Smoked Pork Butt

You know how much I love cooking something that gives us multiple meals. Yesterday I smoked a pork butt and ended up with cooked meat for lots of meals.

A while back, I heard about cooking the pork butt first with the sous vide, then smoking it. That is one of the most amazing tips and that’s how I’ll always cook pork butts from now on.

I seasoned the butt Wednesday morning, put it in a vacuum seal bag and kept it in the fridge til Thursday morning, took it straight from the fridge to a tube of water and used the sous vide. I set the sous vide at 165 and cooked the butt in the water for about 24 hours. I think it was actually 22 but 24 was my goal . . we just had other things happening.

Yesterday morning, I put it in the smoker at 225 degrees with a couple of chunks of apple wood and smoked it for 7 hours. For perfect pulled pork, I like to reach an internal temp of 195.

We had pulled pork sandwiches for dinner last night; I put up 5 packs of 8 oz. meat each, two packages of the parts we didn’t want to eat that I’ll use for seasoning other things, along with the bone and 8 oz. of meat I’ll use for making lima beans with meat.

This one pork butt will give us about 12 meals. Not bad for a a piece of meat that was about $15.

Some of the dishes I’ll make:

• Baked Potatoes topped with shredded pork butt.
• Ravioli – I used purchased ravioli. We have some that has chickpeas and gorgonzola cheese. I’ll make meatballs, a sauce, add some pulled pork to give it a bit of a smokey flavor and serve that over the ravioli.
• Enchiladas.
• Pulled Pork Chili.
• Beans with Meat. The smoked pork adds so much to this dish but I will often add ground beef, or sliced chicken breasts to this dish. Any beans work great but my favorite is baby lima beans . . which I’ll be putting in the slower cooker today for tomorrow’s meal.

I try to keep at least one pork butt in the freezer. That’s one big piece of meat I can cook and know that we will eat it all.

In fact, yesterday after I finished putting all the meat away, this is what got thrown out:

The skin, the bones and the meat . . it all will get used.

Even the liquid from cooking it in the bag with the sous vide will be used to season other dishes.

As we were eating our sandwiches yesterday, Vince said “This is so much better than the BBQ at the restaurant!” I love it when he says things like that.