Carolina Pulled Pork, Bill Blakely style

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How do I find Bill Blakely's (of Lilburn, GA) recipe for Carolina Pulled Pork. Best I ever had. He had to practically run my wife and me off at eggtoberfest, we couldn't get enough. Please help!

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Dan,[p]I am putting as much love into documenting the recipe and process as do the Butts! I apologize for telling everyone that I would have it up this weekend. I've gotten most of it down on electrons and now I'm just making sure that I don't leave out any details. It will do my darnedest to get it up tonight.[p]Thanks for the compliments,[p]Bill

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Here are the steps I took in preparing the Pulled Pork I served at Eggtoberfest '04[p]Day 1 Brine your butt & Prep the Smoker (cleaning & loading the smoker can be done any time before placing the butts on the smoker)[p]Brine (per Boston Butt)
8 ounces or 3/4 cup molasses
12 ounces pickling salt
2 quarts bottled water (if using a cooler as the brining chamber, reduce this to 1.5 quarts and use 4-5 lbs of ice to keep the Butts cold)[p]Rinse off the Butts and put them in the brine. Let them sit in the brine for 24 hours.[p]Clean out the entire smoker. Take any partially burned pieces of wood and set them aside. Remove the fire ring and firebox to make sure ALL of the ashes are out of the egg. Reassemble the egg (don't forget to make sure the hole in the bottom of the firebox ring lines up with the draft door on the egg) Open the bags of charcoal and separate the pieces of charcoal into the 3 large bins - Large, Medium, & Small (include the charcoal dust in the small bin). Stack the largest & longest pieces in the bottom of the egg so that there are lots of small gaps for oxygen to get in from the bottom. Keep building up using smaller and smaller pieces (including the pieces of partially used lump you pulled out of the smoker from your last session) until you are within approximately 1" of the top of the fire ring (your hickory chunks will need that room between the charcoal and the plate setter).[p]If you are using the Maverick ET-73 Redi Check Smoker thermometer to monitor the dome temperature, remove the clip from your BGE dial thermometer, but leave that thermometer in the Egg (you will use the dial thermometer prior to putting the butts on the egg).[p]Day 2 Rub your butt[p]Rub (per Boston Butt)
2 tbs. mild paprika
1 tbs. hot paprika ("Pride of Szeged" is the most commonly found brand of "HOT" paprika in US grocery stores. I know that Publix stores carry this brand).
3 tsp. firmly packed lt. brown sugar
1 tsp. celery seeds
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. black peppercorns
1 tsp. dehydrated onion flakes
1/2 tsp. kosher salt[p]
Grind the celery seeds, peppercorns, onion flakes, and kosher salt into a powder with the spice/coffee grinder. Mix those ingredients with the rest of the rub ingredients.[p]Take the butts out of the brine and dry them off with paper towels. Pat the rub onto all six sides of the butt and any openings between the muscles. Shake off any excess (the excess rub can be used on the next butt.) Dispose of any left over rub. Wrap each butt in saran wrap and place in either a refrigerator or in a cooler with ice in sealed bags or dry ice (if using the same cooler that was used to brine the butts, drain the brine solution and dry it out before putting in the rubbed butts).[p]Pour 2-3 bottles of the beer into a large bowl or pail. Place about 10-15 chunks of hickory in the bowl (make sure they all fit below the top of the bowl/pail.) Fill in the gaps with several handfuls of hickory chips. Fill up the rest of the bowl with water and hold the wood under with a heavy plate or pan top. (the chunks and chips should soak for at least an hour or two before you put them on the fire. However, soaking them on the day before you intend to use them means that is one less thing to forget about!)[p]Day 3 Smoke em' if you got em![p]If you haven't already prepared your smoker or soaked your chips, do so now![p]Start your BGE with either starter squares or, if you can find it, Greenheat gel. I start fires in four locations in the charcoal and usually get 2 or 3 to keep going. Open the draft door and take the cap off the top. (Cheating tip - if you don't have a BBGGuru forced air unit, get one of those cheap hand-held fans that use a AA battery and position it in front of the draft door. It will force air up through your charcoal stack and will get your fire going a lot faster.)[p]Once you see your dome temperature starts to move above 250, open the lid and make sure your fires have established themselves throughout the top of the stack. If they have, start placing the hickory chunks on top of the charcoal stack. Once they are placed, scatter the hickory chips over the top of the stack.[p]Place your plate setter, "legs" side up, on top of the fire ring (you might have to "tamp" down some of the hickory chunks a few times to get the plate setter to sit flat). Place the drip pan on top of the plate setter. Place your smoker grid on top of the legs of the plate setter.[p]Take the butts out of the cooler or refrigerator at this time. You want them to be as cold as possible before you put them on the egg. As they warm up, they will absorb the smoke flavor faster than if they start off at room temperature. Arrange 3 (2 for the medium egg) butts on the grid with the layer of fat on top (you want the fat to trickle over and through the butt as it melts!) (If you have a large egg, you can get 4 butts on the grid by placing them on their sides). Insert the meat probe from your remote thermometer into a meaty part of one the butts (you might have to fish around inside the butt to get around the bone).