First pulled pork on the kettle


 
Nate Frost

Nate Frost

TVWBB All-Star
I'm new at charcoal so yesterday I picked up a 4lb pork shoulder to do a test run. This is my second cook. Here's a couple pics of the test cook. The temp got away from me for a bit, 350+, after the first 20 minutes of putting the pork on but got it under control after closing down the top and bottom vents. Leveled out at 250*. Without anymore vent adjustments and held steady the whole time. Had to extend the snake, almost did a full circle. I think next time I will turn the meat 180* to try and get it to cook more evenly. The reason why is that on side was up to 200* while the other was sitting at 173*. I rotated and let it cook til about 193*. Foil towel wrapped for a couple hours until dinner. Hopefully the hot side didn't dry out to much. Overall, this went really well and like the fact the temp required no maintenance from me after my first vent adjustment.

Here's my set up


Here's the result








It was delicious. I don't know if it was using charcoal or the simple salt and pepper rub, but this tasted really good compared to the ones I've done in my bradley smoker and weber gasser. Yummy :cool:
 
Looks like it came out great.

I haven't used the snake method, but I'm thinking if you made a narrower snake, meaning less coals lit, then you could light it on both ends/sides so the heat would go down both sides of the meat at the same time and you wouldn't have to flip or rotate the meat during the cook. The less you open the lid, the easier it is to regulate temps.

Just a thought
 
I did a three coals deep arrangement like that a while back and was really impressed with how easy temp management was. I went maybe 60% of the way around the outside and it held solid at 250* for more than 6 hours. Great photos!
 
Rick Body said:
Looks like it came out great.

I haven't used the snake method, but I'm thinking if you made a narrower snake, meaning less coals lit, then you could light it on both ends/sides so the heat would go down both sides of the meat at the same time and you wouldn't have to flip or rotate the meat during the cook. The less you open the lid, the easier it is to regulate temps.

Just a thought
Click to expand...

I think burning the snake from both ends might run to hot, but I could be wrong as this was my first time.
 
APMason said:
I did a three coals deep arrangement like that a while back and was really impressed with how easy temp management was. I went maybe 60% of the way around the outside and it held solid at 250* for more than 6 hours. Great photos!
Click to expand...

Thanks. I was impressed too as to how well it maintained temp. I probably wouldn't have had to add any coals if I had rotated the meat and not let the fire get away from me at the start. That burned through a lot of the snake real quick. I hunk I need to get another digital thermometer so that I can watch grate temps without opening the lid.
 
Nate Frost said:
I think burning the snake from both ends might run to hot, but I could be wrong as this was my first time.
Click to expand...

I think you would have to use a smaller snake and lite less coals to begin with. Like the WSM, you can control the amount of air getting to the coals helping keep the temp down.

This is just a guess, I would like to see if it would work or not.
 
Rick Body said:
I think you would have to use a smaller snake and lite less coals to begin with. Like the WSM, you can control the amount of air getting to the coals helping keep the temp down.

This is just a guess, I would like to see if it would work or not.
Click to expand...

The snake I used was 2 bricketts on the first row and 1 on top. Maybe you could try just 1 on the first row and 1 on the top row.
 
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