Another Pork-a-Palooza

[DaveD]

Tomorrow I'm smoking up a pork butt and two racks of ribs, one St. Louis, the other baby backs. This is my final prep cook for the first gathering of friends we have hosted since the Before Time. In a little over three weeks, we'll be hosting about a dozen "McPeeps", fellow fans of James McMurtry whom my lovely bride and I have gotten to know well during the two years James did his pandemic live streams, and who have been coming to my own since I started doing them almost two years ago now. We've gotten to be pretty good friends, and this will be the first time most of us have met in all three dimensions. We'll be feeding everyone as described below, and then they'll have to pay for their meals by listening to me do a little house concert

We'll be serving a big BBQ spread, with pulled pork and pulled chuck roast for sliders; sliced brisket point; these two racks of ribs; a pan of pulled pork carne adovada enchiladas; some Rancho Gordo spicy red beans & andouille sausage; grilled veggies; and a garden salad featuring tomatoes and cucumbers from my lovely bride's tub garden. The only thing we'll make on the day will be the veggies and salad. I'll put the pan of enchis together the day before, and all the meats will be done ahead of time and vac sealed. I've got a big-ass polypropylene tub that I'll use as a sous vide vessel, and we'll heat up all the BBQ to 160F/70C that way so that everything will be ready to serve at the same time. Nobody's going hungry!

Starting this thread to capture my process tomorrow. Pork butt will go on bright and early on the SnS kettle with B&B and apple wood chunks, and then around midday the SLCs will go on and the butt will get foil-boated and moved into the Pit Boss vertical pellet smoker for the rest of the day. About an hour later, I'll add the baby backs to the kettle. Once they've gotten a good bark, I'll boat them as well and move 'em into the PB so that everything will be nice and stable.

We'll have some of the pulled pig and one rib each from the two racks, and the rest will get sealed up for the event. I'll plate our meal tomorrow with some fresh corn on the cob and string beans from our CSA farmshare pickup we got this week. Gonna have us a time

Here's the starting material for tomorrow. The butt is a Smithfield cut from our local Harris Teeter, as are the SLCs. The baby backs are from CrowdCow [Edit: originally misstated as Wild Fork]. Quite nice looking meat, I must say. I trimmed about 11oz/300g of fat cap from the butt.






I also made a pan of the enchiladas the other day, as it happens, because my lovely bride has decreed that we shall never be without vac-sealed portions ready to heat up, and who am I to argue? Had them last night and they were spectacular. The butt I'm making tomorrow will be used for the pan I'll put together for this McMeatUp.




Come on by and watch the action tomorrow if you take a notion

[DaveD]

Goooooood morning Pitmeisters! Perfect Pork-a-Palooza conditions here in NoVA, cool and dry this morning, absolutely beautiful. My condolences to everyone experiencing awful weather...



Got the SnS kettle fired up a little after 7am and stable by 8, pork butt on the grate. Doused it generously with Jenni In A Bottle, my Austin pal's eponymous secret-recipe rub. Apple wood chunks on B&B, everything starting off nominally.




Catch ya later on! Hope everyone has a good Saturday.

[DaveD]

Whew...! Busy busy today.

Put the SLCs (foreground of below pic) on the kettle about 12:30.




About an hour later, the IT of the butt was at 170F/77C and starting to stall, so into the foil boat and transferred to the Pit Boss. However, that did not free up enough space on the kettle to add both halves of the baby backs, so I put the smaller half of the SLCs in the PB as well, plenty of room in there.



Larger half of the SLCs top left, with the just-added BBs.


Seems clear that the T probe in the BBs is near bone and/or surface, despite my best efforts, as it is reading 130F/49C after only 45 minutes. No biggy, I'll just poke 'em with the insta-read to keep track.

I'm sending my Fireboard back for refurb while it's still under warranty after this cook. Only two of the probe ports still function, it has taken to randomly restarting itself mid-cook for no reason (although not today, thankfully), and the display is now off-center from the screen, chopped off along the bottom. Wendy at Fireboard has been very responsive, but it's clear that at least one time I dropped the thing has damaged a couple of ports, they're all askew (and one just poked right into the unit today when I tried to plug in a probe). Fully expecting this won't be a free repair, too much user error involved...

I'm worn out after all this tap-dancing! My lovely bride and I have come down with some kind of bug, likely from going to the Birchmere on Thursday night to see Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. I'll do the test tomorrow, hopefully it's not the dreaded C-word... but I'm knackered! Fortunately everything else is done for dinner, got some green beans and corn on the cob all prepped and ready to cook at dinnertime, so I can relax and watch the data the rest of the afternoon...

[HotSun]

DaveD , it was a lovely morning for smoking in our region, to be sure. I like how you're using both your cooking devices to maximum effectiveness.

Everything looks great and I hope your wife feels better soon!

[DaveD]

Starting things on the kettle and moving into the pellet rig has turned out to be a really useful approach for me. The meat typically has all the smoke it'll take by the time the kettle's fuel dies down to require much more fiddling to maintain T, and the hands-free pellet rig liberates me to do other stuff in the home stretch

[DaveD]

Everything is now foil boated and in the Pit Boss, the kettle can't maintain high enough temp any longer. Starting to probe fairly tender in many places despite temps no higher than 190F/88C in the butt and 180F/82C in the ribs. Hopefully ready to go by dinner time...

