Preparing the meat
That is quite simple, I didn't go too complicated. I just got my two Boston pork butts (that are in fact shoulders.. I never really understood why we call them butts if they are in fact shoulders.. Anyways..) and I've used that Cajun Style rub on them about 3 hours before my cook. I like my meat to keep together very well and be easily manipulable on the grill, so I'm using some cotton butcher rope to attach it all together and make it a nice bundle (Actually two bundles in that case!)If you have access to the inside of your shoulder, open it a little and put some rub inside before putting your rope on it.
It is very easy to freeze cooked pulled pork if you have a food saver or anything that can suck in the air in individual packs. Might as well do a LOT of meat if you are going to cook overnight... Well, thats what I tell myself. For that cook, I prepared two butts of 8.5 pounds each, it is quite important to ask your butcher to prepare them so that they have about the same size because you'll be using a temperature probe in only one of them.
About one hour before your fire is ready, get your pork out of the fridge, and add some more rub on it, don't worry, it won't be too tasty no matter how much rub you put on it, it will just taste even better and let the rub get in that meat further.
Preparing the cook
I'm building a fire with the big pieces of Rockwood lump charcoal at the bottom, followed by medium / small pieces and I make sure my firebox is quite filled so I'll be able to cook for 20 hours without needing to add more in the middle. Up to now, after trying several other kinds of charcoal, this is by far my favorite. It lights up easily and it tastes so good.
Some people want to achieve their cooking temperature very slowly to make sure their fire isn't out of control, but I found that on my side I prefer starting a bigger fire even for low and slow cooks, and reduce it quickly when adding the plate setter as well as the grill and the meat. Adding all of this drops the temperature quite abruptly, and I find that having a bigger fire at the beginning helps at getting a stable temperature for a long time. So, I'm aiming for 300˚F with the vents open to start with, and when I'm achieving this temperature, I'm adding wood chips of pecan wood that were soaked for about 30 to 45 minutes before as well as the plate setter legs up and a drip pan, filled with about half an inch of water to keep the humidity in there and have a very tender and juicy meat at the end. As soon as I do that, the temperature drops back to about 160-170˚F. That is the time where I start my DigiQ DX2 temperature controller already all setup to start controlling that temperature, and I close the top vent to keep only a small crack opened.
About 30 minutes later, I have a stable fire at 221˚F, and I let it stabilize for about 30 minutes before I put my meat on, I want to make sure it won't go crazy.
Now... The hard moment to say goodbye to your meat for the next 20 to 24 hours and its time to close that lid, and DON'T OPEN IT FOR THE WHOLE COOK TIME!
Middle of the night temperature check
I was very worried since this was my first overnight cook that something was going to go wrong, so I've decided to set an alarm at 3am to go check on my precious pork. It was a very good decision I did so because the fire was starting to go out at this exact moment and the temperature was dropping really quick. I had to open the BBQ in the middle of the night, remove the pork, and add a lot of charcoal. Fortunately for me, I had 3 lumps of charcoal still lit up so the new charcoal was able to burn and my DigiQ was able to get back the temperature exactly where it was supposed to be. The lesson here is to make sure you have a LOT of charcoal in your initial fire and that you do not reuse old coal that was still there from the previous cook because that charcoal burns a lot faster than brand new one.
Superbowl day, February 1st 2015, the pork is ready.
Its time to get the pork out of the BBQ when its at 200˚F. At this time, it has been exactly 24 hours, 8 minutes and 40 seconds since the beginning of the cook. I think it could have been less than that if I hadn't run out of charcoal in the middle of the night.
You can now wrap this pork up in double sheets of aluminum, and then wrap that wrapped pork in towels to keep it hot, and then just store it in a cooler. The pork can stay in there between 1 and 4 hours without an issue. You'll see even after 4 hours, it will still be burning hot if you wrapped it correctly.
Pulling the pork
Eating the pork
Well, I don't have much to say here. I've bought some jalapeños, red onions and normal white hamburger buns. Don't go too fancy on the bread, the goal is to taste the meat, not the bread! Choose your favorite BBQ sauce, assemble all of this and eat until you can't anymore.
The remains (if any?)
If you have something like a food saver, you should use it! You just store it in bags of about one pound each and freeze it. When you want to use it you just have to put it in very hot water and it becomes the perfect temperature to do more sandwiches.
