Boston Pork Butt 101

A couple of weeks ago I made arrangements with my son Alexander to cook a Boston Pork Butt but the weather did not cooperate and we had to reschedule it. The request was puzzling to me but I think he was intrigued and drawn to it by the uniqueness of the name. Please view my blog entry titled Planning time! to read important introductory information.

Today, February 23, 2013, 4:11am, I am beginning to write this new post because Alexander is coming today to visit and have lunch here with us. As I write this entry I will be checking the grill and report here the progress. Look at the time. It is 3:04am, Saturday and I am up and ready to begin the process.

There was a lot of preparation that took place because this is a major cooking event and there were several purchases that had to be made. For this reason I went to ShopRite and purchased the following:

• 8 1/3 lb Boston pork butt, 
• a variety of canned, cooked beans
• anchovies, 
• romaine lettuce, 
• bread,
• a spray bottle,
• heavy duty aluminum foil,
• and apple cider.

I also want to cook bbq beans to go with the pork butt. Since the Boston pork butt takes about nine to ten hours to cook I will use my cast-iron pan to slow cook the beans. The can to the right with the butter beans is for an appetizer that I am planning for.

I purchased the bread to make melba toast. Be on the lookout for this recipe too.

Anchovies. Yum! I will use them to make a modified Caesar salad. I will exclude the croutons and egg from it but I do like the taste of the salt in the anchovies.

I will use this heavy duty foil to wrap the Boston pork butt after it's cooked. You need to let it sit for about one hour for the juices to redistribute and allow the meat to be nice and moist. If you cut is immediately you'll end up with dry meat.

I use apple cider vinegar for the mopping sauce and for wet rubs. Be on the lookout for a recent bbq recipe where I used apple cider vinegar on chicken.

Here is the Boston pork butt, at the supermarket shelf waiting to be purchased by Evan. There were several decent looking Boston pork butts but this one was the right weight and had the cutest, nicest fat on its side. The butchers at the supermarket probably see me coming and they roll their eyes because I usually have a lot of weird questions to ask them. In this case I was asking about the amount of time this particular Boston pork butt was on the shelf, if the meat was butchered locally or if it was shipped from New Jersey, and if the meat had any type of special handling done to it. So, I chose this Boston pork butt and gently placed it in my shopping cart.

I started to work on the Boston pork butt on Friday morning, the day before it was needed. I got all the ingredients together for the rub:

I decided to first rub lightly the pork butt with mustard. I have been using mustard when I make my world famous Chicken a-la Grecka and it adds a nice flavor to it.
After rubbing the butt with mustard I also rubbed the following mixture of spices:

• paprika, 1 tablespoon,
• cayenne pepper, 1 tablespoon,
• chili powder, 1 tablespoon,
• garlic powder, 2 tablespoons,
• onion powder, 2 tablespoons,
• pepper, 2 tablespoons,
• and 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce.

[Side note. I have been checking the butt every hour and it's doing great! I add a little coal and apple wood chunks every time. The temperature is at about 250 °F and it's smoking good.] 

Of course I have to deal with Raspy too. I am busy but Raspy wants attention. Look at her meowing next to the refrigerator. That is her way of saying "cook something good for me now!" Not now Raspy. Not now. Go away!

Raspy, though, has different ideas. She wants food and she wants it now. Here she is getting ready to attack my leg. First she approaches innocently and then boom! She claws and bites my leg.

But I have a way of getting rid of her and spoil her at the same time. Chicken. Here I am gettin her chicken filet ready.

Here she is gobbling down the chicken. Isn't she cute? Isn't she? She is so precious and I hope you can see that we love her.

Finally, Raspy is happy and away from my legs. In the picture below she gets her little body warmed up while she is also on the lookout for any intruders from the east side of the house. What a watchcat. She is such a distraction. It's enough to make you heave. But I digress.

 

  

Back to the Boston butt now. It's difficult working with raw meats and take pictures at the same time. Here I am alone at home trying to get things done and I am doing as well as I can. I removed the wrapping from the pork butt and gave it a good rinse, dried it with paper towels and placed it in a plate. Then I got the liquid for the juicer ready. So far, easy peasy, which should not to be confused with geteasypeasy, the open source community that provides Internet and web-enabled operating systems for netbooks, tablets and mobile devices.

Injecting the fluid was easy. The injector has a nice and sharp needle and it took two minutes to inject the fluid. HOWEVER, I don't want you to think that this step is to be taken lightly! You should distribute the fluid evenly across the pork butt area. The liquid consists of equal amounts of apple cider and apple cider vinegar. By the way, vinegar and grilling go perfectly together.

