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firewife

Fire Starter
Original poster
Jul 30, 2014
38
11
Redding, CA
Hi everyone,

I've been stalking this website for a couple months now and decided to join so I could utilize all your experience!

I am a 32-year-old wife of a fireman and mother of a 19 month old little girl, and have another little girl due this Oct.  I do 95% of the cooking in my household.  I've gotten to know my traditional gas grill very well and was using that for my BBQ needs, but a few months ago my husband picked up a Green Mountain Pellet smoker so I'm learning a new field.  I've become more interested in the smoker recently as I've learned I can put something on early in the day with little attendance and have amazing meat ready at dinner time.  Priceless for a working mom - my toddler doesn't care to share me with dinner prep time after I've been gone all day so multiple step meals are just too much work right now, unless I can do the prep ahead of time!  I also love that the smoke makes the meat taste better for leftovers.

So far, we've had good success with beer can chicken, baby back ribs, and brisket but that is about where my experience ends.  I would like to tackle a smoked pulled pork next so I'll be posting asking for some help on that.

We live in Northern California about two hours north of Sacramento.  It's currently very, very hot (over 100 degrees most days) and we have pretty mild winters of about 50-60 degrees during the day and rarely ever get snow.

Thanks in advance for all your help.
 
Welcome to the site. You will find that A pork shoulder is about the same amount of work as the brisket. It is actually easy and quite a forgiving cut of meat. Pretty hard to screw one up. If you have any questions fire away.
 
Welcome from Canada, Firewife.

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You have come to the right place to get ideas for smoking. For example, if you are doing a butt, just type in the search bar and you will get many posts as to methods of doing a butt. You can then pick the one that interests you.

If I were to give advice on doing a butt it would be to remember that it will be cooked when it is done and that you can't predict how long it will take. So, give yourself plenty of time. If it is done early, it reheats wonderfully but I have had butts take an incredible amount of time. My first smoke, I thought I had given lots of time and ended up with a slicing butt instead of a pulled pork. 

Another consideration is whether to foil wrap the butt during the smoke. Doing so speeds things up and gives a very moist result. Not doing so takes longer but gives a dark rich flavoured bark. You will find fanatics for both methods.

I also suggest you post your smoke with pictures while you are doing it. You will get real time comments and advice while you are doing the smoke.

Ask questions, post pictures and have fun!

Disco
 
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Hello and welcome to the forum. If you have had success with brisket, pork shoulder will be a walk in the park. A lot more forgiving and harder to screw up. Just allow Plenty of time.

Gary S
 
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