G
Guest
Guest
The plan.
Friday night pick up a nice pork butt (9# without bone) from the butcher. Fire up the WSM around 9pm using the Minion method. Stablize the temp before going to bed. Get up around six, baste and insert temp probe. Hopefully remove the butt around 1pm, foil and hold for an hour before pulling.
I should have known there was a problem when it took me three sheets of newspaper to start 20 coals of Kingsford. This was an unopened bag of charcoal that sat in a plasic trash bag on my back porch. 7:30pm I started the 20 coals and proceded to mix the Mr Brown rub and apply the rub to the butt. 8:15 coals finally ashed over, they were placed on a full ring of charcoal and smoke wood was added. WSM was assembled and a full pan (brinkmann charcoal pan) of warm water was added. Now the wait for the WSM to get up to temp (250 at the lid). At 9:30 lid temp is only 210, the butt has been sitting out since 7:45 and I am concerned about the danger zone so I put it in and hoped everything would be ok.
I had all three vents wide open and the temp stayed close to 200 until somewhere around 3am when the waterpan went dry. Then I was able to close down 2 vents and hold 250. got to sleep around 3:30 and woke at 6 to baste and probe, the Intern meat temp was 170. At 9am the lid temp started dropping so I stirred the coals and got the temp back to 250. At 10:30 I added 20 more lit coals. At 1pm I pulled the butt off because the lid temp was dropping off and there were no coals left to stir. Luckily the internal temp was 190.
Mr Brown was a big hit with my family but I did learn alot with this cook.
1. Start with good charcoal. I believe the charcoal was damp and maybe even a bad batch.
2. On longer cooks start with VERY HOT (boiling?) water in the water pan when using the Minion method. You don't want to waste coals heating up the water pan.
3. Even when things don't go as planned you still can make some pretty good Q.
Friday night pick up a nice pork butt (9# without bone) from the butcher. Fire up the WSM around 9pm using the Minion method. Stablize the temp before going to bed. Get up around six, baste and insert temp probe. Hopefully remove the butt around 1pm, foil and hold for an hour before pulling.
I should have known there was a problem when it took me three sheets of newspaper to start 20 coals of Kingsford. This was an unopened bag of charcoal that sat in a plasic trash bag on my back porch. 7:30pm I started the 20 coals and proceded to mix the Mr Brown rub and apply the rub to the butt. 8:15 coals finally ashed over, they were placed on a full ring of charcoal and smoke wood was added. WSM was assembled and a full pan (brinkmann charcoal pan) of warm water was added. Now the wait for the WSM to get up to temp (250 at the lid). At 9:30 lid temp is only 210, the butt has been sitting out since 7:45 and I am concerned about the danger zone so I put it in and hoped everything would be ok.
I had all three vents wide open and the temp stayed close to 200 until somewhere around 3am when the waterpan went dry. Then I was able to close down 2 vents and hold 250. got to sleep around 3:30 and woke at 6 to baste and probe, the Intern meat temp was 170. At 9am the lid temp started dropping so I stirred the coals and got the temp back to 250. At 10:30 I added 20 more lit coals. At 1pm I pulled the butt off because the lid temp was dropping off and there were no coals left to stir. Luckily the internal temp was 190.
Mr Brown was a big hit with my family but I did learn alot with this cook.
1. Start with good charcoal. I believe the charcoal was damp and maybe even a bad batch.
2. On longer cooks start with VERY HOT (boiling?) water in the water pan when using the Minion method. You don't want to waste coals heating up the water pan.
3. Even when things don't go as planned you still can make some pretty good Q.
