A Tale of Two Butts: Smoked on the Camp Chef SmokePro Pellet Smoker

Today was forecast to be a beautiful day with highs in the mid 70's. That's amazing because it's February 12th and we've been freezing our butts off most of the winter.  So the plan was to cook two pork butts and to make pulled pork for our family as we gathered to celebrate the birthdays of one of our granddaughters and grandsons.  It would take two butts to feed everyone so for the first time I decided to get the butts at Costco.

One nice thing about living in North Carolina is most every grocery store stocks pork butt, but a good friend swore that the quality of the pork butt at Costco was second to none, so I thought it was time to give them a shot.  They were priced a bit above what I typically expect to pay, but they did look good and fresh, so I pulled the trigger.

What I didn't notice until I opened the package was that they were boneless!  To my way of thinking that is not a good prize.  For one thing, I always prefer to cook meat as whole as I can to prevent moisture loss.  Second, bones add flavor.  Finally, God gave pork butts a bone so that BBQers had a built-in thermometer to know when butts are ready to be removed from the heat.  If you didn't know this already, the bone in the butt becomes loose and pulls out cleanly when the butt is cooked, and I was counting on the bone to be intact.  How did I miss this on the label? (Click pic to Biggie Size it)

The night before the cook I washed and dried the butts then gave them a thin coat of yellow mustard. This step must be news to a lot of people based on the number of comments that the pics I posted on Instagram @Aristocob.  I've tried adding rub directly to the butts and applying it after applying a coat of oil, but mustard just seems to work best. Does it impart a flavor? Note that anyone has ever mentioned, including my mustard-hating grandkids.  The rub that we use is from Killer Hogs and we all love it, but it doesn't contain much salt, so prior to applying the rub I apply garlic salt and freshly ground pepper and some of Weber's Kick'N Chicken seasoning. Both this seasoning and the Killer Hogs rub contain MSG, which none of us have a problem with, but I know some folks do, so be forewarned.  I figured that these butts would need about 9 hours of cooking at the planned 225F, so now all I needed to do was to get a good night's sleep and be up for a 7am start.

I overslept!  The butts made it onto the smoker at 8am and I was thankful that I had given myself a buffer before dinner, so it should be good.  A 9am I checked on the smoker and the fire was out!

It didn't take long to figure out that the problem was the crazy-high winds so I had to come up with a solution. Thankfully I remembered that I had purchased a fiberglass welding blanket a few weeks back from Harbor Freight that should do the trick.  I had to tuck the smoker into a corner and surround it with some of the grandkid's yard toys and with the blanket in place we were back in business.

After five hours on the smoker the butts were nowhere near the temp I was expecting and though the smoker was set at 230F the smoker was holding steady at 211F!  Something had to change, so I adjusted the temp dial up to 250F and made the decision to wrap one of the butts in foil.  The "Texas Crutch" as it is called, has a couple advantages and one big disadvantage: It will hold in heat and therefore will speed the cooking process BUT it also holds in moisture so the lovely bark that we work for will likely turn soft.

In the end, the family preferred the smoky taste of the unwrapped butt but preferred the texture of the wrapped butt. That figures.

The rest is covered in the details below.