It is officially Summer. I fired up the smoker yesterday afternoon. It was sunny and 72 here in Boise and I figured that would keep me out of any other sort of mischief for a few hours. For the most part, it did.
The guest of honor yesterday was a 4 1/2 pound pork butt done up "Carolina Style". His day got started around 10 A.M. with a nice dry rub massage of brown sugar, paprika, ground mustard, garlic, onion, salt, and of course, cayenne. My mortar and pestle contributed a healthy dash of pepper and some cumin (lightly toasted before grinding). He went into the refrigerator and just sat there for about 7 hours. I watched a baseball game, had a late lunch, and screwed around on the computer while he was in the refrigerator.
My smoker is not real fancy or anything. It is an "inexpensive" little offset firebox model.
When I first started cooking on this thing my results were wildly inconsistent. I finally figured out that the thermometer it shipped with was about 60 degrees off. (That makes a difference.) I went to Home Depot and upgraded it to a $10 model. That was better, it was only about 30 degrees off. I finally got smart and bought a dual probe digital thermometer. One probe monitors the chamber temperature while the other one monitors the internal temperature of the meat. Good investment.
Since I had a late lunch, I figured I might as well have a late dinner so I fired this guy up about 20 after 4, got my temperature stabilized and threw mister pork butt in for what I guessed would be a leisurely 5-6 hours of smoking. This is the first time I have smoked anything that was going to take that long. I encountered a new quirk in the design of this smoker. The grate in the firebox sits to low. As the ash started to build up, it was restricting airflow to the fire. This is where I caught the spatula on fire. It was the only thing I had handy that I could reach into the firebox with and rearrange some of the ash. Yes, it was a wooden handled spatula. Yes, I should have known better. It wasn't going to be in the fire that long.........
To sum it all up, after 5 1/2 hours the pork butt emerged beautifully smoked. I served it with a homemade Carolina vinegar sauce, coleslaw, and some tater tots. Finished it off with a cold beer and called it a day. (The first of many this summer I'm sure!)
1 comment:
Brenton, it sounds wonderful! Someday you are going to make some woman a wonderful Wife!
But I can just imagine some college kid is going to google "dual probe" + "pork butt" expecting something a little risque' and get your blogspot. He might be disappointed.
Didn't Cartman get dual probed?
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