Recipe By: Smoke & Spice
Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison, 1994 (with variations).
Ingredients:
Southern Succor Rub (½ recipe)
Southern Sop
6 To 8 lb Boston Butt (or pork shoulder)
Bert’s Superb Barbeque Sauce
Optional Sauces:
Golden Mustard Sauce
Vaunted Vinegar Sauce
Directions:
The night before you plan to barbecue, combine the rub ingredients in a small bowl. Massage the pork well with about half of the rub. Transfer the pork to a plastic bag, and refrigerate it overnight.
Before you begin to barbecue, remove the pork from the refrigerator. Pat down the butt with another coating of rub. Let the pork sit at room temperature for about 45 minutes.
Prepare the grill for indirect cooking using 30 briquets (for 27″ diam. grill) on each side separated by 2 small logs of wet, fragrant wood (hickory, fruit, oak, etc.) and drip pan, and bring the temperature to 200-220F degrees with lid closed. Keep grill at cooking temperature by adding 9 briquets to each side each hour.(Or use smoker according to manufacturer’s directions.) If you plan to baste the pork, stir any remaining rub together with the mop (“sop”) ingredients in a saucepan and warm the mixture over low heat. Transfer the pork to the grill and cook it for about 1 hour per pound. Mop the pork about once an hour as you add charcoal to maintain heat, otherwise keep lid closed.
After 4 hours, wrap the pork in heavy-duty foil, pouring about ½ to 1 cup of warmed barbeque sauce over the meat. Seal the edges of the foil well. Return the pork to the grill for about 2 more hours, cooking it to the fall-apart stage, with an internal temperature near 190F. degrees.
Allow the pork to sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes before pulling the pork apart in shreds. Offer barbecue sauces on the side.
Alternate cooking method: Preheat an oven to 325 degrees. Place the pork on a rack in a roasting pan. Pour 1 1/2 cups of the barbeque sauce in the pan. Cook 1 hour per pound, basting frequently with sauce.
NOTE: Butchers normally cut pork shoulder into two big pieces of meat, the Boston butt and the picnic, both likely to weigh 6 to 8 pounds on the average hog. If you want to cook the whole shoulder, an overnight job, you may have to make a special order in advance. Most backyard barbecuers and restaurants these days are satisfied with just the butt, the portion that has the least bone.