Instructions

1. Trim the outside of the pork butt of any excess fat with a boning knife. Some fat is good for keeping a roast moist, but thick, hard fat should be removed.

2. Rub the roast all over with a blend of dry spices a few hours before grilling. Look for pre-mixed dry rub blends in the spice aisle, or mix your own with ingredients such as white pepper, black pepper, sea salt, sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cumin and chili powder. If desired, you can cut a few X-shaped holes in the roast and pack them with the spices to flavor the inside of the roast.

3. Add charcoal to the bottom of one side of the pit roaster. Light the charcoal and allow the flames to burn down until the coals turn gray with ash. Unless you plan to cook several pork butts or other cuts of meat, there's no need to fill the entire bottom of the roaster with charcoal. If you need to add more charcoal to keep the grill hot, you can start new charcoal on the open side until it burns down to ash gray.

4. Set an aluminum pan filled with water in the other side of the grill. Add chips such as applewood, mesquite or hickory to the pan to help flavor the meat. Instead of using only water, mix beer or vinegar with the water for an extra flavor boost. The hot grill creates steam from this liquid which also helps keep the meat moist.

5. Place the pork butt on the grill rack and close the lid. Add a thermometer to monitor the internal temperature of the grill. Allow the roast to cook for about 1 hour. Add more charcoal as needed to keep the temperature inside the grill between 250 and 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

6. Check the roast after 1 hour. Coat the roast generously with a barbecue mop sauce applied with a barbecue brush mop. A mop sauce is basically a thin barbecue sauce used to keep the meat moist, and to help build up the flavorful bark on the outside of the roast. Start with roughly equal parts apple cider vinegar, olive oil and chicken broth. Mix in other ingredients to taste, such as ketchup, brown sugar, pepper, salt and paprika.

7. Flip the pork butt over and mop the second side with the mop sauce. Close the lid and cook for another hour. Flip the pork butt about once every hour. You can lift the lid and mop it with the sauce several times per hour.

8. Cook the roast for about 6 hours or until it reaches an internal temperature of about 180 F. Insert a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the meat to check the temperature.

9. Remove the pork butt from the pit trailer and set it on a carving board for at least 15 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute throughout the meat. If you want to cut it up for pork barbecue, wrap it loosely in aluminum foil until it cools enough to touch. Then, wrap it tighter and stick it in the refrigerator overnight. Shred the pork or cut it into smaller pieces the next day to make the barbecue.