Blackberry bourbon bone-in boston butt recipe

Ingredients

• 1 large bone-in pork shoulder (Boston Butt)
• 1 jar of blackberry jam (8 oz or so)
• 1 pound of local honey
• 1 cup of bourbon
• 1 Tablespoon of fresh ground black pepper
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 cup of Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning
• Louisiana Pecan Wood

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Preparation

• So let's start with the injection. The idea is that we're going to flavor the pork both inside and outside the meat. The ingredients that get injected inside the pork will marinate the meat as well as provide some bold flavor.
• Take the blackberry jam, honey, bourbon, and black pepper and mix it all together really well. Once it is all combined, strain the seeds out if there were seeds in your blackberry jam. They will have trouble getting through the injector.
• Now take your pork shoulder. One side will probably have an excessive layer of fat on it. Go ahead an trim most of that off. There is no precision required, just make sure you are trimming off fat and not muscle. Pork has so much fat in it to begin with that you don't need that extra layer.
• Now the fun part... lay the trimmed pork shoulder down on a pan of some kind and start injecting the blackberry/bourbon/honey/pepper mixture into it. Feel free to take a little sip... it should be sweet, fruity, peppery, and have a little kick from the bourbon! Stick your needle into the pork shoulder all over the place. Be very liberal with it. You might as well use it all! Flip the pork over and make sure to get the other side too.
  
• Inject the pork all over the place. Once you have thoroughly injected the mixture into the pork, the next step is to rub the outside. The brown sugar will caramelize on the outside and provide a nice bark while the salt and peppers will penetrate into the pork and leave it flavorful. Just blend the ingredients together and rub it all over the outside of the pork shoulder. It will mix with the runoff blackberry mixture, but that's ok. Just let it form a paste on the outside of the pork shoulder.
• Now get your smoker going. This varies completely based on what kind of smoker you have... so its hard to give specific advice. As a general rule of thumb you'll want to smoke the pork shoulder at 200 to 250 degrees until the internal temperature has maintained around 165-170 degrees.
• If your smoker stays hotter than that, you won't want to leave the shoulder on for that long. The finished product should look something like the picture below. The bark on the outside should be nice and caramelized.

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