Today I wanted to do a long cook. By that, I mean at least 5-6 hours and with that in mind, I grabbed the Pork Butt aka Pork Shoulder that my wife had picked up last week. Of course, I rubbed down that bad boy with some of that sweet/heat Big Bob Gibson dry rub. I really like this rub as it hits all the flavour profiles I like.

At 11:45am, I put the butt on the pit with an initial starting temperature of 9°C internal. For the first time, I decided to, as this was a long cook, use a water pan to catch the drippings but also to ensure the pork kept it's moisture content. I'd also run out of pellets, so I didn't have anything to put in my smoke box, so as I have a fair bit of rosemary growing in my backyard at the moment, I used sprigs of it as my smoke base.

At 12:42pm, the internal temperature of the pork was at 43°C. An hour later it was at 72°C, with me adding rosemary every hour. I got comments from my wife, who said it was sure smelling great.

At 2:00pm, it's internal was 77°C and then at 2:45pm, I decided to foil up the pork and spritz it with both apple cider vinegar and used a baster to get some of that dripping/water from the water pan. It's internal temperate was at 86°C at this point.

Around 3:45pm, I opened up the foil to spritzed it some more and I noticed that the fat had some bounce. I couldn't use the "fat has split" method, as the pork already had slices/grooves made in it by the butcher.

At 4:45pm, the pork had been cooking for 5 hours, so I decided to take it off and let it rest for an hour. Then I did my usual veggies - potato and onion wrapped in foil with butter and salt. An hour later, they were done and it was time to hook into that pork !

This cook was a bit of a do over. Reason is, I had rubbed / prep-ed a chicken last week, but because I grew fists for nipples and became a real man (and consumed too much alchohol), that chicken ended up getting ... oven roasted.

I know, the shock was too much for me, so here we are to make amends by getting some of this deliciously herby Stubb's Chicken Dry Rub and put it all over the breasts and wings (I don't really eat the legs, my son has those). Another thing that I ordered off the net was a good range hood temperature gauge and I thought, why not just drop it into the top vents of the Weber Smokey Joe, so I can get an idea of the heat coming off this pit.

It's pumping out some heat, where it's starting temperatures are around 200°C (392°F) and upwards, so I need to work on getting a better diffuser to try and regulate the heat.

On this cook, I cracked open a 3 year old bottle of homemade vodka (was for my 40th) by a friend of mine, Ben Meares. It was gooood, could tell it had an artificial vodka-like flavour to it, but it still had a nice kick to it.

Anyway, back to the chicken. I ended up getting a really nice bark to this chook and the taste was fantastic. Simple two hour cook, no issues, pretty much on automatic through the whole process as I spent most of the time re-watching Stargate Atlantis on the new to Australia streaming service, Netflix via my iPad.