Afternoon the day before cut a 9 pound bone-in pork butt in half. Rubbed on Memphis Dust and put in the frig in separate plastic bags. About 2 AM remember I had not sprinkled on salt for the dry brine so got up and did so.
2/7/2016 – Superbowl Day
- 5:10 AM – Counted and lite 20 Kingsford blue bag briquettes. First time to actually count them and found 20 is less of a pile than my past guesstimated piles.
5:40 – Placed the two 4 lb. pork chunks on the grate after placing fully light coals in one end of SnS and filled it to near top with un-lite briquettes and a pecan chunk on the burning coals. The meat looked very wet now due to the salt added about 2 AM. Opened vents and it came up to 230 quickly so closed vents down so lower was at 1/4 mark and upper at a little less than 1/4. Ambient temp at this time was 36 degrees and very still.- 6:25 – Checked on it and grate temp is 233.
- 6:55 – Grate temp was 246 and climbing very slowly. Closed top vent slightly. Sun is coming up soon.
- 8:40 – Grate temp is 233 and has been within 5 degrees of that for the past hour+.
- 10:50 – No smoke with grate temp at 240 so opened up and stoked fire moving pecan over coals. Checked internal temp with quick read and found at 155. A lot of juice came out both penetrations and chucks are wet with sweat.
- 11:20 – Grate temp is 244. Added bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers around the chunks. Added another chunk of pecan.
- Took Mary and her art stuff to the Studio in the Woods in the Woodlands for art week with her buddies. Had added more briquettes and wood chunks. Came back to Kelley’s for Piper’s 4th birthday party and went home twice to check.
- 4:35 – Grate 243, internal was 185.
- 6:15 – Grate 227 internal 178
- ~7:00 PM came home to stay. Grate temp is still at 240s but internal is barely 180+. Noticed the fire has fully burned to the end where the probe is clipped so it is seeing more heat than is really in the overall kettle. Removed the meat. Very dark and the bark seems a little tough like it is dried out. Wrapped them in foil and left on a rack to cool.
- Once cooled to warm I dug into one with two forks. The exposed meat strands that did not have any bark were all but black. But, once that layer was pulled back the meat below pulled apart nicely.
- BTW – Some of the poppers were good and some were painful. See separate post.
