Man vs Pork Butt

First off, it’s actually the shoulder of a pig, not the butt. Secondly, if you’re gonna try this, make sure you have a whole day to commit – It’s quite a long battle against the butt, but it’s worth every minute.

Battle Plan:

1. Grill Prep
2. Meat Prep
3. Cook…and cook, and cook, and…
4. VICTORY

Grill Prep:

Fill up & fire up your chimney. As usual, set up your cooker for indirect cooking. I use a weber kettle – setting it up for indirect cooking is a snap. Simply put your hot coals on opposite sides of the cooker. Next place a drip pan in between your coals, underneath where your meat will lie.

Meat Prep:

Take your roast and give it a good rinse. Trim off any excess chunks of fat that you don’t want, but don’t trim off all the fat. The majority of it will actually melt away and baste the roast during the long cooking process, so you want some fat on there. After a good rinse and dry, now it’s time to make some rub. As a rub base for pork butt I tend to use: black pepper, sweet paprika, brown sugar, seasoning salt, cumin, & cayenne pepper.

In a bowl, combine the above. I leave measurements out, because everybody’s taste buds are different. Just keep adding to the bowl until you’re satisfied with your rub. Now, it’s slathering time.

Slathering is a pre-rub process that is done for most bbq…ribs, pork roasts, brisket. Slather is simply a non-sugar based goopy liquid mixture that acts as glue for your rub. Slathering is not required, but I feel there’s more good with it than without it. Typically, slather is a mixture of mustard and vinegar. However it’s not limited to just those two – you can add hot sauce, use pickle juice or beer instead of vinegar…etc. Really, it’s whatever you have in your fridge, just be sure not to use anything that is high in sugar.

This time I used yellow mustard, sriracha hot sauce, and some spiced vinegar. Add a little of all, till you get the right consistency – think goopy.

Brush one side at a time, with a good but not generous amount of your glue. Then sprinkle your rub on top of the glue. Wait about 10 minutes allowing for the rub and slather to soak in together. Once the two have mixed well (when your rub looks wet), repeat the process for all the other sides.

While you’re waiting for your rub & slather to mix – it’s a great time to finish setting up the grill. If you lit your coals before you started the meat prep, they should be nice and hot by now. Last, fill the drip pan about a third up with very hot water.

Cooking:

Like most bbq, your ideal cooking temperature for pork butt is about 225-250 degrees. It is very important to keep your cooker within that range at all times. A temp spike here and there is fine, but long periods of high cooking temps will kill your roast. I’m old fashion and use a simple oven thermometer that goes right on the cooking grate. To monitor your temperature all you have to do is lift the cooker lid a tad and have a peek at the thermometer. Voila!

When your cooker has reached the correct temp, toss in the roast and make a note of your starting time. Cooking a pork shoulder takes a loooooong time. Cooking time depends on a number of things but usually it’s around 1.5 hours per pound, more or less. From here on out, the hard part is maintaining your cooker’s temperature.

You should have an idea of how much charcoal you need to maintain a temp within your cooking range. About every hour check up on your cooker’s temperature. If you’re running hot, you can either adjust the air flow vents, take some charcoal out, or open the cooker for a bit and let things cool down. If you’re running cool, open the vents or simply add more already fired coal.

About halfway through the cooking process, baste your roast about every 90 minutes or so. Pretty much any time you open up the lid to add more charcoal, baste away.

When you’re nearing the end of your calculated cooking time, stick a meat thermometer into the roast. When you’re at 180, you’re done. Take the butt out, and let it rest for 10 minutes or so.

And now, your moment of zen. Remove the bone (which should just slide out), grab two forks, and pull the shit out of it.

When you serve the pulled pork, make sure you distribute the bark (the parts with rub exposed) evenly. Have a drink, eat some pork, and take a well deserved nap.

VICTORY.

Beer Can Chicken

Salutations.

Beer can chicken, BeerButt chicken, Up the butt chicken, Can in the ass...whatever. All the same thing. It's a great way to roast a whole chicken on the grill. If you love cooking chicken in the oven, you will love this. It absolutely trumps anything you can do in the oven.

Let's begin:

You want to start off with a small chicken, 3 or 4 lbs, nothing above 5. Like all bbq, you want to rinse/dry/rub your goods. After you've rinsed, dried, and cleared out the cavity of the chicken, give it a light coat of either olive oil, or oil based salad dressing. Now you're ready to RUB.

Experimenting with rubs is always fun. I like to start out with a base, usually seasoning salt, paprika and brown sugar, and then improvise. Sometimes i'll go for a super spicy rub, sometimes really sweet, sometimes just weird. Depends on what you're cooking. I like my chicken spicy, so this time i used:

Oldbay
Italian seasoning
Seasoning salt
Chili pepper flakes



I used even amounts of all four, and it turned out prettttty prettttty good. There's no one correct way to rub a chicken, just coat the entire bird, inside and out.

Ok - So, what's the beer can all about? Well, all the beer can does is prop up the chicken in the grill while it's cooking. So, grab an empty 12oz can, and fill it with about 4 oz of soda, NOT BEER. You want to put some liquid in the can, and contrary to the name beer doesn't work well, because it's bitter. You're better off using 7-up, ginger ale, coke, anything super sugary.


With the can right side up - plop the chicken on top of the can, and you're ready to go. You should more or less have a tripod from the can, and the two chicken legs.

Fire up your grill for indirect cooking, with a drip pan and all. Cook the chicken for 90 minutes, or till it's done. When you take it off the grill, let it rest for 10 minutes or so, then carve it up.


Beer can chicken is delicious, really easy, and it's pretty damn cheap. A lot of people overlook just how cheap whole chickens are...$5 tops.

That $5 goes a long way too. After you completely carve/pull the chicken, you'll notice you have a TON of CHICKEN. Eating it plain is pretty damn good, but if you want to mix it up - grab some buns and bbq sauce and you've got yourself a great sandwich. Or for you health nuts, the chicken goes great on top of a salad. Enjoy.