Well, I smoked my first Boston Butt this past weekend.
The night before I mixed a brine of kosher salt, peppercorns and molasses for a total brining of around 14 hours for a 9.5lb BB. At 7:00am, woke up, made a pot of coffee, surfed the news channels, had a couple of smokes and waited for the caffeine and nicotine to do their business. Washed hands thoroughly. I found an interesting rub for the BB, but already had several rub mixtures in the spice pantry. WTF, I took a large mixing bowl and dumped them all in. Since this was my first BB smoke, the other rub recipe would wait. None of the mixtures of the already made rubs would be bad for pork anyway, just don't really know what they were. Pulled the pork out of the brine, pat dry and rubbed. Fired up the WSM (Weber Smokey Mountain 18.5" smoker).
All my ducks weren't in a row though.
- I left an opened bag of charcoal in the shed, which is a slat design, not open air, but not air tight either. It rained pretty hard the night before and I guess the charcoal absorbed dampness. Instead of getting to temp in about 30 minutes, it was more like two hours.
- Apparently, I fried the cable of my meat probe on the gas grill a few weekends ago and it was completely hosed. No way to check the internal temp.
- I had read not to trust the temp gauge on the lid. The only other meat probe I have only registers up to 200°.
- I had a massive hangover.
So after the smoker finally hits a good temp (according to the lid gauge), I throw the meat on. I kept a check on the temp for the next two hours every 15 minutes and it stayed rock steady at 225°. I took off and did other things and got back around 2:00pm with a newly purchased oven temp gauge. The lid gauge had risen to 250°, but that wasnt really a concern
or so I thought. The newly purchased oven temp gauge registered 285°.
After about seven hours, this is what I saw. The photo doesn't show the water pan well, but there is a cup of goodness down there, the drippings. I figured this was a good time to slather on some of the No. 5 sauce I made last weekend (seen in the second & third photos after it was turned)
I double foiled it and let it rest for an hour or so. With the combination of cooking at a higher heat than expected and no means of checking the internal temp, I guess the result wasn't too bad. It was still very moist and oh so tender.
Next weekend is my trial run for a smoked Thanksgiving turkey.