My first pulled pork overnight smoke

[jonobacon]

Hi Folks,

I wanted to share with you a recent cook and some lessons learned, and a few questions.

We recently had a BBQ to let people know the gender of our baby that is coming in November. It is going to be a boy.

In decided what to BBQ for our guests, I decided to take the somewhat stupidly ballsy move of making pulled pork having never done this before. I am still very new at all of this, as you can probably see from my posts, but I really wanted to try and step up my game for our BBQ.

My idea was simple: have a cook on the Friday night so if it is not good I can try again on the Saturday. Everyone needs a backup plan, right?

My wife seemed to think 16 pounds of pulled pork was needed so I got them from Lunardi's. I asked for bone-in but unfortunately they gave me two pork butts with no bone in either of them. Is bone in really that much tastier?

They looked like this:



I used a pork rub from my Weber's Way to Grill book. If you folks want to know the recipe, I can always put it online - just let me know.

I unwrapped the butts, applied my rub and left it to sit for about 30 minutes. I wasn't sure if I should have left the netting on, but it seemed the general online knowledge was that leaving it on was the right thing to do.

I didn't use any mustard to affix the rub to the meat (I have since bought some), but do you think this is needed for pork butts? Also, do you folks inject your pork butts at all? I didn't inject, marinade or brine these; I wanted to keep it simple as it was my first pork butt cook.

I fired up my smoker to 250, soaked my hickory for a while first (this helps with reducing flare-ups) and then put the two slabs of meat on at around midnight on the Friday evening. Everywhere I was reading I saw that it would take about ten hours to perform the smoke and get the meat up to an internal temp of 190. This mean't I could check them out at 10am and if that didn't work I would do an overnight smoke on the Sat night ready for the Sunday BBQ.

I used my wireless Maverick thermometer to keep an eye on this overnight (this was also my first overnight smoke). I wrapped the transmitter in a small baggy to protect against any rain (although I wasn't expecting any rain that night).



I was curious to see what kind of temperature fluctuation would happen with an overnight smoke. My smoker is a cheap Brinkmann that I wanted to start my BBQ journey with, and as such it is not insulated. I live in Northern California, so I was not expecting it to be that cold in the evening, but I figured it would certainly drop in temp. I didn't wrap any insulating towels around the smoker, but I figured if the temp dropped drastically (e.g. sub-200) I would go Macgyver on that thing and figure something out.

I was pleased to see the temperature tended to range between 250 during the day and 220 in the middle of the night (I kept waking up and checking the temp on my bedside table). If you don't have a wireless temp system, get one, they are awesome.

I sprayed the meat every 45mins or so with applejuice (apart from when I was sleeping). I know some folks are divided on whether this helps, but I get the impression it did. It also gave it a nice yet subtle apple flavor.

When I woke up at 9am the following day (Saturday) the internal pork butt temp seemed to be around 130. I kept the smoke going and at around mid-afternoon I hit the 160 wall where it seems the temp doesn't change hardly at all. I had read about this online so I wasn't all that worried, but as the day turned into early Sat evening I was getting worried that things were not progressing fast enough. Given that I was already over six hours over my estimated completion time, I had no idea how long these puppies were going to take.

Fortunately at around midnight one of the pork butts hit 190 and I took it off the smoker wrapped it in a few layers of foil, covered it in towels and put it in a cooler. I let it rest for about an hour. My cooler is just a simple polystyrene one that I picked up at safeway a while back to cool drinks, but it is now my dedicated meat cooler.

When I took the butt out I was amazed at how hot it still was. I then cut the netting with scissors and to my delight the butt just collapsed into a pile of tender, juicy, meat. At the time I didn't have any heatproof gloves so I used a knife and fork to pull it (it was still way too hot). I just got some heatproof gloves (they are the rubbery ones and they smell a bit chemically, but I presume they should be fine after a few washes).

The other pork butt needed another two hours or so, so at 2am I got it off the smoker, let it rest for an hour in the cooler and then at around 3am I pulled it. I was happy with the first butt but the second one was a whole new level...it was juicier and even more tender, and I as I stood there by myself at 3.30am while my wife was upstairs asleep, I was giggling at how awesome my first smoke turned out. Beginners luck, eh?!

