Pork Picnic BBQ

Sunday March 16th - 70 degrees with a slight breeze

Since it was going to be a nice weekend, I figured I would do some Q'in over the weekend.  Below you will see pictures of the steps I went through to create this fabulous treat and I will give rough estimates to the times and temperature of the picnic.

Unfortunately, I did not write down the exact amount of the ingredients I put into the rub I do have the types.  Please click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.

Preparation

Selected a decent pork picnic from the butcher (left the bone in) with a very nice marbling of fat.  The bottom side had roughly 1/8" to 1/4" of fat.  It weighed in at about 5 to 6 lbs.

Slather it with plain yellow mustard.  Some people say that this changes the taste but I have to disagree.  I just use it because it helps keep the dry rub on the meat.

Coat the picnic with the dry rub on ALL sides, press it into the meat and place in a 2 gallon Zip Lock bag for an overnight delight in the fridge.

Take out the pork about 1 to 2 hours prior to smoking, so it has time to warm up to room temperature

While the meat was warming up to room temp., I decided to get the good ole Weber silver bullet working.  I like to use the minion method because it creates for long smoking times between refueling. 

In this picture, I loaded the smoker with about 6 pounds of Royal Oak Lump.  Other Q'ers out there will probably get mad but I used some of the left over briquettes from my last bbq but I figured since they were half gone and pre-burned, they could be used as fuel (I did not taste anything different in the final product).

I put almost 2 lbs in the charcoal starter (pic2) and let that burn till most of the lump was white.  Dump it on top of the other coals in the Weber and spread evenly.  I proceeded to assemble the smoker and put on the

This is what the meat looked like after about 4 hours of cooking.  It is around 12:00 or so and the meat is around 140 internal temp.  The smoker has kept a pretty stable temp between 225 and 240 depending upon which way the wind blows.

Around 6:30 the picnic finally hit 190 degrees internal.  The fire just about piddled out around 5:00 and the smoker temp dropped down to about 213.  I put some unlit lump on the top of the small pile and the temp came up within 20 minutes or so.

*Interjection - I have to say that I really LOVE my Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM for short).  With its temperature control features and heavy gauge metal construction, I am able to have constant temps if the air valves are adjusted properly.  At one point during the cooking stage, I did not have to adjust a thing and the smoker temp sat at 233 for 2.2 hours.  What a beautiful thing!!!

Here is the final picture of the pork.  It was wrapped in aluminum foil, inside a towel, inside a cooler for a 1/2 hour so all of the juices stayed contained inside the meat.

I hope you enjoy my trip down Pork Picnic lane.  Come again real soon.......