dreammachine
New member
- Messages
- 3
- Grill(s) owned
- Bull
Picking quality meat is the key to great smoking. Cheap meat is not going to be as good. Spend a little bit more at a local butcher shop and get prime meat if you can.
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I wash and then marninate my Boston Butt in apple cider vinegar, apple juice, tad of lemon juice, and sometimes a sweet kiwi/strawberry juice for a hour or so (6 to 8 lb Butt). I do sometimes inject with the same juices as it is sitting in. Put my rub on it and then I put it on my Bull at about 200 F around 10:00 PM and allow it to slow cook until about 8:00 AM the next morning and then wrap it in double foil and cook it for about two more hours at 225F and then take it up and allow it to rest for an hour or so and then you can easily pull the bone out and the flavor of the meat is off the charts. Works for me.
I wash and then marninate my Boston Butt in apple cider vinegar, apple juice, tad of lemon juice, and sometimes a sweet kiwi/strawberry juice for a hour or so (6 to 8 lb Butt). I do sometimes inject with the same juices as it is sitting in. Put my rub on it and then I put it on my Bull at about 200 F around 10:00 PM and allow it to slow cook until about 8:00 AM the next morning and then wrap it in double foil and cook it for about two more hours at 225F and then take it up and allow it to rest for an hour or so and then you can easily pull the bone out and the flavor of the meat is off the charts. Works for me
Is there any danger if the internal meat temperature doesn't reach 140 degrees within a 4 hour period??I started with a 8 pound pork butt. Here's the data:
10:50 pm (last night) - 215F
3:45 am - raised temp to 225F, meat temp 130
7:30 am - meat temp 150
9:45 am - meat temp 161 (figuring this is the stall)
2:45 pm - meat temp 174 (wrapped with butcher paper to hopefully speed up cooking)
6:10 pm - meat temp 176
About 19 hours in and the temp is not getting about 176
I just pulled it off the smoker and I have checked and double checked temps with my thermopen and my smoke x. I did not use RT probes for this cook.
It seems done. So far it looks like I can pull it and it's moist. I tasted a piece with the bark and it's delicious.
I'm going to take it off the grill now to see what the deal is. I realize this can go 20+ hours, but to have the temp basically stall for about 6-8 hours seems a bit much for an 8 pound piece of meat. The bone does not slide out like it normally would, however, the roast is probe tender all over. I like it pulled. Hubby likes it chunky. We might just get the best of both worlds.
This is what I love about this grill....the experimenting. Fortunately, I got nowhere to go and nothing to do. And I have 4 smoked turkey legs ready to come off the grill as a backup.
I thought bacteria would grow if not up to 140 degrees within 4 hours, thanks for the clarification.What issues did your friend have. Pork needs to be cooked to 165 to be out of the food danger zone. As long as the finished product gets to 165 that should be fine.
Thank you @Uncle Bob for the link and education@BethV and @Chris_G more up to date info here; USDA Revises Cooking Temperatures for Pork (webmd.com) , also note the whole vs ground mention. Chris, it's not just a set temp, but also time at temp. If you look at some of the sous vide info on the net there is good discussion about added time at lower than suggested times having similar bacteria killing effectiveness.
Always let your nose be the judge instead of the sell by date. Products can get laid down somewhere out of refrigeration for hours and then put back by someone who thinks they are helping when they are actually doing the opposite. Customers change their minds and just lay meat anywhere throughout the supermarket all of the time, plus sell by dates can also be manipulated or changed as well. Each supermarket chain has their own policy regarding shelf life for all meats and produce items, not a health department or state agency. After opening tens of thousands of packages of all cuts of beef, pork and chicken, if it has an odor or stink when the vacuum is broken that does not dissipate quickly it is probably not good and need to be discarded or returned to the store for a refund. People with poor immune systems(the young and elderly) do not need to be eating these items.This is the third piece of pork I have gotten that smelled so bad others in the house could smell it. The other 2 came from Costco. Normally I don't have issues with their meats. The sell by date was good (into September), but it's usually a sign that the pork was not kept refrigerated at a safe temperature at some point. I'm a certified food safety handler and my motto has always been when in doubt don't. The good news is that Costco takes their meats back. All you have to do is provide them with the label and receipt. No need to return the meat.
@TheRicker It was definitely a Boston Butt/Shoulder (at least that is what the label states from Restaurant Depot). I have never bought the shank other than to cook in my home oven and years ago. These days, I separate the coppa muscle from the butt and cook them at the same time. It's a whole new ballgame when you do that. It also gives you a much better understanding of the muscular structure of the roast. And two totally different "eats".Beth...I've read through the entire thread on this and went back to your original post. I looked at your pic of the pulled meat. Looked great! Then, I went back and looked at your original picture of the intact, cooked meat. If you say that was a butt, I believe you. But the shape of the whole cooked piece of meat looks more like the shape of a fresh ham than a (shoulder) butt. It appears like the shape of the shank on the one corner. They typically come with a thick layer of skin/fat that sort of wraps around the meat. I've cooked those before, thinking it would cook like a shoulder butt. But it didn't. It turned out great but took forever to cook. And, as I recall, I only got it up to around 180. I wasn't able to pull or shred it as nicely as yours looks. I sliced it. It tasted great. But it was a totally different experience than I have with shoulder butts. Fresh hams are very dense. Not a lot of internal fat.
I somewhat accidentally did the fresh ham based on the part that the Bessinger Family BBQ restaurants do here in the Charleston area. They don't do the butt portion of the shoulder. They do the upper section of the shoulder...I think it's the upper. More "white" meat to that section. And that's what is typical of that brand of BBQ here in the SC Lowcountry...along with the mustard-based sauce. Anyway, I digress. I bought that fresh ham thinking that's what they cook. And I was wrong. Not totally disappointed in the end product but it definitely was not what I thought I was doing.
I've done whole shoulder, just the butt portion, and I've done the "ham". Different experiences for sure. My second time with a whole shoulder I did separate the butt from the shoulder for a quicker cook.
Suffice to say, I'm baffled by your 19 hour cook. At the end of the day, the final result is all that matters. I'll put this one into my memory bank for the future.