First overnight and first butt cook


 
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Brandon Cackowski-Schnell

TVWBB Member
This weekend I conquered my fears of both the overnight cook and pork butt in one fateful evening. Well, fateful is a gross overstatement as the cook went without incident.

I uses the mustard slathered pork butt recipe found on this site with a small modification. I split the 1/4 cup paprika up into 1/8 cup sweet paprika and 1/8 cup hot paprika as I like a little more heat in my rubs.

I put a 6 lb butt on the top grate and a 7 lb butt on the bottom grate. Fired up the WSM using the minion method (old Kingsford) with three smallish chunks of hickory buried in the coals and 3 small chunks of cherry on top. When I fired up the cooker, outside temps were in the mid 40's and it was supposed to be a calm night with the temps in the high 30's.

I put the meat on at 8:30. By 9:30 the thermometer was showing 252 at the grate. It was at 254 when I went to bed at 11:30.

The next morning I checked it at 8:45. The cooker was at around 205 due to the fuel all having burned off, and the meat was at around 175. After replenshing fuel and water, I got the temps up to 275 (I was getting impatient at this point) and waited. I pulled the first butt at around 10:15 at an internal temp of 201. I then moved the larger butt to the top grate and pulled it at 11:00 when it got to 197.

Both butts spent an hour in the cooler before pulling. The bark was fantastic and the meat pulled with no effort. All in all, almost 14 lbs of uncooked, untrimmed meat yielded about 5 lbs of pulled pork. Not bad for a night's work.
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Thanks very much to everyone on these boards for all the support and to Chris for the recipes and the work behind the scenes. Now I can't wait to try some pork butts with Old Bay.

-Brandon
 
Sorta nerve racking to do that first overnight cook, huh? It just gets easier. If you haven't acquired a larger water pan yet, take a look in Chris's mods section. Very important for overnighters. Also, if you burned all the fuel off in 12 hours, see if you can get some more in there, I usually can go 16 hours or so on a (very) full load (then again, I cook at a little lower temp, so I guess that figures.)

Any way you slice it, congrats on your first overnighter....many more to come, I'm sure!!
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Rich G.
 
In calm conditions I have easily reached 19 hours at 225-250 maintained.I fill the ring all the way up and then some. You can get the bigger water pan at Bass pro shops for about $4. It does help on the overnighters.

Next time, as a suggestion, you may try both butts on the top grate for convenience. They might fill the grate at first, but by morning will have shrunk. I get 2 7lb'ers on the top grate easily.

Great job, and next time you'll be more at ease about the whole thing.
 
It's good getting that first overnighter under your belt. If you fire up the WSM at 8, before you hit the sack, toss in a few more coals if you experience the fuel/temps being low when you wake up.
I'll have to start checking my pork. Seems like 14# at the start and only getting 5# of pulled is on the low side. I never really measured the butts though.
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I was amazed at how not stressed I was. I think it was from everyone saying that it was real hard to mess up pork butt.

The fuel thing was my fault. I was concerned that it wouldn't all fit, so after I filled up the ring, I took some briquettes from the ring and put them in the chimney. Of course, the next morning I ended up putting the same number of briquettes back in the ring. :p

As for the yield, in Chris's article about Mr. Brown, he says:

"Earlier I said that I started with 32.07 pounds of meat. I weighed all the pulled pork, and ended up with 12.88 pounds of edible meat. That's a 40% yield. I lost 22% to trimming before cooking, and 38% to fat and moisture rendered during cooking plus some fat and unsavory bits discarded during pulling."

I got less yield than that, but one of the butts was real fatty. Next time I'll put both butts on the top rack, if only to have one less rack to clean.
 
I did two boneless Butts this weekend as well, it went real smooth. I start with 16.8#. Then after trimming I was down to 14.3#. When I finish up I had about 6.5# of edible meat. Not too bad I think. One thing that I was dissapointed in was it seems I may had burnt the bark too much. From other pictures I see of RMB's my bark was too black. It was very edible, but I always wonder if I coulda done a better job.

Don't know if my wife will let me do anymore butts though, she said she didn't really like it, and preferred my Brisketts.
 
Bark too black? Faugh! I am going to say something here that will seem blasphemous to some. I have moved away from the minion method on long cooks. I have found that by using two very full chimney starters lit at the same time I can 22 hours of good burn time. There is no trick to it (except buying the second chimney). Just dump both chimneys in to the coal ring as soon as you see fire licking the top of the charcoal in the chimneys. Close the WSM up and wait for the temp to drop to around 220. The unlit briquettes that had been at the top of the chimneys will light during this period. Put your meet in and open the top vent 100%. Works every time. You will have to make a couple of adjustments on the bottom vents in the first 30 munutes of the cook, but after that it will be stable or very slowly decreasing for hours (I mean temps between 250 and 220 for up to 12 hours!). The advantage is quicker start-up and very easy temp control. I find this to be even more stable than minion.

Cheers
 
P.S. for Bob. You have probably already tried this, but I have turned on some folks with delicate taste to pulled pork through the use of a nice BBQ, lettuce and tomato sandwiche. I make them with big sesame seed hamburger buns toasted in the oven and smeared with a little mayo (or garlic aoli if I'm trying to impress a date). Hasn't failed me yet! Might work on your wife.

Best of luck
 
Thanks for the advise, I will give it a try.
What's kinda funny about the hole thing is that my kids (7 and 4 y.o.) won't eat a lot of what I BBQ. But they mowed the pork.
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They have told my wife every night this week that they wanted 'Some of Daddy's smoken piggie' for dinner.
 
Originally posted by Bob Hunter:They have told my wife every night this week that they wanted 'Some of Daddy's smoken piggie' for dinner.
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Hey Bob,
Makes you feel "validated", eh?
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Same here.

--
Charles

You might be a redneck if...
You’ve ever been counting the tiles on your bedroom ceiling and noticed a new patch of sky you hadn’t seen before.
 
It makes me feel really good, when I listen to my wife complain that she is tired of our kids being picky and that they won't eat hardly anything she cooks
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I have to make sure I don't gloat about it though.
 
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