First Cook on the Stumps

Ulika Outdoor Kitchen

This weekend was the inaugural cook on the new Stumps cooker. I started out easy and cooked four pork butts.

I started the smoker on Friday evening at about 6:30 and had the butts on around 8:30. When I filled the charcoal chute, I mixed in some wood chunks and I added some to the fire box as well every hour for the first two hours. Then - here's the best part - I went to bed at 10:30 and slept until 5:30. In the past, with my stick burner smoker, the terms sleeping and cooking were never used in the same sentence.

I prepared the butts the same way that I would for a competition, doing some testing with the difference between foiling and not foiling. I foiled three of the butts and let one stay on the smoker unfoiled. The butt that was not foiled had a great bark and was very flavorful, but I was surprisingly pleased with the bark on the foiled butts as well. Sometimes in foiling, the moist environment can cause the bark to not set properly, but the bark on the foiled butts was really good. I was pretty happy with the butts overall. The flavor profile that I was going for worked out and I believe that the more cooking and seasoning that the Stumps gets is only going to give me more flavor.

Next week, I will be working on cooking briskets. Thanks to Pat Martin (visit his blog and his bbq joint), I have a new brisket supplier. Pat put me in touch with Dalton Garner of PFG and he is going to be getting me Certified Black Angus briskets from CreekStone Farms. Hopefully I will have a sample brisket for next weekend and I will deliver a full report.

Here are a few pictures: