Right away I can think of three
reasons you thought that you
had "really good food":

(1) You've never been to Memphis!

(2) BBQ is so good that even done
poorly, it's darned good.

(3) Actually (secret, don't tell the
others) BBQ, at least the Memphis kind
that I know, is not very difficult to
do well!

Why is it so good? Well, it's
warm, soft, and moist (succulent) and
is big on salt, black and/or hot red pepper,
sweet, sour, fat, smoke, and the Malliard
reaction. So, it hits really
hard on nearly all the elements
as in:

Gray Kunz and
Peter Kaminsky,
'The Elements of Taste'.

For the secret, one of the
pillars has been explained
by some food chemistry --
keep the proteins in the
meat fibers below 185 F.
Do most of the cooking
with the meat at about 160 F
for melting the collagen.
Then you do have food safety.

Overheat the meat fibers with the
proteins, and they
will shrink, get rid of their
water, and become not good.

The long cooking times at
relatively low temperatures
are to melt the collagen
without overheating and, thus,
ruining the proteins.
Supposedly the proteins are
always tender; only the collagen
is tough. So, melt out the
collagen without ruining
the proteins.
The melted
collagen helps make the
meat moist and succulent.

I don't know about beef
brisket BBQ -- it's a
Texas thing. I was in Texas
only once, did have some of their
beef BBQ, and it was good.
But I don't know how they do it.
On that trip to Texas, the story
went that some early immigrants
were German butchers, and they
worked out how to BBQ brisket,
no doubt, as a way to have people
able to like that cut of meat.

For ribs, which I also don't know
about, maybe the smoke plays
a really important role, e.g.,
for a smoke ring.

But for Memphis BBQ, picnic pork
shoulder, I long suspected that
all the smoke was mostly just
advertising smoke to attract
downwind customers
and, really,
not very important to the
final meat as served. One reason
is that about half the shoulder
was still covered by the skin.
Another reason was that for the
rest of the meat, the ratio of
surface area exposed to the smoke
to meat volume was
relatively small.

Another big secret (definitely
don't tell anyone this one!):
Actually, get a good oven
thermometer and carefully adjust
your oven to hold about 220 F.
Not much higher than 220 F
and maybe a little lower
(don't want the meat to
get over 185 F).

Get a roasting pan and a
roasting rack. Put a
picnic pork shoulder, say,
skin side down, on the rack,
with a dry rub on the exposed
meat surface if you want,
although I doubt that it
will contribute to the final
product as served,
place it in the oven with
a meat thermometer deep
in the meat but not next to
a bone (that might give a
misleading reading).

Cook to an internal
temperature of 185 F,
maybe a little less, not much more,
for maybe 16 hours.

Will get a lot of fat
and melted collagen
in the bottom of the roasting pan.

Place on a cutting
board, remove the skin,
remove the meat from the
bones (the arm bone and the
shoulder joint),
remove as much fat
as you wish,
and coarsely chop the rest.

Add favorite red BBQ sauce, likely
one with smoke flavor.

Place, likely with some salt
and hot sauce,
on a white bread bun
and top with
a simple white coleslaw.

It's good.

Refrigerate what's left;
it reheats well in a
microwave oven.

For the coleslaw, my quick
guess at what Memphis has
been doing is to take
a head of ordinary green
cabbage, quarter it by
cutting through the root,
and cut out the solid, stiff
stem parts.
Thinly slice the rest.
Add ordinary Ranch dressing
and mix.
Done.

Last time I bought
about 9 pounds of cabbage and
used 127 ounces of shredded cabbage
and 13.2 cups of dressing. Might
cut that back to, say, 12 cups.
Got eight quarts.

No doubt Memphis was not using
Ranch dressing, but with my
guess the results are not
too far off. I got the
Ranch dressing idea from
the back of a package of
shredded cabbage for coleslaw.

So, here I've described
hated ersatz oven-Q.
It's also surprisingly good.

For doing BBQ, picnic pork shoulder
is forgiving, from all I've seen
much easier than beef or chicken.
Should get good results if even
roughly follow what I outlined.
Even with pork, the shoulder is
likely much more forgiving than
ribs.

I have no desire to return to Memphis!

If my business does well and I retire,
I want to go to, say,
New Hampshire,
enjoy challenging the
winters with a 4 wheel drive
car with a lot of road
clearance and big, aggressive
snow tires,
attend operas, concerts, and
lectures on mathematical
physics in Boston,
feast on New England seafood
and maybe French, Italian,
German, and
Chinese food,
and, maybe, sometimes
BBQ a pork shoulder!

Memphis? Naw.

For the business, as of yesterday,
I got all the planned software
running. That was a good day.
I have a few revisions in mind and
then on to my critical review,
alpha and beta test,
version 1.0, and going live!