Recap: 2015 Super Bowl Smoke

If you are a longtime reader of our blog (do those exist?) then you will recall that for the past two Super Bowls, Speedy and I have taken the opportunity to step out from behind our blogger notepads and laptops for the Monk family annual Super Bowl party. Two years ago, Speedy and I competed head to head in a smoke off of pork butts and wings (in which I edged him out just slightly). Last year, we tackled our first brisket. This year, turns out Speedy was going to be out of town for the Super Bowl so I would have to go my own way (go my own way).

I started the night before by rubbing the meat with the “Luv Rub” that I picked up from Boone’s Bar-B-Que Kitchen. In year’s past I had mixed my own rub but decided to go the easy way this year. Besides the ease of simply sprinkling from the bottle, the rub itself enhanced the meat nicely.


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In terms of prep, that was basically it until my alarm woke me up at 5am to start the fire. In the smoke off two years ago, I didn’t get the fire going and get the meat on until close to 9am and felt like the pork butt could have used another hour or two so I wasn’t going to make that mistake this year. By 5:45 I had the meat indirectly set over the coals and had a pretty good smoke going. This time I decided to smoke it fat side up just to see if I noticed a difference.

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Outside of a brief nap around 6:30am, I stayed up and checked the temperature every 20-30 minutes for the next 11 or so hours. At around 4:30 the meat temperature had reached 190 degrees and it had a good bark, so I pulled the meat off the grill and let it sit for about an hour before chopping.

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After I chopped the butt I added some homemade Lexington dip to the pan and served to the party. I was really happy with how it came out and thought the rub from Boone’s worked out really well. I’m not sure that I noticed a huge difference smoking the butt with the fat side up, but it didn’t screw anything up so I would do it that way again. I also got some really good feedback from the crowd at the party.

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Once again, I was really happy with how it turned out and besides that, it was a lot of fun to smoke it on my own. I can’t wait until the next opportunity to try it again.

Monk


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