Brining the pork cheeks

• Take a deep bowl of water and add the ingredients of the brine.
• Carefully bring to boiling point, turn off the heat and allow the brine to cool.
• Add the pork cheeks and brine for 12 hours in the cooled beer brine.
• Remove the pork cheeks from the brine and pat dry well.

BBQ time

• Prepare your BBQ for an indirect session at low temperature 75-105°C. When using the Traeger Pelletsmoker you can use the supersmoke function.
• Smoke the pork cheeks to a core temperature of about 75°C.

Wrapping

• As soon as the core temperature is reached you take a piece of butcher paper. Place the pork cheeks in the butcher paper (or silver foil) and sprinkle with the maple syrup.
• Then place a few lumps of butter on top and fold the butcher paper tightly so you get a nice package.
• Wrap the pork cheeks to a core temperature of +-88°C until you can easily pierce the pork cheeks with a toothpick.

Cherry beer glaze

• While the pork cheeks are cooking on the BBQ you can make the sauce. Pour the juice of a cup of cherries (keep the cherries separate) in a bowl and add the cherry beer and thyme.
• Leave to simmer gently for five minutes so the flavours mix well.
• Add the rum to the vanilla pudding powder and dissolve it so that all the lumps disappear.
• Thicken the sauce with this mixture and season with some raspberry vinegar to taste.
• As soon as the pork cheeks are cooked you increase the temperature of your BBQ to 130°C (indirectly).
• Pour half of the sauce into a deep bowl and remove the pork cheeks from the packaging. Put them through the sauce and put them back on the smoker until the sauce sticks nicely to the pork cheeks. This takes about 10-20 minutes.
• Meanwhile, add the cherries to the other half of the sauce and let it heat up in the sauce for a while.

Serve with mashed potatoes and the cherry sauce. Enjoy your meal!