My First Pulled Pork

And the first time using the "new" smoker. Actually lugged it up to my friend Mike's place. Turn's out they had a family wedding the day before we planned to smoke, so we were going to be feeding about 17 family members.

 

I pulled two pork butts out of the freezer. They were just over 13 pounds together. Didn't get them out quite as soon as I had hoped, so turned to the CBBQA Forum to get some tips on faster defrost. In the end they were thawed late Saturday evening for a Sunday cook, so I rubbed them up with Bad Byron's Butt Rub and tossed them back in the refrigerator for morning.

We got a late start. Neither of us had done butt before. Mike had the coals going in the firebox before I got there, and we put the butts on just about 11:15 AM.

We added a small Tri-Tip and a sausage too. Also put a chicken on the rotisserie later too (used Butt Rub on it too, and it was tasty). The Tri-Tip and sausage went on about 2:15 PM. Pork butt was 131* internal temps at this time.

We added more soaked oak chips as we went along. We had the smoke box running with about a 10 degree difference from side to side. She was running about 210 at the hot side and 200 on the other.

We added a towel pretty quick - lots of air leaks. Going to have to work on that.  In the afternoon the winds picked up a little so we added the fancy brick mod to keep the towel on. It seemed to do pretty well keeping the drafts down. We took it off once to see what would happen - the temps shot up really fast. Was also glad to see it drop back down fast when the towel went back on. 

By 6 PM the natives were getting restless. So we decided to pop up the heat and get things moving along. We had already lost one family that didn't want to wait any longer and had a long drive home. So we tossed on a oak branch piece. That caught and the temps went right up - so turned down the air flow - kept her at about 250/260. At this point the pork was at 166 internal - as you can see in the photo to the left.

We wrapped in foil a little after 6. We pulled the meat before we really wanted to, but we were going to loose everyone, and the other meats were all done. We ended up pulling it at about 7 PM and the internal temp was at 174*.

Below you can see what I chopped for Mike's family to gobble up - yes chopped, I wanted to get it done fast at this point. On the cutting board are also the Tri-Tip and the sausage. That Tri-Tip was tasty. But so was the pork! Next to that is what I pulled after getting home that evening.

 

I pulled 1 1/2 butts and vacuum packed them up in 2 serving sizes. There was probably about 16 servings at least left there.

I'll be enjoying this meat for some time, and I learned a lot on the cook too. Not bad for my first run at pulled pork! I think we are going to try brisket. None of us have done a brisket before either. This is my kind of learnin'!