Cooking Pork Butts in the Weber Smokey Mountain

These pork butts were larger than the 6 lbs I prefer, but it's all Sam's had available. I injected, seasoned with spice rub and let them marinade in the refrigerator overinight.

I use lump charcoal when it's available. It's a better quality charcoal that burns cleaner, hotter and with less ash than briquettes. This bag of Royal Oak was purchased from Gordon Food Service and cost me $9.55 for 20 lbs. For comparison, 40 lbs of Kingsford briquettes costs about $11.35 at Sam's, but in this case....you get what you pay for.

I never use lighter fluid when starting charcoal. The lighter fluid can leave a bad taste on food. I prefer a charcoal chimney and a fire starter stick. You can use newspaper, but the starter sticks work better for me.





I line the water pan on the WSM with aluminum foil to make clean-up a little easier. You don't have to line the pan, but if you don't it gets pretty greasy from the pork fat melting as the pork butts cook.





I put the butts on at 10:30 a.m. and will rotate them top to bottom after about 4 1/2 - 5 hours. I also wrap them in aluminum foil at that point. It keeps the moisture in and seems to help prevent oversmoking the meat. It also speeds up the cooking process.