Barbecued Pineapple Pork Loin “Ham”
When my family and relatives get together every year to celebrate Easter, we are thrilled for the blessing to be able to get together to reconnect and catch up with loved ones. The Sunday festivities always revolve around a ham as the main dish, and weather permitting, the little ones will hunt for Easter eggs hidden around the house or outside in the yard.
I’ve never cured a ham and have been looking for an excuse to use the pink salt I ordered from Amazon that was languishing in my pantry. My chance came when the kind folks at Snake River Farms sent me a couple of their Kurobuta pork loins.
Earlier in the week, I had made one into a terrific spiral stuffed loin and then I had a brainwave to cure the second one as the “ham’ for Easter. After curing the loin in a brine for 2 days in the fridge, I rolled it into a log and trussed it with some Butchers twine. The log shape makes it easier to slice and plate the pork. I smoked the cured “ham” in my trusty Weber Smokey Mountain and glazed it with some fruity pineapple glaze.
Read on if you want to see how a pork loin can, through some Butcher twine and some creativity, masquerade as an Easter Ham!
- Total Time: 1 hour 30 mins
- Yield: 6 1x
Ingredients
- 2–3 pound pork loin
- Butcher’s Twine
- SYD All Purpose Rub
Curing Brine (I used a digital scale to measure the quantities)
- 1 gallon cold water
- 1–1/2 cups kosher salt
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 8 teaspoons pink salt (cure #1)
Pineapple Glaze:
- 1/2 stick of butter (add 1/8 tsp salt if unsalted butter)
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 tablespoons karo syrup
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 6 tablespoons pineapple juice (reserved from canned pineapple slices below)
Garnish:
- 15 oz can of pineapple slices (reserve the juice)
- a little brown sugar
- 1 small jar of Maraschino cherries
- Toothpicks
Instructions
- Mix the curing brine liquid
- Soak pork for 48 hours in curing brine. Weigh it down so it is submerged
- Discard brine and soak 2 hours in cold water to remove excess salt. Pat dry, wrap in Saran wrap, and refrigerate until you’re ready to cook it
- Lay flattened loin on its side and press down to give it a more rounded shape
- Truss snugly with Butchers twine to give a more rounded shape
- Apply a medium coat of SYD Meat Rub
- Heat your BBQ pit up to 250F using briquettes (I used Kingsford Blue)
- Add two tennis-sized chunk of apple wood and smoke in pit until pork internal temp of 140F (about 30 minutes per pound of pork at 250F pit temp)
- Remove and tent with foil and rest for 10-15 minutes to redistribute the juices
- Sprinkle the pineapple slices with some brown sugar and grill to get some char marks
- Make glaze in a saucepan by heating the butter and adding the other ingredients while pork is resting
- Pour glaze over ham
- Arrange your grilled pineapples on the glazed ham
- Put cherries on toothpicks (cut the sharp end off one end) and place in the center of the pineapple hole
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 60 mins
- Category: Entree
- Cuisine: American