Smoking Boston butt

trim a little fat
and fat cap up

also don't get hotter than 250


eta: seems like i remember the rule being 1.5 hours per pound?
i'd have to look it up

Trim fat layer if thick, fat cap up, cruise at 225 until internal temp of 195, pull off smoker, wrap and store in cooler with towels underneath and on top for at least an hour. Pure gold after that!

You can trim, but I don't

Fat cap up

I like to smoke low, like 220-225, for 2-2.5 hrs/lb. probably closer to 2.5

I'll be odd man out of the temperature. I shoot between 250-300. I think I did my last one around 290 for most of the time. Butts do well at higher temperatures and you can drastically shorten your time and lessen your stall.

My big offset has tuning plates, just below the bottom shelves, which give off radiant heat. Fat cap goes down to protect the butt from the higher heat. My smaller offset runs hotter at the top and the meat is closer to the top of the pit steel than it is the bottom, so the fat cap goes up.

What I'm trying to say is that I use it as a protective barrier to the hottest part of the pit.

Fat cap up or down? Folks have been fighting over this for as long as they've been throwing meat on a fire.

I buy them trimmed to about a half inch. Always cap up at 250. Apple and mesquite or oak wood.

quote:

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I trim the cap off, cut it in to small chunks and make oven cracklins.

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What's your process for this?

Nice. I'll try that next time. Thank you.

Smoked a shoulder ham last week for a couple hours then finished for 2 hours in a pressure cooker. This ham had the skin in tack which I cut off (about 1 square foot with a good 1/2" of fat). I cut the skin into 2" squares with kitchen shears. I put the skin in a pyrex bowl with lid and then into the oven at 500 F.

The skin fried in it's own lard (you could see the lard bubbling away. I soon lowered the temp to 350F for about an hour. The cracklins were excellent.