W
ith his minimal mustard rub applied, McManus begins
cooking the smaller pieces like butts on his Wilmington Grill
in the smoke shed behind the store. After transferring the
meat to his Treager wood pellet smoker or the larger, whole
hog cooker, the pork roasts for 13 hours at around 215
degrees, soaking up the slight smoky hickory flavor.
“I don’t like a lot of smoke; most people overdo the smoke,” he says.
Opening up the smoker Friday morning, McManus painstakingly takes up to two
hours to handpick the BBQ, separating the fatty pieces from the meat.
“Most of the guys throw the fat in there but there ain’t no fat in mine, I pick all
that out,” he says with pride. “It is a lot of work.”
While he used to cook Wednesday nights when coaching a travelling girls softball
team on the weekends, he says it makes no difference whether the meat has time to
rest or not.
“Now I cook it and pull it without letting it rest,” McManus says. “A lot of people
say if you let it rest it makes it better but I’ve tried both ways and I can’t tell a bit of
difference.”
Every week he makes the pork naked, as he calls it, and experiments with a couple
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WBM september 2013