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.

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.

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.

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.

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