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We had a porkilicous BBQ dinner yesterday that was tender, smoky, and all kinds of delicious.

Spicy Smoked Pork Butt

Bourbon Barrel Smoked Spare Ribs

Southern-style Potato Salad

Bush's Smokehouse Grillin' Beans

Smoked pork butt and spare ribs for the win!

This isn't a recipe post, just a summary of the cook. Here are my notes, thoughts, and some pictures of how everything went.

Meat Prep

My Food City had Smithfield pork butts and Smithfield spare ribs on sale for the weekend so I picked up one of each.

Pork Butt Prep

The pork butt weighed in just over 9 pounds. When picking pork butts, I look for a rectangular shape, not a lot of excess fat, a prominent money muscle, and a vibrant color (not pale pink). 

• Timing - I like to do this so that my pork butt has 12 hours to rest in the fridge before smoking.
• Trimming - None, this Smithfield pork butt was nicely trimmed of any excess fat. The one downside is that a deep gash almost cut off the money muscle. The gash was sort of like we do for competition pork butts to expose the money muscle to smoke, but the cut was much deeper, almost all the way through.
• Injection - I inject mainly for flavor rather than moisture. I used Chris Lilly's recipe for his World Championship Pork Shoulder from his first book. The apple juice gives it sweetness, the salt seasons it, the cayenne gives it a hint of heat, and the Worcestershire sauce adds that umami "fifth taste". 
• Rub - We opted for a spicy pork butt this time. Instead of a sweet rub like my Southern Sweet recipe or Meat Church Honey Hog, I pulled out the Albukirky Seasonings Anchonero rub. As the name implies, Anchonero has ancho (smoky, dark) and habanero (heat, bright) chiles. 

Fat cap down on a wire rack in a half-sized steam pan. You can see I had the money muscle leaning against the steam pan in the front. If you look about 2 inches back, you can see a fine line that was the cut that I mentioned. If I did this without a steam pan, I would have tied the money muscle to the roast so it didn't flop open and cook faster than the rest of the roast.

Spare Rib Prep

The rack of Smithfield spare ribs was HUGE, I'm talking 4.4 pounds. 

• Timing - I do this about 2 hours before starting the cook. IMHO, ribs only need to sit for an hour with the rub on them compared to larger meats like brisket and butts.
• Trimming - The rack was already trimmed St. Louis-style so its edges were straight. I trimmed off the "skirt" on the back of the ribs, removed the membrane from the back, and converted St Louis-style to Kansas City-style by squaring off the ends of the ribs.
• Rub - I used a mix of Flavor Anonymous Notorious RED (one of my top 2 favorite pork rubs) and Fire and Smoke's Second City Sweet.

The ribs were thick, even and nicely trimmed.

Trimmed, seasoned and waiting to go into the smoke.

Grill Set Up

Big Green Egg for the Pork Butt

A good smoke session starts with cleaning out your smoker to ensure the best airflow. I use a Kick Ash Basket to shake off the ash from the leftover coal from a previous cook. I transfer this to a holding pan. I put fresh lump charcoal and 4-5 chunks of wood in the basket and then top that off with the leftover charcoal.

I used a cast iron plate setter, drip pan, and cast iron grate for my grill setup. I like the cast iron plate setter (aka ConvEGGtor) because I broke every ceramic plate setter that I have owned but I've had this for almost 10 years with no issues. Cast Iron Plate Setter [Amazon Affiliate]

I used Jealous Devil XL Lump Charcoal for my main fuel source. I used their whiskey barrel smoke wood blocks for my smoke.

Egg Ribs

My setup for the Big Green Egg for the ribs was different, mainly because of the shape of ribs. With a traditional ConvEGGtor or plate setter, the ends of the ribs can stick out over gaps. That puts the rib ends over direct heat instead of indirect heat, which can make them burn.

I used one of my Adjustable Rigs (Ceramic Grill Store) with an oval heat stone. This is the setup I use for briskets and ribs.

From this picture, you can see how the oval heat stone protects the full length of the ribs and the heat and smoke come up around the sides. The metal frame pictured is for the drip pan. You lay a sheet of foil over it and tuck it underneath the frame.

I decided to use electric controllers, just for the convenience. I used Thermoworks Signals to run a Billows fan on the Egg with the pork butt. I used a BBQ Guru UltraQ and Pit Viper on the Egg with the pork spareribs.  Thermoworks Signals [Affiliate Link]

Timeline

Prepped pork butt as noted earlier in this post. 

Saturday Afternoon

Competition BBQ has gotten me in the practice of setting up all equipment hours in advance so when it's crunch time, there are no delays.

Saturday 10:45pm

Lit the BGE for the pork butt. I set my Signals for a 225°f cook temp and lit the coals in one spot towards the front of the Kick Ash Basket. My intent is for the fire to burn down and back because I have my wood chunks stacked that way in the coal.

Sunday 12:00AM 

The Egg was rocking steady at 225°f with wisps of smoke dancing through the top vent so I put the pork butt on in the center of the grate. I spritzed it liberally with quality apple juice, closed the dome and let it ride.

Sunday 1:00am

I spritzed the pork butt heavily one more time and then turned in for the night. Normally I'd spritz every hour or so. But, 1) kamado grills like the BGE have a moist cooking environment and 2) I wanted to sleep. 

Sunday 6:00am

• Pork butt - I spritzed it. It was only an internal temp of about 150°f and didn't have the color that I wanted yet.
• Ribs - I lit the BGE and turned on the BBQ Guru UltraQ set at 275°f. Meanwhile, I prepped the ribs as noted above.

The Results

Everything turned out tender, smoky, and delicious. 

Here's the graph of the internal temperature of the pork butt as recorded by my Thermoworks Signals. You can see the quick dip when I took the pork butt out to wrap it. This shows how the wrapping speeds up the cooking.

Gorgeous color on the ribs, right?  The knife I used is my 12" Victorinox Cimeter. I'll also use the straight slicer that I use for briskets but for ribs I'll normally grab this one because I like how the curve makes for an even slice motion on the ribs. Victorinox 12" cimeter [Amazon Affiliate Link]

The two rubs worked well together to deliver a balanced sweet and savory flavor profile.

The meat drew back nicely, pretty much evenly exposing the tips of the rib bones.

It's rib slicin' time, baby!

I gave them one last brush with the thinned BBQ sauce after slicing.

Now THAT'S a proper BBQ plate.