[Just checked the grill. I have one word to describe the pork butt and the whole process. Perfection! The temperature fluctuates between 225 and 260 °F. Nothing more to ask for. The grill is smoking good and the pork butt looks even better.]

Then I applied the rub slowly and carefully on the pork butt. Finally  wrapped the pork butt with plastic and put it in the refrigerator. The image below shows my attempt to control the juices from the pork butt. I placed a plate under it and then wrapped it but that didn't work very well and I used two plastic bags from the supermarket before placing the whole thing in the refrigerator.

Here is a closeup of the pork butt.

The pork butt stayed in the refrigerator for about 12-13 hours.

This morning I turned the patio lights on, looked outside and...there was a little snow that had fallen. Still better than having rain or a blizzard.

I used my trusted oiled newspapers to light up the coals in the Weber coal starter and then I started to prepare the grill itself. I added an aluminum pan for the drippings and I also added a much smaller aluminum pan to provide moisture.  When the coals were ready I added them on the one side of the grill opposite the grease pan. When the temperature reached 250 °F, I cleaned the grate using half a lemon and placed the pork butt on the grate with the fat side up. By the way. Since I use the grill once a week I save the used half lemons and I use them to clean the grate. They lemon juice left in the lemon cleans the hot grate very well.

The new Weber Gold has this nifty thermometer attached on the surface of the cover that makes checking the temperature nice and easy. I have the Weber, a.k.a Achilles, near a window and I can check the temperature from inside the house. This way I don't have to go out often for no reason.

Here is the pork butt getting comfortable on the grate...

 I went in the house and started to work on this blog entry as the pork butt was cooking. I have been checking every hour the grill and everything looks good.

[UPDATE! It's 11:50am and the pork butt has been cooking since 3:30am, that is almost 8 1/2 hours. The temperature is at 145. It has been at that temperature for a few hours already but that is normal as this massive piece of meat needs to cook throughout.]

Five hours after cooking the pork butt I started to cook the beans. I used three cans of precooked beans: red and white kidney beans, and white baked beans. To the left of this picture you can see a small slice of the cast-iron pan that I use for the beans. I used the following ingredients:

1. six slices, of bacon diced,
2. 1/4 cup maple syrup,
3. two cups bbq sauce,
4. 1 1/2 diced sweet onions,
5. 4 cloves of finely chopped garlic. 

I moved the pork butt over to make room for the pan, waited a few minutes for the pan to heat up, and added the bacon. It took a few minutes for the bacon to brown, added the garlic and mixed it all up. After one minute I added the onions and waited until they were nicely cooked. I added the two cups of bbq sauce and maple syrup and waited for the whole thing to come to a boil and then I added the beans. Stirred everything up and closed the grill cover. Phew! I took the following picture about 20 minutes into it. I cooked the beans for about 50 minutes and then took them out and brought them into the kitchen. Looking back, I should have waited at least two hours to start cooking the beans. Live and learn. 

Here is the pork butt 140 °F. If I waited another minute it would have gone a little higher but I was anxious to put the lid back on. By the way, FSIS, Food Safety and Inspection Service, lowered the safe internal temperature of FRESH pork to 145 °F. Pork that is chopped must be cooked to 170 °F.

I had to check the Weber thermometer every 15 minutes or so to make sure the temperature did  not drop below 220 °F. When the temperature dropped I would add coals and one small chunk of apple wood. The pork butt cooked for 10 whole hours before I took it off the grill. Once the temperature had reached the glorious 170 °F, wrapped it with heavy duty aluminum foil and brought it inside the house where I was greeted with applause and cheers. Apparently there were a lot of hungry folks waiting to eat.

The surface of the Boston pork butt was...picture perfect and the aroma emanating from it was ust unbelievable.  One tiny mistake I made here was cutting the meat and puncturing the foil under it thus allowing some juice to drip onto the pan under it thus making the washing process difficult.

Guess who else loves this type of cooking... How many cats are out there that eat flavored meat? None! Only Raspy. Raspy had a nice helping of the meat and ate it all up!

I hear that Diane, our daughter, requested one too and this event will happen soon.

Public Service Announcements

To better communicate information to the reader of this blog entry I found the degree symbol ° and simply copied and pasted every time I needed it. This way I didn't have to write degrees F, instead I write ° F. Also, when writing online and wanting to draw the readers' attention you should never underline anything because the will be confused with a link.

Challenges

Writing this blog entry was challenging because I had to reword such phrases as:

• several nice looking butts and changed it to several nice looking Boston pork butts,
• grabbed a nice butt and made it grabbed a nice Boston pork butt.