****** ATTENTION ALL CASH & CARY SHOPPERS!! *****
Oct. is national pork month (I was told), and Cash & Cary has some great deals on all thinks pork! Just FYI
So as you can guess I was suckered in by Cash & Cary's pork butt at $1.32 per. lb. and these two followed me home. I trimmed off the fat cap and put together a low sugar rub, gave them a good rub down and tossed them into the fridge for a few hours.
I set up my 22.5" WSM for a long burn, these are going to be no-foil butts, so they tend to take a bit longer. Filled ring about 1/3 full, put 5 chunks of hickory around the outside, the filled the ring the rest of the way and put another 4 chunks of hickory on top. For lighting I put 3/4 of a fully lit chimney on top. (The wind was a steady 15-20 MPH, so I wanted to start with a good amount of lit to get up to temp fast).
Everybody into the pool!
.... like I said the wind was blowing steady and as we all know wind is the worst enemy of smokers, so I pulled out my "Banana Skin" (8'x6' welding blanket) and wrapped up the WSM. If you notice the previous pic. I am able to have the bottom in place with the top pealed down when I need to access the grates, then I add the top two clips to close it up. The dark area is not head discoloration, it's smoke residue - I arrange the top to have an opening for the exhaust and an opening to see the lid therm.. These blankets are good to 1200+ deg. and even the outside of my firebox can still be touched by hand. But this welding blanket lets me smoke in cold windy conditions and still use about the same amount of charcoal as a warm summer night. I ran all night with 1 vent fully open, 2nd vent 1/4 open, and 3rd vent closed with only a 5° difference in temp!
Got a good 7 hrs. of sleep came out to check the WSM - still chugging along at at 245° (I had left it at 250°). Decided to toss a few more chunks of hickory on and peek at the butts!
As you can see at the 10 hr. mark I still got about half my fuel left, and nothing looks quite so lovely as early morning light shinning off of a couple of beautiful butts!
The butts ended up supprising me and finishing up at 12 hrs. (I was thinking more like 15 with no foil). Since it was 10:00 AM and were weren't going to be eating dinner till later, I put them in a dry towel lined cooler to rest and keep toasty!
After 6 hrs. in the cooler it was time to pull them, they still were almost to hot to handle with bare hands!
Plated up with some slaw and hand cut oven fry's, what's not to love about that!!
So ends another WSM smoke! Note: I only opened the smoker that 1x to add some more wood and click a pic, the rest of the time I just left it alone - gotta love the WSM!
Oct. is national pork month (I was told), and Cash & Cary has some great deals on all thinks pork! Just FYI
So as you can guess I was suckered in by Cash & Cary's pork butt at $1.32 per. lb. and these two followed me home. I trimmed off the fat cap and put together a low sugar rub, gave them a good rub down and tossed them into the fridge for a few hours.
I set up my 22.5" WSM for a long burn, these are going to be no-foil butts, so they tend to take a bit longer. Filled ring about 1/3 full, put 5 chunks of hickory around the outside, the filled the ring the rest of the way and put another 4 chunks of hickory on top. For lighting I put 3/4 of a fully lit chimney on top. (The wind was a steady 15-20 MPH, so I wanted to start with a good amount of lit to get up to temp fast).
Everybody into the pool!
.... like I said the wind was blowing steady and as we all know wind is the worst enemy of smokers, so I pulled out my "Banana Skin" (8'x6' welding blanket) and wrapped up the WSM. If you notice the previous pic. I am able to have the bottom in place with the top pealed down when I need to access the grates, then I add the top two clips to close it up. The dark area is not head discoloration, it's smoke residue - I arrange the top to have an opening for the exhaust and an opening to see the lid therm.. These blankets are good to 1200+ deg. and even the outside of my firebox can still be touched by hand. But this welding blanket lets me smoke in cold windy conditions and still use about the same amount of charcoal as a warm summer night. I ran all night with 1 vent fully open, 2nd vent 1/4 open, and 3rd vent closed with only a 5° difference in temp!
Got a good 7 hrs. of sleep came out to check the WSM - still chugging along at at 245° (I had left it at 250°). Decided to toss a few more chunks of hickory on and peek at the butts!
As you can see at the 10 hr. mark I still got about half my fuel left, and nothing looks quite so lovely as early morning light shinning off of a couple of beautiful butts!
The butts ended up supprising me and finishing up at 12 hrs. (I was thinking more like 15 with no foil). Since it was 10:00 AM and were weren't going to be eating dinner till later, I put them in a dry towel lined cooler to rest and keep toasty!
After 6 hrs. in the cooler it was time to pull them, they still were almost to hot to handle with bare hands!
Plated up with some slaw and hand cut oven fry's, what's not to love about that!!
So ends another WSM smoke! Note: I only opened the smoker that 1x to add some more wood and click a pic, the rest of the time I just left it alone - gotta love the WSM!
