How I Smoked A Supermarket Pork Butt on a Backyard Barbecue
While a good part of the United States in 2022 began to heat up and burn, Oregon, where I live, experienced the wettest spring in recorded history. It rained, and it rained, and it rained some more.
We were soggy and depressed. Picnics got canceled and suicides were up. It was bad.
But the sun finally came out, and it was time for me to celebrate the sun by sacrificing a pork butt on my deck. The smoking of a butt, that poorly named hunk of meat from the shoulder of a pig, is my way of welcoming the six weeks of sun and warmth that once a year provide respite from the cold green rainforest in which I live.
This year’s butt was an unassuming three and a half pound shrink-wrapped butt from the local supermarket. It was an impulse buy I made while doing the regular Tuesday grocery shopping. I thought I would cook it up for my wife and myself, but upon seeing that I had come home with pork, my wife’s mind immediately went to entertaining. She whipped out her phone, and shortly after, I learned I would be feeding seven.
