The company I've worked for for 28+ years, Intuit, has a core value of "We Care & Give Back" (WCGB). They put their money where their mouth is by giving us paid time off to help out in our communities, including performing "random acts of kindness". Lucky for me, smoking butts and feeding people counts as such. So I picked up what I needed from Sam's Club last weekend, and took the past couple of days off to do this (not pictured, another bag of apples and the two butts)...

On Sunday night I trimmed a couple of butts and started dry brining them in Obie Cue's Gatorbreath Cajun Salt. I like using this with butts since its plenty salty for the dry brine and also gets a nice first layer of spicy rub on there that doesn't come off when I slather & put on a 2nd layer later.


Tuesday morning I fired up the Bronco with a charcoal basket full of B&B briquettes lit on one side and added a few nice applewood chunks. While it preheated I took the butts out, applied a mustard slather and then hit them with a sweeter but still savory rub called Let It Ride from the Sauced! BBQ team down in Denver, NC. Got them on the smoker around 8:15am.


Interesting cook, since probe 2 went bad and on top of that I eventually figured out that combining my wifi bands after replacing my router led to significant connection issues to my Fireboard. Long story short - I'll be connecting it to the 2.4 Ghz "guest" band from now on. Anyway, after 7 hours at ~285F they were looking good so I wrapped them each in a foil pan and put them in the oven to finish.

The one on the right cooked a little faster and was probe tender at 206, the other one took about 30 min more and was probe tender at 203. Great example of how each piece of meat is different! I left them in the hold for about 2 hours, then took them out and pulled them. Pretty sure it was a jfmorris reply I read somewhere about pulling that night while hot, and reheating the next day, which worked like a charm. I just left the pulled pork in the foil covered pans in the fridge over night, and Wednesday morning opened them up to add a little more rub and some Scott's eastern NC style sauce to help moisten it up a bit (its watery, not thick at all), then reheated them in the oven at 250F. I was super happy with the results, and I'll be doing it this way in the future for parties, etc. as opposed to getting up so early the day of.

We used this to make pulled pork sandwiches, my wife and daughter helped with the assembly line.

Each lunch bag got a sandwich, an apple, and couple of homemade chocolate chip cookies my wife made that morning.

I think we had 25 bags and definitely lots of leftover pulled pork for us, a third of which we took to my in-laws yesterday.

Then we loaded up my Acadia and I drove around Durham to the intersections where we always see folks asking for help. My kiddo was in the back with most of the bags and water bottles, and she'd hand them up to my wife as needed, and my wife would pass them out her window. People were very grateful, a couple of them even started eating right away. Kinda cool to watch them get so excited about getting a hot pulled pork sandwich.

We got rid of most of the bags this way in about 30 min, and what we had left I took to the local fire department - as they said, "we do like to eat here!"
Random acts of kindness make the world go 'round, and I'm pretty sure BBQ only helps matters!
On Sunday night I trimmed a couple of butts and started dry brining them in Obie Cue's Gatorbreath Cajun Salt. I like using this with butts since its plenty salty for the dry brine and also gets a nice first layer of spicy rub on there that doesn't come off when I slather & put on a 2nd layer later.
Tuesday morning I fired up the Bronco with a charcoal basket full of B&B briquettes lit on one side and added a few nice applewood chunks. While it preheated I took the butts out, applied a mustard slather and then hit them with a sweeter but still savory rub called Let It Ride from the Sauced! BBQ team down in Denver, NC. Got them on the smoker around 8:15am.
Interesting cook, since probe 2 went bad and on top of that I eventually figured out that combining my wifi bands after replacing my router led to significant connection issues to my Fireboard. Long story short - I'll be connecting it to the 2.4 Ghz "guest" band from now on. Anyway, after 7 hours at ~285F they were looking good so I wrapped them each in a foil pan and put them in the oven to finish.
The one on the right cooked a little faster and was probe tender at 206, the other one took about 30 min more and was probe tender at 203. Great example of how each piece of meat is different! I left them in the hold for about 2 hours, then took them out and pulled them. Pretty sure it was a jfmorris reply I read somewhere about pulling that night while hot, and reheating the next day, which worked like a charm. I just left the pulled pork in the foil covered pans in the fridge over night, and Wednesday morning opened them up to add a little more rub and some Scott's eastern NC style sauce to help moisten it up a bit (its watery, not thick at all), then reheated them in the oven at 250F. I was super happy with the results, and I'll be doing it this way in the future for parties, etc. as opposed to getting up so early the day of.
We used this to make pulled pork sandwiches, my wife and daughter helped with the assembly line.
Each lunch bag got a sandwich, an apple, and couple of homemade chocolate chip cookies my wife made that morning.
I think we had 25 bags and definitely lots of leftover pulled pork for us, a third of which we took to my in-laws yesterday.
Then we loaded up my Acadia and I drove around Durham to the intersections where we always see folks asking for help. My kiddo was in the back with most of the bags and water bottles, and she'd hand them up to my wife as needed, and my wife would pass them out her window. People were very grateful, a couple of them even started eating right away. Kinda cool to watch them get so excited about getting a hot pulled pork sandwich.
We got rid of most of the bags this way in about 30 min, and what we had left I took to the local fire department - as they said, "we do like to eat here!"
Random acts of kindness make the world go 'round, and I'm pretty sure BBQ only helps matters!
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