So. Last weekend. Early Saturday morning. Beautiful sunny day. Six pound pork butt all dry brined and rubbed and ready to go on the PBC. Light the PBC. Get temps to about 260. Hang the meat with two hooks, and off we go. PBC cooked like a dream. Nice and steady about 250. Meat climbs slowly to about 165 and then stalls. That's OK. I stick with it. Crack the lid, raise the temp briefly to 290, then close it. We come out of the stall and SLOWLY we approach 203, the promised land. Then, about 7 hours in, we are there--203!
So now, let's go take it off, let it rest, then pull the pork and feast.
Wait--what's this? When I pull up the hooks, the open sides of each hook are facing IN, and the long sides of the hooks block me from swinging the meat around and under the rods and pulling it out! Darn. What if I do this? No. Or that? No. Well, stop moving it around, re-hang it and think of something else. So....re-hang it....
CRASH! Beautiful meat tears away from the hooks, and falls in huge yummy bark-y pieces into the coals! Flames everywhere! the fat ignites! Of course I panic.
I tell my wife what's happened. At first she thinks I am kidding. Then, cool as a cucumber, she says: "Just pull out what you can with the long handled tongs. I will save it." AND SHE DID. We got a bunch of the meat out, and somehow she made a meal. The next day I found 3 big fist-sized chunks of meat in the dead coals when cleaning the PBC, but there was enough for dinner to save a shred of my honor.
Lessons learned: (1) Plan how you are going to un-hook it when you hang it in the first place. (2) With pork butt, take it off at 170, wrap it or don't, but finish it on the grate. At least that's my plan from now on.
Learned the hard way. But I love the PBC. The challenges are the fun part. Just hate to lose any of that delicious meat.
So now, let's go take it off, let it rest, then pull the pork and feast.
Wait--what's this? When I pull up the hooks, the open sides of each hook are facing IN, and the long sides of the hooks block me from swinging the meat around and under the rods and pulling it out! Darn. What if I do this? No. Or that? No. Well, stop moving it around, re-hang it and think of something else. So....re-hang it....
CRASH! Beautiful meat tears away from the hooks, and falls in huge yummy bark-y pieces into the coals! Flames everywhere! the fat ignites! Of course I panic.
I tell my wife what's happened. At first she thinks I am kidding. Then, cool as a cucumber, she says: "Just pull out what you can with the long handled tongs. I will save it." AND SHE DID. We got a bunch of the meat out, and somehow she made a meal. The next day I found 3 big fist-sized chunks of meat in the dead coals when cleaning the PBC, but there was enough for dinner to save a shred of my honor.
Lessons learned: (1) Plan how you are going to un-hook it when you hang it in the first place. (2) With pork butt, take it off at 170, wrap it or don't, but finish it on the grate. At least that's my plan from now on.
Learned the hard way. But I love the PBC. The challenges are the fun part. Just hate to lose any of that delicious meat.
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