On the night of July 2, Ryan taped a timeline to the cabinet above the coffee maker. Line one said "Thurs 9 p.m. Meat on." The last line said "Fri 3 p.m. Eat." Everything in between was a guess, and he knew it, which is why he wrote it in pencil.
We had about twenty people coming for the Fourth: Mom and Dad from Lewisburg, Ryan's side of the family from Columbia, Deb and Marcus from next door and two families from Jack's baseball team. Twenty people is pork butt territory. We bought a twin pack at the Costco in Cool Springs, an 8.5-pound butt and a 9-pound butt, 17.5 pounds at $2.19 a pound.
Ingredients
- 2 bone-in pork butts, about 17 1/2 pounds total
- Yellow mustard, a thin coat to hold the rub
- Rub: 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup paprika, 3 tablespoons kosher salt, 2 tablespoons black pepper, and 1 tablespoon each garlic powder, onion powder and dry mustard
- 1/2 cup apple juice for wrapping
- Vinegar sauce: 2 cups apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup ketchup, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 2 teaspoons kosher salt, 1 teaspoon black pepper and 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (I pour off a cup for Nora before the pepper flakes go in)
- Slaw: 1 head green cabbage and 2 carrots, shredded, with 3/4 cup Duke's mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 teaspoon celery seed and salt to taste
- 36 hamburger buns
The overnight timeline
- Wednesday night: coat the butts with a thin layer of mustard, rub them all over, wrap them in plastic and refrigerate.
- Thursday, 8:30 p.m.: heat the pellet grill to 225°F and fill the hopper to the top.
- 9:00 p.m.: butts on, fat side up, with a probe in the thickest part of each one, away from the bone.
- Around 165°F, when the bark is dark and firm, wrap each butt in two layers of heavy foil with 1/4 cup apple juice.
- Pull them at 200 to 205°F, when a probe slides in with no resistance at all.
- Rest them in a dry cooler lined with towels for 1 to 3 hours. They should stay above 140°F.
- Pull the meat with gloved hands, discard the bones and fat seams, and toss the pork with about a cup of vinegar sauce. Pile it on a bun, spoon slaw right on top and pass the rest of the sauce.
Here's how the real night went. The butts went on at 9:04. At 4:40 a.m., the low-temperature alarm on Ryan's probe set went off, and the grill read 168°F. The pellets had bridged, which means they formed a little tunnel over the auger and stopped feeding the fire, and the fire went out. Ryan stirred the hopper with a wooden spoon, restarted the grill and had it back to 225 in about twenty minutes. The meat barely noticed. "Stir the hopper" is now a line on the timeline, right before bed.
Both butts hit 165 around 7 a.m. and got wrapped. The 9-pounder finished at 203°F at 11:50. The smaller one, out of pure spite, didn't finish until 12:35. That's fifteen and a half hours and about 30 pounds of pellets.
A pork butt is shoulder, a hard-working muscle laced with collagen. Pork is safe to eat at 145°F, but it won't pull until that collagen slowly melts into gelatin, which takes hours once you're past 160. That's why the probe has to say 200-something before the meat falls apart.
Slaw on top is new for us. In Memphis last month we had pulled pork with slaw piled right on the sandwich, and Ryan came home and made it law: slaw goes on the sandwich now, not next to it. The vinegar sauce cuts the fat, the slaw adds crunch, and Jack, who loves anything with sauce, went through about a third of the jar by himself.
It was 93°F on the patio by three, so the pork stayed in the cooler and came out one pan at a time, and the slaw bowl sat nested in a bigger bowl of ice. When it's over 90 outside, an hour on the table is the limit, not two.
Twenty people ate about 6 1/2 pounds of pulled pork, and we had 3 pounds left. I spread it in shallow containers and had it in the fridge before the fireworks started. Two quart bags went into the chest freezer, Saturday was pulled pork nachos, and tonight it's baked potatoes.
Counting the meat, buns, slaw, sauce and pellets, the whole cook came to about $87, or $2.29 a sandwich at a quarter pound of pork each.
