Started with 2 bone-in pork shoulders; 8.5 lbs and 7.5 lbs. $1.99/pound at Costco. Trimmed both of them the night before. I couldn’t believe how much fat I ended up cutting off. Then dry brined for ~15 hours.
The morning of the cook I rubbed the meat with water, then used ~1/2C of Memphis Dust rub from amazingribs.com per shoulder. Then I tied them together, because I think I went a little overboard on the trimming; there were pieces of meat hanging off all over the place. I didn’t have Rosemary powder this time around, but I did crush the Rosemary I had… I probably ended up with about 1 TSP in the entire batch of rub. I need to check more stores, because neither of the Kroger stores I go to had it.
I put them both on the grill at 7:07 AM, at 180° / LO “Xtreme Smoke” mode for 1 hour. I decided to start it at 180° because internet people complain that their pellet grills don’t produce enough smoke at 225°. There was no discernible difference, from the smoke pouring out the vents anyway, between the two temps. I’m sure there was some minor difference inside… Oh well, I couldn’t tell from outside. I plan on starting at 225° next time.
Around 8:00 AM, I inserted a probe into each shoulder and bumped the grill up to 225°
Went and golfed 9 holes at 12:45 PM and monitored the temp from the app on my phone.
Around 5 PM they were still only around 170°, so I set the temp on the grill to 265°.
Around 6 PM I wrapped both butts because we were starting to get hungry and they were still not up to my target temp of 203°
Pulled them off the grill at 7 PM, one was at 200° and the other at 198°. Pulled/shredded them immediately after and they were as tender as could be. The bones slid right out and I didn’t even need to use tools to shred the meat.
I thought it could have been a little better. It seemed a tad dry, but with BBQ sauce it was delicious. Everybody else seems to have loved it. I bought Kings Hawaiian buns, Kroger creamy coleslaw, Sweet Baby Rays (Regular), and Famous Dave’s Sweet BBQ Sauce to serve with it. I loved both sauces, I wish I would have paid more attention to note which one I liked better.
I believe the meat temperature probes for my grill were reading about 9° too hot, but I don’t really have a good way of telling. I put them in an ice bath when I first put the butts on the grill, and they were reading 34°, while my instant read thermometer was reading 31.8°
Next time I want to try wrapping it at the stall and leaving it wrapped until its done. I also want to leave the grill set to 225° for the entire cook. I feel like wrapping it will ruin the bark though. The bottom was a little soggy and it was only in wrapped for about an hour.