Sometimes, you have a recipe that is so simple but looks amazingly luxurious. We smoked a pork neck and served it with a delicious onion cream sauce. All you have to do is cut an onion and monitor the temperature.
Every recipe depends on good quality ingredients. That means you must always buy the best meat you can afford. It’s better to eat fantastic a few times than mediocre every day, right? In this case, we opted for a Livar pork neck of almost one kilo. Livar is free-range pork from the Netherlands with a nice amount of intramuscular fat.
We made a spicy dry rub with chipotle pepper and a big teaspoon of black pepper to flavour the meat. You don’t have to worry about the meat getting too spicy. Most of the heat will be lost during preparation.
We set up our Kamado Joe with an indirect heat of about 150ºC (300F). The baking dish with sliced onion and butter and the pork neck go on the grill grates. Don’t forget to cover the plate setter with a double sheet of aluminium foil. Otherwise, the drops of fat will burn and start to smell.
We smoke the pork to a core temperature of 65ºC (149F). That’s juicy and still a little pink. This is quality pork, and you can eat it medium rare.
In the meantime, check every now and then how the onions are doing. If they threaten to dry out and are not yet golden brown, pour some water into the oven dish. Pull the oven dish out of the grill to continue making the sauce if they are already golden brown. Let the bowl cool down a little; otherwise the creme fraiche will curdle, which doesn’t look good.
This is how we prefer to eat pork neck. Juicy, tasty with a smoke ring and just pink. Let us know if you will make this smoked pork neck in the comments below. Or better! Could you take a photo and post it on Instagram? Tag @bbqhelden and @kamadojoe so we can see what you made.
Ingredients
- 1 kilo pork neck
For the dry rub
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp smoked paprika powder
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp garlic granulate
- 1/2 tsp chipotle powder
For the sauce
- 4 white onions
- 50 grams of butter
- 1 tbsp mustard
- 100 grams of creme fraiche
- Pepper and salt to taste
Instructions
- Mix all parts of the dry rub and sprinkle it over the meat. Rub it in and leave it in the fridge for at least 45 minutes or overnight.
- Cut the onions into ½ cm slices and line the bottom of a baking dish with them. Put the butter in small pieces on top.
- Prepare a barbecue with an indirect temperature of about 150ºC (302F) and a chunk of smoke wood. Apple or Cherry works well.
- Place the baking dish under or next to the meat if you have the space. Insert a thermometer into the meat and close the lid.
- Check every 15 minutes after half an hour to see if the onions are not cooking dry.
- When the pork has a core temperature of 65ºC (149F), remove it from the grates to let it rest.
- When the onions are golden brown, remove the oven dish from the grid and mix the mustard and creme fraiche through it. Then, season it with salt and pepper.
- Cut the pork into nice slices and serve with the onion cream sauce.
