Day: June 2, 2024

writ­ten 6/2/24, updat­ed 6/2/24

June 2, 2024

Meats: Half-slab Pork Bel­ly, 3.8lb bone­less pork shoul­der butt with net, 3 pieces Coun­try-Style Pork Rib, 5 bone-in, skinned chick­en thighs

Taste: Pork Bel­ly (half heo quay, half not, McCormick Pork Rub mar­i­nate in pie plate meat side in sauce 4–5 hours), Pork Shoul­der (inject­ed pick­le juice, salt, soy sauce, ground mus­tard, etc. Mus­tard and dry spices out­side, tight­ly wrapped in saran wrap 4–5 hours), Coun­try-Style Pork Rib (half xa xiu, half not, plas­tic bag mar­i­nate 8 hours), Chick­en Thighs (pie plate mar­i­nate 8 hours skin side down, apple juice, mus­tard, oranges, mo hanh, spices). All have been stabbed

Fuel: 1st Round — 2 apple­wood chunks, half chim­ney starter big blok and scrap BJs char­coal; 2nd Round — half chim­ney big block and scrap BJs coal; 3rd Round —

Smoke: Start­ed around 10am, poured in by 10:30am. Left to set­tle for 20 min­utes (cut the back grass), then placed pork bel­ly 2nd from top rack fat up and shoul­der top rack. Threw in a hand­ful of chips (apple and pecan), then cut grass in front yard ~30 min­utes. After 45 min­utes, spritz with apple juice and more chips. Left to do graph­ic RW stuff.

11:45 — spritz again. Temp sit­ting around 218F

12:40pm — start­ed 2nd chim­ney while apple­wood chunks burn through

1:00pm — poured 2nd chim­ney in. Very hot. Apple­wood chunks are gone. Sit­ting at 240F upper lev­el

1:17pm — Pork bel­ly reach­es 165 F. Peach paper wrap and return to smok­er. Spritz.

1:30pm — added 2 more chunks and a few unstart­ed char­coal on top of burn­ing coal. Refilled con­tain­er to ready for 3rd round. Removed Coun­try Style Pork from fridge

2:20pm — placed Coun­try-Style Pork on lev­el 3. Spritz oth­ers. Sta­ble temps @ 247F and fire­box still mod­er­ate­ly full

3:00pm — Removed chick­en from fridge, spritz all meats. Fire­box burn­ing out, but still steady. 220F opened damper. After open­ing door, tem­per­a­ture strug­gling at 200F, start­ing new chim­ney 3rd round

3:20pm — new coals added

4:30pm — added chick­en, removed peach paper on pork bel­ly and return to smok­er to crisp, added more coals and 2 more wood chunks, wrapped coun­try style pork. Prepped more coals to add not chim­ney. OPened for so long that tem­per­a­tures plum­met­ed. Slow­ly ris­ing.

5:00pm — removed 1 chunk of wood. WAY too much smoke. Chick­en thigh probe was out of the meat, so fixed. Added more coal to fire­box. Was cloudy all day, but late after­noon sun is now out and hot. Temps after open­ing are now 222F and climb­ing. Afraid that there’s going to be too much smoke on meat. Was going to remove pork bel­ly, but want to cook with­out so much smoke for a bit

5:30pm — Removed Pork bel­ly, cov­ered in foil placed in insu­lat­ed bag. Peach papered Chick­en which just hit 165F. Removed COun­try Style Ribs from peach paper and set back in smok­er to fin­ish (stuck to paper and tastes great). Ham has been stuck at 165 for a long time.