Smoked Pork Butt

Who wants to watch me smoke my butt, baby? by NosmoKing

Smoking

My Boston Butt hunk O' pork, that is. Today I started using my Brinkmann water smoker. Let's talk about what I did over the last few days.

I took my butt and stuck it in a bowl. I soaked my butt in a mixture of 1/3 cider vinegar, 2/3 water, enough salt to saturate the solution, and 2 TBSP of ground black pepper. My butt sat in that for 1.5 days. When it came out, it looked a little odd, but then I rubbed it heavily with a BBQ spice rub. Nothing special in the rub exactly.

I then tried to figure out how to work my smoker. I wanted to smoke my butt RIGHT. I filled the charcoal tray about 1/2 full of lump charcoal. I set hunks of water soaked oak (from my firewood pile) on top of the lump charcoal.

I filled my charcoal chimney starter with Kingsford to the top and let it burn until it was all burning like mad. I then spread the blazing coals on top of the lump charcoal and added a few hunks of water soaked Hickory.

I filled the water pan with, water. I then set my butt on the top smoking grate and inserted my remote probe thermometer.

I assembled the whole smoker and let it sit and smoke my butt.

I smoked my butt for 6 hours and it had heated up to 175 degrees. The guide I read said it should take at least 8 hours to smoke my butt properly to 195 degrees. I set the top back on and let it smoke more more to get to the proper temp.

Here's my notes about butt smoking thus far. The Brinkman smoker has exactly zero adjustments for airflow. You get a perforated base in the charcoal pan and a gap around the top lid. That's it in terms of airflow. Fire management becomes more of a challenge. At first, it burned too hot. I wet down the coals with water and dropped the temp to where it should be for smoking. After that, I dicked around with the fire every 2 hours to toss in a few more hunks of lump charcoal, some more oak wood, and to stir the coals to get the fire working properly.

Later that day

Well, after smoking my butt for almost 9 hours, it looked like shit!

I wrapped my butt in aluminum foil and a thick towel. I let it sit for about 1 hour inside a small insulated cooler. It was still over 165 degrees when I got to it 1 hour later.

I stuck 2 forks in my butt and RIPPED IT TO SHREDS!!! It was all soft and tender after all that time in the smoke and pulled apart in a hurry. I mixed up some "Carolina Red" and made up dinner (cider vinegar, ketchup, hot pepper flakes, salt, sugar).

Not a fancy dinner, but BBQ isn't all that fancy. My butt tasted awesome!