If you've read the 'about me' section on this page, you're about to see that this was pretty much the most perfect 48 hours of my life this year thus far. I had just returned from a 7 hour motorcycle ride from Vermont when my wife Kelly showed me the 6lb pork butt she purchased for me. Nothing says love like pork butt. A friend of mine suggested a recipe from The Grill Smith and it proved to be outstanding. Kelly prepared the rub and then I went to work on rubbing the crap out of the butt (not exactly how I meant that to sound but you get the idea).
We let the butt sit for a while and stopped for a beer having worked so hard thus far. Next up was prepping the grill as this was going to be a LONG overnight low and slow smoke. Being new to the charcoal grill, I checked out a number of links online and settled on this site for guidance. I didn’t go to the extreme he suggests with separating my charcoal lumps and it still worked fine but followed his general guidance overall. What I basically learned from reading his tips though, was that I should really figure out how to set and MAINTAIN the proper temperature before I throw the butt on. So at about 8:30pm, I fired up the grill and over the next 2 hours, I fiddled with the top and bottom vents to make sure I was able to keep the temp at 225 F.
At 10:30pm, I threw the butt on the grill and after another hour of temperature watching (and confidence building) we went to bed. Now like any good man dreaming of butt ;) I woke several times throughout the night and went outside in my skivvies to check the temperature making the odd tiny adjustment to the vents when needed.
By around 2pm on Friday July 1st, the interior temp of the meat hit 195 F and it was ready to come off the grill. I wrapped my butt in tin foil and put it in a cooler for a few hours. That time period is crucial as it continues to break down so that the meat just falls off the bone later when you fork the butt ;) to pull it from the meat (sorry for the 80 sexual innuendoes, but there’s just so many opportunities to do so when dealing with pork butt - and yes, I know, the pork 'butt' is actually from the shoulder).
Supper that evening was pulled pork sandwiches with Kelly having prepared an outstanding sauce to top the meat. We enjoyed with a nice bold bottle of red wine which just made it even more enjoyable. The smoky flavor came through in the pork in such a way that when I brought some in to work the following week, a friend actually got goosebumps while eating it saying it was so amazing.*
*Disclaimer – Rob does have diabetes and there was a lot of sugar in the BBQ sauce Kel made, so it’s entirely possible the goosebumps were not a result of my pulled pork, but hey, he still said it was outstanding.
So, check out the loads of pulled pork recipes online or contact The Grill Smith for his recipe and get grilling. This was my first attempt at a low and slow smoke and if I can give goosebumps to a diabetic – dammit, so can you!
Get grilling! What’s the worst that could happen? ;)
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