[p]If you are using the Maverick ET-73 Redi Check Smoker thermometer, replace the BGE dial thermometer with the Smoker probe. With either thermometer, make sure that the end of the probe is not sticking into one of the butts when you close the lid. If it does, rearrange the butts so there is a gap between the butts in the front middle portion of the grid. [p]Start adjusting the temperature of the egg. Move the draft door so that you have a gap of about 1/4th of an inch. Close down the daisy wheel so that no smoke is coming out of the draft door or between the lid and the base of the egg. You want to bring the dome temperature to a range of 210 to 225. As you reach that range, move the draft door so that you have a gap of 1/8th inch opening and start closing down the daisy wheel. Once you have the temperature within that range, you will generally only use the daisy wheel to adjust your temperature. If the temperature starts to fall, open the daisy wheel to allow the smoker to pull more air through the egg. If the temperature starts to rise, close down the daisy wheel to slow down how much air can move through the egg (which in turn dampens the ability of the fire to pull more air from the draft door.).[p]The real work is done! Now the worrying begins! (just kidding!). If you are using the Maverick thermometer, make sure you set it to alert you if the smoker temperature goes below 200 degrees. Keep an eye on the smoker temperature for the next few hours to make sure the temperature is staying within your range and adjust the daisy wheel as necessary (try not to adjust both the daisy wheel and the draft door at the same time - it is extremely difficult to smoothly adjust temperatures if you adjust both simultaneously). Also keep an eye on the meat temperature. If the temperature starts to jump, move the probe to another location or another butt (the probe was probably in a pocket of fat which has melted and gotten hotter than the meat).[p]One word of caution - due to the large amount of smoking wood used, your egg will look like a smokestack for the first few hours. This is what I call "marinating with smoke" (I use this same concept with spathcocked chickens - but that is another story). The cold meat is more receptive to absorbing the smoke flavor, so the longer it takes to reach 140F, the more smoke flavor you butts will contain (as I understand it, when the meat reaches 140F, the pores which have been absorbing smoke start to close up). If you need to open your egg watch out for huge plumes of smoke for the first 30 seconds. Try not to keep the dome open more than a minute or minute and a half at a time (the coals will suck in huge amounts of air while the dome is open and will flame up).[p]If you are dealing with cold temperatures (50F or below), you need to open the draft door a bit more to compensate for the fire having to burn hotter in order to keep the dome temperatures in the 220 range. If you are smoking in cold weather, keep a close eye on the charcoal levels in the smoker. Because the fire burns hotter, it might use the entire lump before the butts are finished. If you think that might happen, lift up a section of the grid and toss more pieces of lump down into the smoker.[p]Over the next 14-16 hours the temperature of the butts will gradually rise to the 180F range. Once they reach that range, the temperature will plateau for 3-4 hours as the collagen around the bone melts. When it starts moving again, move the meat thermometer to a few spots on different butts to make sure that all of the butts have completely broken down the collagen. At that point, open the draft door 1/2 of an inch and let the dome temperature rise to around 335F. When the meat thermometer gets to 205F, move it to different positions on different butts. When you find a position that has a lower temperature than the previous site, leave the probe and close the dome. Keep doing this until you move it four or five times and don't find a site with a temperature lower than 203.[p]Pull the butts off of the smoker, close down the draft door, and replace the daisy wheel cap with the ceramic cap (you want to shut down the egg as quickly as possible so that you can re-use any partially burned lump). You can cover the butts in tinfoil for 30 minutes to let them rest. I have not found any real benefit to doing that (other than keeping the butts hot while I get ready to pull them apart). [p]In order to make "pulled pork", you must pull apart the strands of meat (as opposed to slicing or chopping it). You can use your fingers or a pair of folks (place one in each hand and turn them inside out). The first step is to pull off a section of the butt. Pull the outer crust off and set it aside. This is called the "Bark" (as in the bark of a tree). It is very chewy and very intensely flavored (it contains the rub that did not soak into the meat and was directly exposed to the smoke). Next, scrape off and discard any remaining fat from the outside of the muscles. Finally, pull apart the meat using your fingers or the forks. Once you have a "mound" of meat, add vinegar sauce to taste.[p]
Vinegar Sauce[p]2 cups cider vinegar
1 1/3 cups water
1/2 cup + 2 tbs. ketchup
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar, or more to taste
5 tsp. salt, or more to taste
4 tsp. hot red pepper flakes
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. freshly ground white pepper[p]Combine all ingredients in a nonreactive medium size bowl and whisk until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Taste for seasoning, adding sugar or salt as necessary; the sauce should be piquant but not quite sour.[p]
North Carolina Style Coleslaw[p]1 sm. or 1/2 lg. head green cabbage
1 c. Vinegar sauce, or to taste
Salt (optional)[p]Shred cabbage and add the vinegar sauce. Let stand for 10 minutes and reseason if necessary.