A Pork Butt, a Turkey and Forty-Eight Sausages
smoking a pork butt, a turkey, and 48 spicy Italians
This is not a recipe so much as a timetable. One fire, three meats, one afternoon, and the only hard part is arithmetic.
The mistake is putting everything on together. A pork butt wants ten hours, a turkey wants three, sausages want two — so you work backwards from dinner and put each thing on at the hour that lands it at the same finish. The butt goes on in the dark. The turkey goes on mid-morning. The sausages go on after lunch.
The outside ring of the grate runs cooler than the middle on every smoker ever built. That is where the sausages go, which is why they are arranged round the edge in the picture.
- Feeds
- 25 to 30
- Hands-on
- About an hour, spread out
- Fire running
- 11 hours
- Start
- 4am
What you need
On the grate
- 1 bone-in pork butt, 8–10 lb — 10 hours
- 1 turkey, 12–14 lb, spatchcocked — 3 hours
- 48 spicy Italian sausages — 2 hours
- All three rubbed the night before
The fire
- Two bags of lump charcoal — you will use more than you expect
- Oak or hickory chunks for the pork, fruit wood for the bird
- A water pan, filled and topped up twice
- A second thermometer at grate level, because the lid gauge lies
How it goes
1 — Count backwards from dinner
Six o'clock dinner, an hour of rest for the pork, ten hours of cook: the butt goes on at four in the morning. Turkey on at half past one. Sausages on at half past three. Write it on the back of an envelope and stick it to the fridge.
2 — Rub everything the night before
All three, seasoned and uncovered on trays in the fridge. On the day you are tending a fire, not mixing spices in the dark.
3 — Light at 3am for a 4am start
Charcoal takes forty minutes to settle into a steady 250°F. Lighting at four means the pork goes on at five and your whole timetable has slipped an hour before sunrise.
4 — The butt alone, in the middle, for nine hours
Hottest part of the grate, fat cap up. It is the only thing on there, it needs the heat, and it is the one item that cannot be rushed later.
5 — Turkey in at half past one, beside it
Open the lid once, slide the butt to one side, lay the bird flat. The temperature will crash and come back — that is the fire doing its job, not a problem to solve.
pro tip — Add charcoal BEFORE you open the lid, not after. The new coals catch while the lid is off and you lose nothing.
6 — Sausages round the outside at half past three
The outer ring is twenty to thirty degrees cooler than the centre and sausages want exactly that. Forty-eight will fit around the edge of a 22-inch grate in a single ring if you lay them like spokes.
7 — Everything comes off within half an hour
Sausages at 160°F, turkey at 165°F in the breast, pork when a probe slides clean. If the pork is lagging, pull the other two and let it ride — both of them hold heat better wrapped than the butt does.
8 — Rest in trays, carve in order
Sausages into a dish, turkey tented twenty minutes, pork rested an hour. Carve the turkey first because it cools fastest and the pork does not care.
One fire, three meats, thirty people. The arithmetic is the recipe. LFG.