We got delivery of our ST1400 on Wednesday, April 6, 2011. We realized that it would be an absolute necessity to have a thermometer to measure the internal temperature when smoking such things as a pork butt or brisket. Our Maverick ET 83 dual probe thermometer arrived early Friday afternoon April 8, 2011. I picked up a pair of pork butts from Sam’s that we had elected to be our first item to go into our new smoker. We chose to follow the prep and cooking instructions presented on a video that was prepared by a gentleman who lives just a few miles north of us in Southlake, TX. His method of prepping is to inject the meat with a marinade, cover the pans and refrigerate for 6 to 12 hours, coat the fat side with mustard and dry rub spices, and smoke/cook for 12 to 16 hours at 225 degrees in your ST over a drip pan containing liquids. In the demo video, the 2 pork butts weighed about 6 pounds each
It was about 3:00 p.m. on Friday when we started with the marinade injection process. Our goal was to let the butts rest in the fridge for 8 or so hours and then, since I normally get up when most folks have just gone to bed, I would start cooking with the thought that this wonderful meat would surely be ready to eat somewhere around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon. It didn’t exactly happen that way. Our planned lunch menu became a quickie substitute chicken salad sandwich instead. The actual cooking time was 23 hours and 25 minutes.
Began prepping pork butts @ 1:40 a.m.
15 lbs total meat weight with an internal temperature of 48 degrees f
Cooked ‘fat side’ up. Coated fat side with yellow mustard and a dry rub of 3/4cup paprika, ¼ cup sugar, and 2 Tbs garlic powder. Injected a marinade composed of 3 cups Head Country BBQ sauce, 1 cup Creole butter, and 2 Tbs liquid smoke.
Used 5-1/2 oz maple wood pieces.
A drip pan containing about 2 quarts of water and a cup of vinegar and some marinade was placed on the lowest rack. The two pork butts were placed on separate racks above the drip pan. Started cooking at 2:05 a.m. @ 225 degrees f
I had a temperature probe inserted into each pork butt in the center of each. The internal temperature reached 153f to 154f at about hour 5 and stayed that way to hour 10. I then raised the temperature to 235 f. I was really curious about what was going on inside the ST but I did not open the door. At 10:20 p.m. the butts were at 178 f and 189 f. Finally at 10:55 p.m. one of the butts reached 190 and I pulled that one out. At 11:30 p.m. the other one reached 190. That is a total elapsed time of 23 hours and 25 minutes. Took me twice as long to cook as anticipated.
I was beginning to fear that all I would find when I opened the smoker would be two lumps of pork charcoal. What I found was two finished pork butts that had a nice dark bark and felt really tender to the touch. The fats in the meat were rendered plus all the connective tissue is gone. Still moist, melt in the mouth tender, and has just the right amount of smoke. Not perfect but a very rewarding experience for the first try.