I pulled my first butt yesterday. I sent some photos to Smokin which he may/may not post. Not important. The roast looked great.. had great bark.. and it did have a $m0k@ ring .
This thing pulled apart so easily I couldn't believe it. My only experience is with grilling and always had to use a knife.
This is the first one so I expected some issues.. and I think I did have some.
1. Not as smokey as I had expected.. I used 3 oz of hickory and one briquette. I put the butt in the Smokette at a meat temp of 46*.
2. The texture of the product after pulling and mixing with extra quantity of Smokins Pork Baste was almost like a pate rather than what I expected.. shards of meat.
So, wondering what I could do to improve this next time.
Here is what I did..
1. After thawing, I rubbed thoroughly with a mixture of CS Rib Rub and some turbanado sugar. Put in frig for 24 hrs. Repeated the process and kept in frig another 24 hrs. I did the second period in the frig because something came up and I couldn't do the smoke that night.
2. Put butt in Smokette at 1930 Monday evening with the CS set at 225*.
By 2200 the internal was ~145* and I figured it was climbing too fast. So, I dropped the t'stat to 185* and went to bed. Checked it at 0630 on Tues morning and it was at ~168* so I changed the t'stat back to 225* The beeper went off at 1200 with the internal at 195*. Pulled the roast, wrapped in foil and put in a cooler with blankets for about 2 hrs.
I unwrapped it and began pulling. As mentioned, it came apart easily. I could probably have blown on it to separate it. I mixed a bit more of Smokin's Baste with the product and bagged in in Ziplocks at 6oz per bag.
Pulled two bags for dinner and tried it in two ways. I made up a batch of slaw using the recipe nysmoker posted. Put 3oz on a sweet french roll with a bit of slaw and gobbled it up. The other way we tried it was to mix a bit of BBQ sauce with the meat on a different sandwich.
I don't usually use BBQ sauce with my smoked meats as they don't need it. But this piece of meat, while it smelled pretty darn good.. was blander than I expected (very light on the smoke flavor) and was almost like mush.. no texture.. like pate, as mentioned above
Any thoughts on what I may have done right/wrong?
Thanks..
Bill
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