Labor Day Weekend 2011 BBQ

This past Saturday I smoked some pork butt and a slab of baby back ribs.  Crystal and I had both of our families over for a BBQ.  This was my first attempt at pork butt and I am very happy with the way it turned out.  I first started with two 4 pound pork butts. Friday evening I made a brine to put both butts in to soak in overnight.

The brine consisted of:

1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 qts cold water
3 tbsp dry rub mix
2 bay leaves

Add salt to some cold water and stir very well until all the salt is completely dissolved. Then add the brown sugar and your choice of dry rub and stir well to combine. (I will show you the dry rubbed I used shortly) I put a plate on top of the butts to make sure they stayed submerged overnight and placed the container in the refrigerator.  In the morning I removed both butts and dried them off with paper towel and applied my rub.

Dry rub:
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground pepper
1 tbsp paprika
1/2 cup brown sugar

After the rub was applied, I had already prepped the smoker to a temperature of 225 degrees.  I used Hickory wood for the smoke.



After a couple of hours of smoking, I began to prepare the baby back ribs.  The night before I used the same rub and applied it all over the ribs.  I then wrapped them in saran wrap and put them in the refrigerator over night as well.  To prepare the ribs to go into the smoker, I removed the saran wrap and applied a little more rub, and then I placed them in the smoker.

Continuing to keep the temperature at 225 degrees, after a couple more hours the pork butt finally reach an internal temperature of 190 degrees.  I first pulled out the baby back ribs and wrapped them in tin foil and let them rest for a half hour.  Then I cut them up individually so that everyone could take as many as they wanted.

After I wrapped the ribs, I went back to get the pork butt.  I also wrapped them with tin foil and let them rest for a half hour as well.

After the meat had rested, I begin to pull the pork apart with a couple of large serving forks.  I could tell that was going to take a while, and since everyone was getting very hungry, I decide to chop the rest of the pork.  And it was delicious.  We took some of the pork, put it on a hamburger bun, put some BBQ sauce on it, topped it off with some cole slaw and the top of the bun, and BAM... a delicious BBQ sandwich.

Lessons learned:
- I will probably cook the next butts to 200 degrees to have the muscles break down even more so that pulling the meat apart will be easier.
-I will purchase some insulated food gloves and some bear claws to make pulling the pork apart easier.
-Have more people over to enjoy the food.

I hope everyone had a safe, happy and relaxing Labor Day weekend.