After I had pulled all the pork, I put it in a bowl and put it in the fridge. The following day I slathered it in Kinders original BBQ sauce and put it in a crock pot. I would periodically spray the pork with apple juice to keep it moist and it was a total hit with our guests.

Nearly all of it went by the end of the day - I served it with these awesome super-soft yellow potato buns (I wish I could remember the brand, they were delicious and we ran out, but when I drove to the store to get more there were none left ).

I wish I had taken pictures of the final result, but I am an idiot. Thanks to everyone for your continued help and guidance; I am putting a big chunk of the credit of this successful first pulled pork smoke in your direction and the rest of the credit on beginners luck. I am curious to see how my next one will turn out. Thanks!
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[Manana]

Congratulations on your baby!

To me the bone does add a bit of flavor and I could just be imagining but seems it adds moisture too. It doesn't sound like you had a problem with either though. Just be warned that without pics no one will believe you. We know you have raw butt but after that it's all hearsay.


I do not inject and haven't used mustard. I meant too this last time to see what it would do and I forgot.
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[jonobacon]

[The Midnight Smoker BBQ]

Good thing the butts were netted. I had to buy boneless buts once when i could not find any bone-in, and the damn things started to fall apart mid-cook. I had to tie them with twine to keep them together. Never had this problem with bone-in butts. And I do believe the bone adds to the flavor. Although many do spritz the meat with AJ or a concoction of sorts, opening the lid ever 45 minutes surely added to the cook time. When I spray I typically wait until halfway thru the cook and then spray every 1.5 to 2 hours. Just something to consider.
Congrats on your successful cook.
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[jonobacon]

[Baldwin BBQ]

The saying goes....

"if your looking, you ain't cooking"

[jjjonz]

Very good....just need more pictues.
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Thanks........JJ
SE Alabama

[1buckie]

Congradulations on the youngster-to-be....
Also on hangin' in there on a long cook !!!

the netting helped keep them in line & cooking evenly..

The bone in ones, stay together mostly on their own..

Seems like an extra long time to get there, but sometimes BBQ is just like that;
you can run just a bit hotter & still be OK ~~> 250°~ 270°, which,
if you can add some fuel / let in more air when they get to that 160° point will help things along....

Wetting the wood is a bit dicey, as it can lead to bad tastes, etc.
the flare-ups will just crisp up your outside bark if they're
not too wild!!

One thing that jumped out at me in reading your story was this:
"I sprayed the meat every 45mins or so with applejuice (apart from when I was sleeping)."

Good Move !!
These pros around here never spray their pork when they're sleeping.....
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[GF]

jonobacon, congrats on the baby and your first overnight pulled pork.
I think you have to spitz less and keep that cooker closed, that is a awful long time for 2 8lb. butts.
I've tried the mustard slather, it does hold the rub on but I didn't notice anything better in the finished product.

Nice job, take more pics next time.

[Swamp Mama's]

Nice job jonobacon. I think you are probably hooked for life!
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[daddywoofdawg]

I cook a few hundred pounds a week and I don't use mustard have but didn't think it was needed.
When it gets to the stall point I now wrap them in foil,and the stall goes faster,and I haven't really noticed much of a diffrence in smokeyness, but have noticed much moister meat.
If you see butts in netting it's boneless and should cook faster.check your therm.
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[jonobacon]

Thanks for all the kind comments about the baby and the wonderful advice.

Also, a few folks mentioned having pics of the final result. I had this odd inkling that we did take photos, but I didn't find them on my phone. Well today while taking a photo of my wife's bump with our digital camera I was delighted to find a pic of the first butt that came off:



At least I can show some evidance of the final product.
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Click the www button below to see my cooks on BBQpad.

WSM 22", Char-broiler C33G3CB, Brinkmann Gourmet Smoker

[SoEzzy]

jonobacon please read PMPNLT650pxOTLS!
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Here's a change Robert.

I still work here!

[jonobacon]

My apologies, SoEzzy, I did read that but I thought that the size limit was 600px wide which my last image was, I didn't realize it was 600px along the long side.

I have changed the size of the image. Apologies again.
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Click the www button below to see my cooks on BBQpad.

WSM 22", Char-broiler C33G3CB, Brinkmann Gourmet Smoker

[TOM BURNS]

[BRBBQ]

Looking good
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[jjjonz]

jonobacon check your messages
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Thanks........JJ
SE Alabama

[jonobacon]