Smoking A Butt

About once a month I fire up the smoker and smoke something. Sometimes its a butt(Pork Shoulder), a whole chicken(I'm praying one day it will be roostie), ribs, jalapenos, fish, deer snack sticks or jerky. This past weekend it was a butt. It's usually a butt because it produces the most food with the least amount of work. It takes the longest but requires only that I check the temperature every few hours. This time of year when it is this hot I don't like smoking as much. I really enjoy BBQing in the winter more and that's when I do it the most. I have come a long way since I first got the smoker on Craigslist about 2 or 3 years ago. Nothing that comes out of the smoker is going to taste bad but it definitely needed some perfecting. The main thing I realized is you can't rush it. It's done when it's done, not necessarily when you are ready to eat. So this time I decided to let the smoker go all night while we slept and hopefully the BBQ would be ready when we got home from church the next afternoon.

I started off getting some charcoal nice and hot in the chimney starter. This is way better than using lighter fluid. A lot of people say they can taste the lighter fluid but I can't. I just find that it is a lot easier and faster doing it this way. Probably safer too.

After they get nice and hot I dump them in the smoker's fire box and add some wood. I usually use hickory but lately I have been using dogwood from a tree that died in my yard. I really like the flavor too.

Another new thing I have been doing the last dew times is soaking the butt in a brine. It consist of 2 Quarts of water, 2 cups of Pickling salt and about a cup of molasses. I let this soak for about 6-8 hours then pat dry and apply your dry rub. I have been using "Bone Sucking Sauce" Dry rub.

 Now that the fire is stoked and the meat is seasoned I wait. This time it ended up taking about 16 hours. That's probably a few hours longer than it should have but it's hard to keep an eye on the temperature when you are sleeping. It still beats cooking all day and then its still not ready by dinner time.

Finally it is done. I gave it about 30 minutes to cool down and then pulled it apart. The last time I made it we used the mixer with the dough attachment and shredded it really fine.

This time I just pulled it in chunks. Either way will work. I also made some Cole slaw to go with it.

(Notice the color of the meat in this picture and there is no sauce on it)

I have not perfected my own sauce yet but I am working on it. Every time I make it it taste awful. The last time I made it was the best yet but still not great. So since I spent 16 hours cooking I wasn't about to make my own sauce again and I don't really like any of the store brands that much I decided to go to a local BBQ place that was featured on the Food Network show "The best thing I ever Ate" and buy some of their homemade sauce. It was a good choice and the BBQ was great. I've really got the meat cooking part down I just need to practice more on the sauce.