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Smoked Pork Loin

Pork loin seasoned with your preferred rub, smoked, and finished at higher heat before resting and slicing. Includes rack, pan, and foil-boat options, plus optional brining.

Avg. cook time: 3-4 hours if fully thawed and a good weather day. Adjust longer if still partially frozen and/or a quick thaw and/or a bad weather day.

Ingredients

  • Pork loin
  • Rub of your choice
  • Mustard, optional binder
  • Pork lard and/or butter, for wrapping or the foil boat

Instructions

Preparation

  1. Score the top fat to help it absorb seasoning and render faster.
  2. Season with a rub of choice. Optionally, use mustard as a binder.

Because of the long smoke time, it's not necessary to dry/wet brine overnight, but if you want some extra kick or you want to wet brine for more moisture, you can do so.

  1. (optional) Fill a water pan and put it in the smoker as it warms up to temperate. Set the temperature to 190–200°F. This just helps keep the chamber moist, but in high humidity, Missouri, it's not as needed.
  2. (optional, but recommended) Cut the loin in half. This allows you to place the different meat sizes and compositions in different areas of the smoker so they cook more evenly. Helps prevent some areas from being perfect and others from being overly dry.

Choose a smoker setup

  • Directly on the rack to get as much smoke on the underside as possible.
  • In a pan to catch drippings, but on an elevated rack where smoke can still get to the underside
  • In a "foil bath/boat". Can add butter to the foil boat, which can keep the meat moist and flavored and absorb smoke flavor.

Smoke and finish

  1. Smoke until internal temperature is about 110°F.
  2. Add pork lard and/or butter and wrap in foil. If you do a foil boat, you can keep the top fat area open to the air and to a hot baste, which may help with the fat render. Being completely wrapped in foil can also help with the rapid fat render. Try both ways and see which style you prefer.
  3. Increase the temperature to 350°F to try and quickly render as much fat as possible.
  4. Cook until internal temperature is about 150°F. If the loin has a large difference in thickness, you may want to cut off the smaller half and get it resting while the thicker half keeps cooking to temperature.

Rest and serve

  1. Rest for about 30 minutes in the oven.
  2. Serve on a warm pan and cut chops off fresh when ready to serve.

Alternatively, pre-cut all slices and season/glaze them and let them sit in the drippings and absorb that extra flavor.

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