Smoked Pork Butt BBQ

Anita picked up 2 butts on Thursday. One was about 9 pounds and the other was about 7 pounds after a little bit of trimming. Early Friday morning I rubbed them down with some Dizzy Pig coarse grind rub and let them sit in the fridge for a while.


I started up the charcoal chimney at 6:30 PM Friday. I also put a full chimney of unlit coals in the Weber Smoky Mountain (WSM) and added a few handfuls of chunk charcoal.

When the chimney was glowing hot I added the coals to the WSM along with some hickory chunks. It took about 45 minutes for the smoker to get a stable 230°, which is where I like it to be.

I put the two butts on the smoker (heaviest on the bottom rack, above the water pan) and put the wireless thermometer in. I checked the temps about every 2 hours through the night, although I wasn't doing a good job early in the morning. The air temp in the WSM had dropped to 190° and the meat temp on the top rack was only about 150°.


I threw some more lump charcoal on, and got the temps up to just about 275°. A little higher than I'd normally run, but time was running out!

At 9:30 AM I pulled both butts off as the internal temps hit 190°. They were so tender and moist! I was panicking but everything was ok! I wrapped them in foil and put them in my meat cooler along with towels and 2 foil-wrapped bricks that I'd heated in a 350° oven for about 30 minutes. We had a 2 hour drive ahead of us. I've found that the bricks and towels keep it well above 160° for the entire time. Perfect.


Got to my FIL's and proceeded to pull the pork. I took about 1/3rd of the pork and put it into a food processor for a really quick grind, then mixed it back into the pulled pork. I think this adds a different texture that really holds the sauce (I brought about 2 quarts of my homemade sauce).

Everyone there said the sauce and BBQ was fantastic. Best that I'd ever done! I'm glad it came out great for my FIL's 88th birthday!