New to Q, suggestions for cooking for a family

I'm not exactly new to bbq, having grilled stuff for many years, but I'm new to slow and low q cooking. Just taken delivery of a weber kettle and have family coming to stay for a few days. Looking for a simple recipe to cook low and slow with coals to one side and meat over a dish on the other side. Need to feed 8 people.

What would be your foolproof recipe ideas for this.

Cheers.

UDS is being built but won't be ready in time

Thanks. Now, being English (despite 4 years in Texas) is a Boston Butt a pork shoulder?

Do you cook slowly until the center hits 71ºC/160ºF?

Thanks very much for that, I'll give the pork shoulder a go.

Looking at making a charcoal snake or just load one side of the kettle and light the charcoal at one end of it and let it burn across the pile.

Thank you all very much for your advice, I'll be cooking for the folks in the next few days and will report back with my results.

Cheers.

OK, so here's where it starts.

Went to our fabulous local butcher and tried to explain what I wanted from a pork shoulder, ie a butt. Told them that I wanted a shoulder with the blade bone in and the hock cut off. This is what he gave me









Looks like I got a whole shoulder. Not knowing how to butcher this to just get the butt out, I looked on here and it was suggested that cooking the whole shoulder is a good alternative. So I sharpened up my knife and had my first go at butchery, trying to take the skin off while leaving as much fat as possible.

I think I managed to butcher it in every sense .



However I do now have the skin in a single piece which I hope to turn into some lovely crackling by rubbing with EVOO, salt and pepper and cooking on hot coals when the rest of the shoulder is done.

I've given it a slather with some EVOO and then rubbed it with Ray Lampe's #67 BBQ rub which I made a tub of this afternoon.



It's now sitting in the fridge until the morning when I'll give it another rub and leave it out for half an hour while I set up the kettle with a snake of lumpwood charcoal and hopefully have it on the heat by 8am.

UNLESS, there are suggestions here to try and butcher it down into smaller sections to just get the butt out, though I'm not sure I'd know how to do that well.

I should add that I was amazed at how cheap this was. The shoulder weighs 17lb and cost me £35 (about $50) This is prime local pork, raised on an open farm less than a mile from my house. In London, where I used to live, this would cost double that

Tune in tomorrow for the next episode in 'The Mad Englishman Attempts Some American BBQ'

Here we go then. Up early, took the shoulder from the fridge and gave it another coating of rub.

Out to the kettle and put in two bricks then surrounded them with good lumpwood charcoal, topped with 2/3 apple wood and 1/3 hickory.



Added a pan on to the bricks to catch juices and to fill with water.



Lit a few coals in the chimney and tucked them into the corner.



Put on the grill.



and finally added the shoulder and a thermometer at grill level.



Now we wait to see how this cooks and whether I can hold the temperature low enough.

After 1:30 the temp's currently hovering around 140C/280F with the lower vents closed almost completely and the top vents wide open. Bit higher than I'd like but not unexpected given that it's a kettle.

I might wrap in foil after a few hours if the temps climb at all, just to keep it moist and stop it burning too much. We'll see what it does.