TIME TOGETHER IS NEVER ENOUGH, SO MAKE PORK BUTT PLANS

Our time together is limited, we can all agree on that, but limited by what?

Together or not, our time is always shorter than expected.

We get sick and die; we have an accident and die; we do nothing and still die.

So why not make plans in the meantime?

Around my place we make plans, some of which even work out.

My wife gets an idea and I help by filling in the details and picking up the slack.

I get an idea and we break it down piece by piece until it becomes a possibility that’s different than my original idea and that’s fine with me. (Share the blame in case things take a wrong turn.)

Then we powerhouse the heck out of it.

Powerhouse? What’s this powerhouse?

We started talking about inviting people to an event. But what event? And where?

Without too much effort we had a forty-name party list in about five minutes.

A minute later we had a reservation for Cook Family Park Picnic Shelter #1.

I call it a powerhouse move when we get up and three in the morning of the event to start cooking.

When pork butt calls, you have to answer.

 

When thirty pounds of garlic-stuffed pork butts call, you put them in the Traeger with the dial on smoke.

Then go back to bed, but you still get credit for the 3AM wakeup.

If you’ve ever ordered what’s offered as twelve-hour smoked pork, and wondered about it like I have, ‘why twelve hours’, this is the answer.

The other answer is Liquid Smoke.

Instead of going long smoke in a Traeger, it could be a couple of hours in a dutch oven, a slow cooker, a crock pot, or an insta-pot pressure cooker, and still pass for twelve hours.

How would anyone know the difference, and who cares?

From all the gathered evidence, anyone who gets up a three to start Kalua Pork cares.

Sooo deeeeeply.

 

About The Main Event

It starts with the kids, their wives, and their kids.

As a group we have a cooking competition, a very subtle cooking competition, so subtle they don’t even know it.

Okay, I’m the only one competing on the cook-top, and here’s why:

I’ve visited both families and had the joy of food made with care and love and gone away feeling ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’

And I also plot our next meal together on the way home. Here’s the key ingredient: my plot includes making my wife think it’s her idea.

With her on board it’s more than mixing drinks and cracking beers. With her, we’re more grown up.

I’m not saying it was my idea for smoking fifteen pounds of kalua pork butt twelve hours, aiming for an internal temperature of 206 degrees.

Not my idea to stab The Meater in one hunk of meat to check the temp without opening the grill door and letting out the heat.

It is the first time I’ve felt so connected to cooking with the twelve hour love-fest with pork butt, especially when we wrapped it all in banana leaves halfway through.

‘Don’t screw it up, don’t screw it up’ was my mantra.

How to screw up slow cooking in a pellet grill? Forget and let the pellets run out.

Don’t do that.

I checked The Meater app on my phone and saw the temp dropping.

I checked the wood pellet bin in the Traeger to find that yes, it had run out of pellets.

‘F-me,’ I thought, ‘I had one thing,’ and executed the emergency measures, dumping more pellets in there, turning the whole thing off for a re-start on the smoke setting, which took longer than expected.

The Traeger rules say ‘don’t turn it off, turn the dial to shut-down mode.’

‘What if I just killed the three little pigs,’ turned into, ‘No huffing or puffing will knock this down.’

With the smoked pork finished and tucked into towels in a cooler, it felt like I was bringing a donor organ to Picnic Shelter 1.

 

Food Is The Flavor Event 

This is where the plan improves: everyone showed up with something special, the kind of side-dishes pork butt asks for but seldom gets, along with badminton, corn hole, and hornets.

“Looks like a lot of hornet traps around here.”

“Who’s going to shred the pork?”

“Me, with these two big forks.”

I cut smoked pork, pulled smoked pork, shredded smoked pork.

I was getting up a pork sweat while the swarm of bees took aim.

With the right group a yellow jacket swarm is not the problem it would otherwise be.

I’m hovering over a mass of hot meat with a fork and knife chopping and pulling as fast as I could before getting drilled by a bee.

I expected to be stung, and wasn’t. Why?

The good players brought the badminton rackets over to fan the bees off of me. Perfect.

Three generations spent time together, mixing drinks and cracking beers and making room each other.

If that’s not nice, I don’t know what is.

 

PS: The next time you’re enjoying a leisurely Saturday ask yourself if there isn’t something more to do.

PSS: When you do think of something more to do, make a plan, put it on the calendar, then get back to your leisurely afternoon.