Smoked Pork Butt - David Carr

Food: Smoked pork butt
Temperature: 270°
Cooking time: 9:30
Wood used: Cherry
Notes: Cooked using minion method to start charcoal, then basted several times, wrapped after 8 hours

We all love pulled pork, and I wanted to try a sandwich I miss from when we lived in Florida. So, I threw a pork butt on the smoker and let it cook all day while I was stuck on conference calls. There was a barbecue place in Jacksonville called Bono’s BBQ, which offers a sandwich they call a Bo-Hawg. It’s a pulled pork sandwich with a link of smoked sausage and a slice of cheddar cheese. And it’s very amazing.

For this cook, I took inspiration from the Aaron Franklin Masterclass series that I’ve been watching. The goal was to stay around 270, which worked out well since this is applicable to both the pork butt and the ribs.

Trim and Rub

I did very little in the way of trimming this time, taking a little of the fat cap off the pork butt, but only where it was hard, thick fat. There was little extraneous fat, so I didn’t trim the ribs back at all. To rub the meats, I used a slather of yellow mustard and a rub of salt and pepper, with a little paprika added for color. For the pork butt, I used a 1:1 mixture of salt and pepper. For the ribs, I used 1:2 salt to pepper.

When I’ve cooked pork butt previously, I used a more complex rub. But I was really trying to stay close to what Franklin did in his videos, so I went a little simpler. The mustard is undetectable after cooking. I’ve learned the point of using a “slather” is to help the rub stick to the meat and create a more noticeable bark. It seems like it did that, but I don’t really recall having any issues there without a slather.

Cooking

I fired up the grill about 6:40 and it was ready for loading right at 7:00. After putting the meat on, it was only a few minutes before the grill as up to temperature. I spritzed both meats every hour or so with apple juice. Actually, I went back and forth on whether to use apple cider vinegar, as Franklin makes note that too much sugar will burn, but I’ve had good luck with apple juice in the past. Therefore I decided not to fix what wasn’t broken.

It’s been unusually warm the past few weeks, and today was similar, projected to be in the low 70s. This is about 20 degrees higher than normal for this time of year here, but it makes keeping the smoker temperatures up much easier. Since I’m in and out of the house with some regularity tweaking the vents, it also makes my life easier since I don’t have to worry about weather clothing. I just basically parked at the kitchen table a few feet from the smoker with my laptop and worked from there. In retrospect, maybe I should have worked from the hammock, but anyway..

Results

The ribs were a bust, maybe because I use a smaller cut of ribs than Franklin does and perhaps the heat was too much. As a result, they were tasty, but fell completely off the bone while cutting them, which makes them entirely unable to be served as ribs. “Congrats on your additional pulled pork.” I’d like to get a bigger cut of ribs (may need to go to butcher shop rather than grocery store) and try again. The fact that my normal way of cooking makes perfect ribs creates a little resistance to continuing to try this. It’s also possible that Franklin is much better (ya think?) and keeping a stable temperature in his offset smoker and this was a bigger factor than I realize.

The pork butt came out great, but it still isn’t quite as juicy as I’d like, but maybe that’s normal with pulled pork before it has sauce on it. I let it rest for an hour and a half before we were ready for dinner, and there was plenty of juice inside the foil when I unwrapped it, so I may just have the wrong expectations here. I cooked the kielbasa on the grill while the side dishes were heating up and that made the perfect sandwich that I’ve been missing. Overall, it was an excellent dinner.

Cooking Log

Time	Grill Temp	Meat Temp	Vents	Comments
6:15 AM	N/A	N/A	N/A	Trimmed meat
6:40 AM	N/A	N/A	N/A	Started smoker, used minion method
7:00 AM	184	43	100%	Meat on, closed vents to 25%, hit temp by 7:15
7:30 AM	285	52	25%	59 outside
8:00 AM	263	63	25%	Opened vents a little to keep temp up around 270
8:30 AM	260	95	33%	Temp rising, tweaking vents still
9:00 AM	282	125	30%	Added ribs, spritzed pork butt
9:20 AM	255	151	25%	Stirred coals, added 3-4 more blocks of wood
9:30 AM	288	154	15%	Reduced vents to lower temp
10:00 AM	270	161	20%	63 outside, spritzed both meats
10:40 AM	267	165	20%
11:05 AM	275	167	20%	Spritzed both meats, added 1 block wood, still 63 outside, stirred coals
11:30 AM	258	168	25%
11:45 AM	270	170	25%	Sauced top of ribs, spritzed both meats
11:55 AM	300	171	20%	Sauced bottom of ribs, lowered vents to control heat
12:05 PM	284	172	20%	Removed ribs to wrap them
12:30 PM	273	177	20%
1:00 PM	265	182	20%
1:30 PM	255	184	25%	Added fuel and 2-3 wood blocks
1:45 PM	245	185	50%	Spritzed pork butt, opened vents to get temp up
2:00 PM	279	186	50%
2:30 PM	242	190	20%
3:00 PM	255	184	50%	Pulled ribs, wrapped pork butt
3:30 PM	284	186	25%	70 outside
4:00 PM	255	199	50%	Opened vents back up to increase temp
4:30 PM	250	205	50%	Pulled pork butt to rest