doodledee

Last weekend I fired up my new smoker for the first time. It was a resounding success, due in no small part to the borderline creepy amount of textbook quality information available over at the virtual weber bullet website. (When I found myself counting pieces of charcoal I knew I'd drank the kool-aid. That site sucked me in like a tractor beam.)

I started with 25 pounds of boneless pork butt*. I rubbed it all over with a bunch of pepper and paprika and some other stuff and threw it on the heat around 11:30 on Friday night. Then I stayed up until around 1:00 watching the temperatures and adjusting the vents and drinking a couple beers and reading the paper and generally just kinda hoping for the best. Eventually I got tired and crashed on the couch, but I set an alarm and woke up every hour or two to check and make sure everything was still going well. And get this: it always was. Like magic or something. Who knew?

Saturday morning I stirred the coals and fired off another couple dozen briquettes to have on hand in case I ran into a fuel shortage. I eventually added a few, just to keep things moving along. Around 3:00 that afternoon - after 15 or so hours of cooking – I took the butts off and wrapped them in foil and threw them into a cooler to rest until dinner. Easy peasy.

And how did they taste? Let's just say that both of Libby's 80+ year old grandparents went back for seconds. I, obviously, went back for fifths.

Conclusion: the wood makes it good.

* - I got the meat at Costco for $1.24/lb. I asked about getting one over at Clancey's Meats in Linden Hills - a store I like and occasionally patronize - but they wanted $4.99/lb. Now I'm all for supporting the small, independent butcher shop backed by local farmers and all that, but come on, I'm not going to pay $125 for a big fatty piece of pork. Who are they kidding with that?