5:00 AM: My alarm goes off, reminding me to do BUTT STUFF. It’s not as funny as it was yesterday evening. I snooze the alarm and then get out of bed anyway. Downstairs, out to the back porch, uncover the big green egg, start the charcoal, turn the alarm off again. I loaded it the day before, filling the fire box all the way up and cramming four gnarly pieces of hickory into the charcoal. It’s charcoal from the bottom of the bag and there are more small pieces than I expect, but I went with it anyway. Indirect heat plate and drip pan go in, followed by the grate. I watch the needle creep up to 225F and then lock the vents down.

5:30 AM: I pull the pork shoulder out of the refrigerator, unwrap all ten pounds of it, and immediately feel overwhelmed. I’ve done a few chickens and two racks of ribs on the egg, but nothing this massive. First I flip it over and score a diamond pattern into the fat cap, and then cover the whole thing in yellow mustard and BBQ rub (label: sea salt, brown sugar, paprika, garlic, onion, “other spices”.) Back out to the BBQ to check if it’s stabilized. It’s still running cold, so I open the vents wider and watch the needle creep up to 225. This is the longest I’ve ever cooked anything. I try not to obsess about all the things that will go wrong.

6:15 AM: The butt is on the grill. I’m leaving it alone for 3 hours so the smoke can do its thing. To keep from hovering, I go inside and mix up the BBQ sauce: apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, cayenne, black pepper, and salt. The recipe says to boil the solution and that effectively fills the house with homemade pepper spray.

7:00 AM: My wife and daughter are awake and coughing. I am wildly unpopular.

7:05 AM: Finishing the BBQ sauce on the patio. Most of it goes into a plastic squeeze bottle, but I pour 8 oz through a coffee filter and into an all-purpose spray bottle. I’ll be using this, starting at 9:15, every half hour until the butt reaches 165 internal temp. It’s a brisk morning and every window not facing the patio is wide open to let the horrible vinegar/capsaicin stench out of the house.

7:10 AM: Yoga and coffee and a lot more coughing.

9:15 AM: Here we go! Spray meat liberally, insert bluetooth thermometer, set timer for 30m. Chase daughter around the yard in the interim. The app says the butt will be done by 6:30. The temperature is climbing steadily, but I know it’ll stall out at some point. The stall can last as much as six hours and isn’t predictable, so fingers crossed that it’ll work out.

1:30 PM: 165! The meat stalled for about an hour at 145, but we’re past that now. I’ve been spraying it every half hour and it’s finally time to wrap it in foil. I’ve already set up a tray and it’s the work of about a minute to lift the lid, remove the butt, wrap it up, and replace it. I open the vents wider to get the temp up to 250. They’re wider than I’m comfortable with, but at this point I’m largely on autopilot and just want to make number go up.

1:40 PM: Time to lay down. The bluetooth thermometer is registering a lower ambient temp than I expected, but the grill thermometer is sitting solidly at 250. I hand-wave it away as the foil messing with the thermometer in some way. Meat temp is still climbing. A tiny voice in the back of my mind reminds me that I have the vents open a lot wider than expected but I ignore it.

2:40 PM: I sure don’t like the ambient temperature reading. I expected it to start climbing, but it’s been sitting at a plateau for the last 15 minutes and has just started to tick down. Internal temp is still climbing, albeit slowly. I race out of bed and check the grill thermometer, which shows 240. Uh oh.

2:45 PM: We’ve trained for this. Actually, no, we haven’t. We’ve never done this before. But we’ve thought about doing it. We’ve thought about it a lot. I have a pair of welding gloves, a tray, a fresh open bag of charcoal and my heat gun lighter.

Don gloves, open vents all the way, open grill, remove butt. Remove grate. Remove drip pan. Remove indirect heat plate. Underneath, I see two glowing coals and a sea of ash.

Here we go.

Rake the ashes. Dump in another full load of charcoal, aim heatgun into the center, hold the button down until center glows red. Replace indirect heat plate, drip pan, grill, and butt. Close lid, stare at thermometer and will it up to 250.

2:50 PM: The thermometer app notifies me that it will be another eight hours before the butt will be done. That’s less than ideal. I leave it alone.

4:30 PM: Against all odds, internal temp continues to climb. We’re at 191 now. My ambient temperature graph looks like a polygraph session. The app says we’re ten degrees and an hour and a half out.

My brain is working overtime coming up with worst-case scenarios: it’ll be dry, it’ll be unevenly cooked, it’ll be burned, it’ll climb out of the BBQ and steal my wallet.

6:15 PM: Internal temp is 202. Time to take it out and let it rest for an hour. I use the time to run to the store and pick up wine. My wife made pasta salad the night before and is cooking peas. What’s in the foil? What did I do?

7:15 PM: The moment of truth. I’m dreading this, but I don’t want to wait any longer. I unwrap the thing and cut into it, mostly thinking about Captain Ahab finally stabbing that pesky whale. The knife slides into it like butter. It pulls apart easily. The bark seems ok.

We quickly load up plates. I offer the crowd-strength BBQ sauce to the table but there are no takers.

It turned out! I made pulled pork! My daughter complains loudly until she tries it. We all get up for second helpings. I run a plate over to the neighbor. The rest gets shredded and bagged up for leftover sandwiches and enchiladas.

It all worked out! I’m already planning my second butt.

Links I used: https://thebbqbuddha.com/how-to-smoke-a-boston-butt-on-the-big-green-egg/ https://www.aforkstale.com/carolina-barbecue-sauce-recipe/