Boston Butt

Safeway up here in the Seattle area has bone in pork should blade roasts on sale for 88 cents a pound, so it was time to see if I could come up with some pulled pork like I remember it for my family to sample.

The six pound butt was a seven hour cook on a 22.5" kettle using the ideas in this thread. Rubbed the pork the night before, used hickory chunks for smoke and sprayed it down with apple cider once in awhile.

The firebricks/minion combo kept the vent temps steady at 270-280 for the first six hours, although I did have to close the top vents by a third to keep it that low. After that, I moved the probe to the meat and waited for it to hit 190, since the first six hours made me confident the kettle could keep going just fine.

There was plenty of time to make Hush Puppies, slaw, cherry cobbler and sweet tea while the kettle did a fine job of pretending to be a smoker.

The wife and kids loved it all, and I'm sure I'll try it again. My hat is off to the board for showing me how to do this kind of cook with my kettle.

Congrats on a successful cook, Dan.

Don't apologize for using a kettle to smoke, I have done it successfully for many years now. Just keep doing what your doing, and enjoy the results!

That's interesting. I was able to get an 18 hour burn in a kettle a few weeks back with a brisket. Those bricks look like they would work well, I have the older style weber separators, they would clip on the grill and allow you to move them around to create various isolated areas for the coals. I put them both a little over center, giving as much space to the coals as possible, and then filled the entire side with charcoal up to the top of the grill. Then I removed some and created a trough in the center, where I put the hot coals after lit...but I put too much so had to cool it down with water some...got it stabilized and it went for about 18 hours off/on, a couple times it started to get low but when i opened it up the air got the coals going again. I did wrap the brisket, but put foil under and around the side so that the coals wouldn't burn it, they were right next to it.

The conclusion I came to is that you could use the kettle with a stoker or guru to do some decent cooks, but ultimately you really need a bullet design that isolates the fire from the meat, so it doesn't burn.

Aside from brisket which requires such a long burn, much could be done in the kettle and the pain could be eased with a stoker or guru.

Anything short enough I can manage, and I've had good luck with a 5-6 hour burn for a turkey.

How long total did it take to soften your pork shoulder? You mention 6 hours and then some after...