This is my method of cooking pork butt "boston butt" or whatever you prefer to call it. Pending the appetite (and size) of your eaters I still believe this should be more than enough for a family/group of 6-8. Adding more meat is purely at the whims of your smoker, and the process really doesn't change at all other than the amount of bacon/butt and maybe green beans you need. I also serve this with white bread (for sandwhiches) and baked-beans; however, no special preparations are made for those (other than I start the bread 3 hours before I am placing the meat in the oven, as that way the oven doesn't need to cool and then re-warm up too many times, and it can sit on top and warm while the pork finishes getting to temperature.

My process as described here I normally start at 12/1PM two days before I am ready to serve it. If I start the soak anywhere from 12 to 6PM on Thursday, then I start cooking around 12PM Friday, from here I can smoke anywhere until 12AM Saturday to 12PM Sunday (12 to 36 hours). Generally I do anywhere from 24-36 hours. If I pull the meat out of smoking at 12PM Saturday, finish the heating of it for an hour, then let it cook for an hour, then take the time to pull it and sauce it, I generally have the full meal ready by 4/5PM Saturday. I've noticed little difference with smoking beyond 24 hours, but I normally burn the same amount of wood chips whether I go for 24 or 36 hours so that's probably why; it's just a matter of when I have time to prep and when we actually end up eating it.

Items Needed:
• 1-2 Pork Butts (Preferably around 8lbs total)
• 3 Cups Brown Sugar (light or dark)
• 1lb bacon (optional; but almost necessary on small <4-5lb butts)
• 2 cans italian green beans
• 1 vertical smoker
• ~180cu-in hickory chips
• 1 large pan
• 1 oven-pan (cakepan)
• 2 forks

1. Thaw your pork butts if you bought them frozen. Preferably have bought fresh meat that hasn't been frozen.
2. Dry-pat on brown sugar, pretty it into the skin as if massaging or tenderizing the meat.
   note: don't bother patting onto the fatty-caps.
   
3. Place butt into large pan, big enough that when filled it will be completely submerged in water.
4. Fill remaining areas of pan with wood chips.
   
5. Add as much water as possible without spilling. Add it into a primary-chippy area so as to not be spraying the brown sugar off the butt.
   
6. Cover, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
   
7. Remove from refrigerator, you should have nicely soaked-through chips now.
   
8. Remove chips by hand, then rinse butt in warm water (to remove any other small pieces of chips. I place the chips onto the tinfoil that I'd used the prior day to cover it.
9. Have your smoker grill-portion read to place the butt onto.
   
10. *Optional* Wrap the butt in bacon if it doesn't have a good fatty-cap (more on that later)
    note: if you opt to not wrap it in bacon, dry-patting another round of brown sugar on at this point is great.
    
11. If it's a small butt (this one is sub-4lbs), wrap the bottom in bacon, to avoid leaching too much smoke into it.
    
12. Note the fatty cap on the small butt here. This one isn't terrible, but it doesn't cover the whole thing, and we really want enough fat to soak into it for some nice loose flavour, so we'll still cover it with bacon.
    
13. Save one strip of bacon (cut in half here) to toss in your green beans. Go ahead and toss it in with them and refrigerate them.
    
14. With bacon on each, the butts are ready to go. If cooking two, place tinfoil between them so they don't stick together.
    
15. Grab your chip-box. Note that I don't clean mine off and the last chips I burned were hickory, so I'm not even going to dust it.
    
16. Fill your chipbox as far as you can with still closing it with the chips. Put the remaining chips back in the water/pan that your butt had been soaking in to keep them moist.
    
17. Have your smoker ready to go.
    
    
18. Place your butt inside the smoker, turn it on, and let it sit at around 150* (at element) for the next 12 hours.
    
19. About 12 hours later, check on your meat. It should be beginning to brown, and your chips should be rather dead. Remove it and set it aside so you can add more chips.
    
    
    
    
20. Fill your chipbox to be overflowing this time, using the remainder of your chips.
    note: if you are going for the >24 hours of smoke-time, then you should do another regular fill this time and use the remainder of your chips in another 6-12 hours.
    
21. Place everything back in and let it rest for another 12 hours.
    
22. The next morning, open it up and check it out. Your butt should be nice and dark now, and ready to finish up.
    
    
    
23. Since the electric element in my smoker can't get this fully up to heat (we're at about 175* here), I put the oven on 350 and let it go for about another 45 minutes until we're up to ~195*. Here I remove the butts from the smoker dish and put them into a pan for the oven. You'll want a pan as some juices will flow out and you don't want a grease fire or messy oven. Notice it's already falling apart and some of it initially stuck to my smoker dish
    
24. Almost ready to go into the oven.
    
25. Crack them in a few places (I use a spatula) so that the heat can radiate and finish the job quicker/more thoroughly.
    
26. With your meat thermometer, test the meat away from the bone, and with the thermometer all the way in meat.
    
27. Now's a good time to start those green beans that have been soaking with the bacon for 24 hours cooking (the bread is a just-add-water mix that I think goes well with barbecue, but that's outside the scope of this document).
    
28. Press the bacon to the bottom so it gets most of the heat and soaks out properly. Set the stove on high until you get a boil.
    
29. Once boiling, lower to a simmer and cover.
    
30. When your meat is at the right temperature, remove it from the oven.
    
    
31. Cover the meat with tinfoil and let it sit for an hour. During this time your beans should still be simmering.
    
32. Now that the meat is a little bit cooler (eating temperature preferably), shred it. I find the easiest way to shred is with two forks facing-down, pressing into a big piece in the middle and then pulling in each direction.
    
33. Now, cheat - add some good ol' store-bought barbecue sauce. Sticky Fingers is not available everywhere yet but once people realize how fantastic it is, it will be. We prefer the Carolina Sweet for pork, and use about 1/3-1/2 a bottle for this 8lb mess of shredded pork, then turn the pork in it with the forks used during shredding to get it all coated nicely.
    
34. Now, go eat! (and unless you're brave, avoid eating the bacon that was cooked in with the green beans)