OK, no pictures so it didn't really happen but this was one tasty unicorn cook.
Belle Foods (was Bruno's) in Birmingham had a cut of meat I had never seen before in their Wednesday newspaper ad. It was called "Pork Loin Rib Half, Bone In" for $1.39 a pound. It was a pork loin with a rack of baby back ribs still attached. Their baby backs run $5.99 a pound and the pork loin usually a little less. I picked up an 8+ lb piece of meat and then since it was just two of us I cut it into two pieces and vacuum bagged half.
I rubbed it down liberally with Fine Swine and Bovine rub (
http://savorspices.com/redneck.html) and let it sit for a few hours in the fridge. The wife came home from running errands and wanted to know if it was done yet. Since she had given me no indication of what time she wanted to eat I had to go into hurry up mode, thus no pictures.
I took it out of the fridge and let it try and come up to room temp while I got the Weber Perfomer ready to cook. I half filled my Weber chimney with Kingsford and got it going with 2 pieces of newspaper. After about 10 minutes I added the hot coals to the two half circle Weber charcoal basket , one on each side of the grill. I finished filling up the baskets with unlit coals and added a nice size chunk of Pecan wood to each basket. I put an aluminum baking pan down between the two baskets and poured a couple of beers in it. When the grill got up to about 400 degrees I took the meat and seared each side about 3 minutes directly over the charcoal thenput the big hunk of pork down rib side down over the pan to cook indirec and stuck my old Maverick meat thermometer into the side.
I am still trying to relearn how to cook on a Weber after about 10 years of cooking with gas so I had to play with the vents trying to keep the temps down. The temps were between 350-400 for most of the cook. It took about two hours to get the IT up to 150 and then I pulled it and let it rest tented under foil until my wife got the sides done. When I pulled it from the foil I took my butcher knife and trimmed the baby back ribs off and sliced them into individual bones. I sliced the loin into 1 inch slices and served with baked beans and a salad.
I have had problems in the past with pork loing drying out on me but this was very juicy and tender and the ribs and loin picked up a nice bit of the pecan smoke flavor.
It is the first time I have seen this cut of meat for sale, but I will be asking the butcher for it again. $1.39 a pound was freaking unreal for such a nice piece of meat.
