Having the new Publix open close to my house with a killer selection of meats has put the smoker box into high gear. I’ve not been able to find portions of pork shoulder locally that didn’t require the use of a hand truck to get out to the truck and take home. Publix keeps a stock of 3-4 pounders that are perfect and don’t take a day of smoker-watching to complete. This weekend I got lazy and didn’t want to deal with putting the rub together so I bought a pre-made jar of McCormick Grill Mates Pork Rub and basically chunked the shoulder into a gallon zipper bag, poured half the contents of the rub into the bag, shook it around to get a good covering then tossed the whole mess into the refrigerator for 24 hours. I was pretty much out of everything, even down to half a bag of cherry wood chips so I tried the pre-mixed rub and I have to say, it was great. When I figure out the name of the product I’ll let you know!.
I put the shoulder into the smoker at around 9:30am Sunday morning and ran the box a little hotter than I’ve done before – I tried to keep it at a level 250 degrees for the entire smoke. By noon I had 30 Atomic Buffalo Turds wrapped and tossed into the smoker for their redemption as well. The other significant change I made in this cook was not wrapping the butt in aluminum foil for the last couple of hours. The end result was a perfectly cooked chunk of meat with a great seasoning bark on all sides. My only complaint was it needing just a tad more of a bite – I’ll add a tad of chipotle powder to the rub the next time I try this. The ABTs were ready around 3:30pm, the shoulder was where it needed to be at about 5. I let the internal temperature of the shoulder get up to 210 degrees which worried be but it turned out better than ever regardless.
Continue reading Butt smokin’ – trying a different recipe