Butt is looking good:


The baby backs have visibly less smoke uptake despite being on the kettle only an hour less than the SLCs, and with a fresh chunk of wood added when they went on. Hmmm.

[fzxdoc]

Dave, as an aside, I've been considering gifting myself with an OG Grilla since my "close as a pig's whisker" brush with the Great Beyond. But I also like the looks of your Pit Boss. Mostly I like the dimensions. I need something with a smaller footprint for the portion of the deck that I've appropriated for my outdoor kitchen. Two obvious questions

How long have you had your Pit Boss (Copperhead?)
Likes and dislikes.

TIA,
Kathryn

[fzxdoc]

So, DaveD , you take regular (not applewood or hickory smoked) bacon and smoke it on your Copperhead? Sounds good!

K.

[wrgilb]

fzxdoc I also have a 1st generation Smokefire EX4 and I haven't had any problems with it that others have had. It has a smoke setting that they recommend for the 1st hour of the cook to get more smoke flavor. You can also crank it up to get a good sear.

[DaveD]

fzxdoc Kathryn, I typically use thick-cut bacon and try to go for uncured, which I can sometimes find on the meat case at the grocery store, but more often I get from online vendors like Wild Fork or similar. But most of them still say some kind of "smoked" on them. But I have never been able to taste a bit of smoke in any of those if cooked on the stovetop or in the oven. So I just take whatever I can get and smoke it up. Delicious!!

[realdocBBQ]

Man that all looks amazing! Wish I had something like that cooking this evening... but I spent the morning and early afternoon in the shop, so after a shower, I'm now 'recuperating' from my OWN time in the oven. lol

[DaveD]

Somehow missed this comment... were you probe tender after all that?? *har dee har har*

[DaveD]

Alrighty, after-action time. Massive success! It took a little longer than I'd planned for, but the butt and both racks of ribs were superb, tender and juicy and smoky and barky and all of the things.

With time running low in the afternoon, I bumped up the set point on the Pit Boss to 275 and then 300F (135-150C), no harm no foul. There was a PRODIGIOUS amount of juice in the butt's foil boat, so much that it brimmed over top of the lip of the boat! Try as I might, I could not prevent a big splooge of juice as I tried to gingerly lift it out of the cooker when it was done... and there was still a ton left. (No doubt why its temp increase was slower than expected.)





The ribs were basically perfect in consistency, tug-off-the-bone just like we prefer. Even though the baby backs' color suggested less smoke uptake, the flavor belied that, they were pretty incredible. SLCs were fantastic too.




Plated with corn on the cob and string beans from this week's CSA farmshare pickup.



Ample leftovers for our McMeatUp in a few weeks, and this completes my get-ahead cooking for that event.




Only downside to the day is that after starting to get sniffles and a scratchy throat yesterday, and those worsening all morning, took a covid test and am positive. My lovely bride has the same symptoms, and actually feels significantly worse than I do, but her test was negative (but it's old and expired - no chance she doesn't have it too). Not the way I wanted to observe the 24th anniversary of the day we met, which is tomorrow... also going to make playing and singing on my scheduled live stream tomorrow a lot less fun to pull off

[fzxdoc]

Sending get well wishes to both you and your lovely bride, Dave! There's a lot of it going around again. Maybe the BBQ meal will prove to be a quick cure. Stranger things have happened.

At least you have each other for a quarantine buddy.

Kathryn

[DaveD]

Sadly, the dose of pig did not have that effect... We're both worse today. I expect it'll get worse for another day or two before we reach the all-important crossroads of "going critical or not"...

[Sweaty Paul]

Fabulous cook! Looks spectacular and delicious. Sending you both best thoughts for speedy recoveries!

[HotSun]

Be well DaveD , hope you and the missus bounce back quickly! Thanks for sharing your outstanding cooking with us today.

[DaveD]

Thanks for coming along for the ride! Nyquil and Benadryl for the night, along with 12-hour Afrin... hoping for the best!

[Draznnl]

Hope both you and your wife feel better soon.

[realdocBBQ]

Sorry to hear your problem DaveD. I know what you mean, though - last week I was out of work ALL WEEK due to the virus, even though I felt essentially back to normal 100% by Wednesday - I didn't want to risk going back to work and making people uncomfortable. Soooo.... freaking virus cost me ANOTHER week of work (and production, which is brutal). This is the 3rd time - no, 4th time overall it has done that to me. Only been positive 3x, but the first was early in the course of the illness, when you had to quarantine just because of being exposed, so that one cost me a week, too. God, I hate this crap.

Anyways, the food looks great, hope you get better soon - I apparently gave it to my wife and my son, as well - first time for either of them, shockingly. But everyone is getting better now, so tomorrow, it's back to work, try to play 'catch-up' from everything I missed. <sigh>

Hang in there, bro!

[DaveD]

Damn, that's no fun either, and yeah, I hate this crap too for a whole host of reasons. Y'all hang in there too!!

[Sweaty Paul]

Well wishes to you and your family.

[randy.56]

First, I how you and your wife get through the virus soon. Second, great cook and pictures. Third, Happy 24th.