"........SMOKIN' !!!"

So I got this smoker for Fathers Day, see, and I signed up on a couple of BBQ blogs to get up to speed on all this slow and smoky cooking, see. So I try and make some 'Q (as they say in the biz) and my first attempt is edible...but not nearly good enough, Joe. Not nearly good enough. I was gonna make you manager (oops, slipped into a movie). Anyhow, it was eaten by family and was not bad but not the other either.

So this weekend I try it again. During the week I purchased and installed a brass LP needle valve so I can fine tune the amount of propane going to the burner (a blogger's tip). After work Friday I walk to Smith's and buy three and three quarter pounds of Pork Shoulder Roast, or as kids under 12 love to say and howl, a BUTT roast. Saturday at five a.m. I get up and soak my hickory chips in water. Then at six a.m. I get up and take the meat out of the fridge to get to room temp.

At seven, I get up and take the chips out of the water and put them into the little cast iron box above the propane burner of the smoker. I fire up the smoker full and close the real cool door with the chromed steel handle. Then I rub down the BUTT with only coarse salt and cracked pepper (love the imagery in that sentence). I cut a yellow onion into five thick slices and toothpick them into place on top of the roast (another tip picked up from the bloggers, but one that made no difference in the end).

I run that baby out to the smoker, set it on a rack in the middle (near the thermometer sensor) of the smoker and turn the smoker down to low-low. With a little back-and-forth with the new brass needle valve I get the temp stabilized at about 205-210 degrees, and the chips are smoldering and smoking in their little box from the earlier full blast flame.

I leave the meat on the rack and the door closed until 12:30 p.m. By now the smoke is gone. I wrap the roast in foil and put it back in the smoker. At 3:30 I unwrap it again, add some more chips and let it smoke for 45 minutes along with some uncooked bratwursts and kielbasas. I then re-wrap the roast, jack up the heat to 300 degrees, and let it cook wrapped in foil in its juices until 6:45 p.m. (having removed the sausages earlier when I was sure they were cooked) when the couple we invited for dinner (like there's no pressure here!) show up.

Now at 6:46 p.m. I open the foil and get the results of this experiment. By 8:45 p.m. after the guests are stuffed and gone, Arleigh and I are fighting over the last bits stuck in the creases of the foil. It was so good we did not even want to spoil it with BBQ sauce. Smoky, juicy, falling-off-the-bone and into your mouth, meltingly divine. And what flavor. Wow! Red Rover, red rover, let that butt roast come over--and run all over my taste buds!! MMMMmmmmm. Oh how I love that man!

Don't know how it will turn out next time, but if it happens again the way it happened today, I'd say that's a strong indication that pigs and reincarnation got thing goin' on whether anyone is called Jones or not. Mebbe when the Paatzman comes West, he and I can sit by the smoker and manipulate paradise while we listen to and remember Memphis. Ah, ambrosia, thy name is 'Q.

PS: The smoker is simply built and the bloggers relegate it to a beginner's rank, but it did a fantastic job. And that is the end--or the BUTT--of my tasty story.