First Smoked Pork Butt

My g/f and I came back from our cruise to the Bahamas, and went to the grocery store to pick up some dinner. We picked up a sales paper, and noticed they had their Pork Butt's on sale. I had been wanting to try my hand at a butt, so I convinced her (which wasn't hard to do) that we needed to grab one. Once we got to the meat section, we realized they only had one left, a 9.6 lb butt. I immediately went to The BBQ Brethren for tips and recipes on how to cook it.

With the guidance of the Brethren I made Chris Lilly's injection. I woke up Sunday morning at 5a.m. to injected the butt and rub it with my Yardbird rub. Once the butt was filled with injection and covered with the rub I went back to bed for 2 hours.

At 7 I went outside and fired up the smoker, and put my digital thermometer in so I could see when the temp got built up. I set the thermometer to 350, because I knew it'd be safe because I just wanted to look at the temp. As I take the below pic, the alarm on the thermometer goes off. I look at the receiver and it's reading 415. Puzzled I open the door and the smoker is on fire. The ribs dripped into the water pan (which was empty at this point) and the drippings caught on fire. I put the flames out, and got everything back under control.

The butt hit the smoker at 8a.m. around 280 degrees. Once the meat when in the smoker. I took the thermometer and placed it as close to the center as I could. To help keep the butt moist. I sprayed with my buddy Apple Juice approx every hour.

Once the butt got up to 160 I pulled it out (with my fancy custom made BBQ mitts) and wrapped it up in foil, so the inside would continue cooking but the outside wouldn't bark up anymore.

At 5:15 the temp had reached 193 (just a hair shy of my 195-200 goal). I pulled it out of the smoker, wrapped it in an extra towel, and placed it in a room temp cooler to rest. After an hour and 15 minutes it was time to eat.

First pork butt comes out of the smoker and the bone pulls clean out. I would have liked more flavor to the meat, but for a first time I really couldn't complain with the outcome. I must say ... it was the best pulled pork I've ever made ;-)