Cooking for a wedding with 150 people!!! Needing some help


 

DerekChase

TVWBB Member
I am cooking for one of my buddies wedding on may 20th starting at 5:00pm (and I am in the wedding) they are planning on having between 125-150 people. I plan on starting Thursday evening/night and put the second load on Friday morning before I have to start mowing.

How many pounds of pork butt do I need?

How many runs will I have to make on my WSM 22 and one of my buddies WSM 18?

How long will those runs take?

I am just going to use Butt Rub from food city because I love it, How much rub?

Any thing else that I should need to know for a cook of this size?

Thanks, Derek
 
There are a couple of threads relative to amounts per person but, around my hog eating friends a half pound a mouth seems to make them happy.
One important thing, do you have someone to be a sous? An extra pair or two of hands will come in handy when serving time comes. I'm new to WSM work but, I often do family/friend gatherings for 20-30 on the kettle, two butts there run easily for lots of take away. If I was closer I'd love to be an extra pair of helping hands! Good luck!
It will be fine!
 
If it was me I think I'd do a trial run and just plan on only running about 3-4 hours in the smoker then wrap or actually place in foil pans and cover and finish in an oven or maybe even a large gas grill depending on what you have access too

I think 1/4-1/2 pound per person is typical so 65-70# which is what 7-8 butts 4 twin packs probably won't take as long as you anticipated
 
Looking at my 18.5" I think I could get six on there using both levels so, I would think you could fit four on each level of the 22? Managing one pit is easier than balancing two, at least for me.
Reggie's numbers look good to me.
 
Any thing else that I should need to know for a cook of this size?

Thanks, Derek

I'm going to suggest this once and hope you take me seriously. Do NOT let the guests serve themselves or you will run out of food pronto. I've seen it too many times -- people are pigs and they will heap on the food, way more than they can eat, in order to be sure they have "enough" and don't have to get back in line for seconds. It's gross really how bad people can be...

Find somebody to help you and keep the line moving. People (even wedding guests) can get testy when they are hungry.

I'll get off my soap box now. Good luck and POST PICS!!
 
Alright thank you all. I have a few helpers, the family of the wedding party is doing the serving. I think I am going to start off with 130 pounds raw bone in pork butt. Use the wsm 18 and wsm 22 and do one load Thursday evening into Friday morning and start the next load about 12pm Friday and pull in early Saturday morning and get it all pull/shredded and ready to go. thanks again for the help
 
yea roll on down to South Western Virginia. Pork butts all around and all the older ladies around here can cook so it will be a feast for sure, country wedding on a big farm
 
Just a thought

May consider paying a little extra for boneless just so it'll cook faster but that's just me

Don't think so. The bone helps conduct the heat to the center faster so bone-in is the way to go--and place the bone so it's touching the grate if possible. Marginally faster but still faster.
 
Russell Y suggested a pulled pork servings calculator. I adapted the existing Boiling Point Calculator to this task, and here it is:

Pulled Pork Butt Servings Calculator

By playing with the variables, you can see that 80 pounds of untrimmed pork butt yields 160 4-ounce servings of pulled pork assuming 50% yield.
 
I'm going to suggest this once and hope you take me seriously. Do NOT let the guests serve themselves or you will run out of food pronto. I've seen it too many times -- people are pigs and they will heap on the food, way more than they can eat, in order to be sure they have "enough" and don't have to get back in line for seconds. It's gross really how bad people can be...

Find somebody to help you and keep the line moving. People (even wedding guests) can get testy when they are hungry.

I'll get off my soap box now. Good luck and POST PICS!!

x2 ! It is incredible how some people think that it doesn't matter how much they take not considering the guys at the end of the line.
 
I use a rough number of 1/2lb raw per person, makes for easy calculations. As others have said, take charge of portion control. This even factors in to what size buns you get, i.e. sliders, small burger, large burger, etc. The 1/2lb raw figure also presumes that it's the only protein that is being offered.


If you haven't done a cook of this size before, there's some other things that you need to consider, the biggest one being food safety. Since you are cooking in advance, you need to be able to move the butts from hot (above 140 degrees) to cold (under 40 degrees in a relatively short amount of time (less than 4 hours). One thing you don't want to do is throw 40 lbs of somewhat hot pulled pork into a fridge to cool down, especially if the fridge has other food in it.

What I usually do is pull the butts from my smoker and put each in an aluminum 1/2 pan to cool down for about an hour. Then I start pulling each butt putting the meat into another 1/2 pan. When that butt is done, I'll transfer the pulled pork from the 1/2 pan to a zip lock bag and try to remove most of the air. Then I fill my sink with cold water, dump in some ice to make a cold bath. You could also use a cooler instead of the sink. Drop the sealed zip lock in to crash cool. While that one is cooling, I start pulling the next butt. Rinse/repeat. Once the bag of pulled pork has cooled sufficiently, it goes into the fridge.

IF you decide that you want to leave the butts whole then reheat and pull them later, you still need to cool them before throwing in the fridge. Put the whole butt into the zip lock and then into the ice bath.
 
I'm going to suggest this once and hope you take me seriously. Do NOT let the guests serve themselves or you will run out of food pronto. I've seen it too many times -- people are pigs and they will heap on the food, way more than they can eat, in order to be sure they have "enough" and don't have to get back in line for seconds. It's gross really how bad people can be...

Find somebody to help you and keep the line moving. People (even wedding guests) can get testy when they are hungry.

I'll get off my soap box now. Good luck and POST PICS!!


Good observation. Never thought about it before, but I guess it makes sense.

I cooked meat for a family reunion (burgers & dogs) and a graduation dinner (grilled chicken wings), but everyone served themselves. In both cases, we had leftovers. Pulled pork might be a different situation though.
 
Sorry to Hijack! What time frame do you guys think it would take to cook 6 butts on the 22? I was considering doing two sessions to ensure they are done by the time I need them which is 10am Saturday morning. I was going to start about 6pm on Friday night to have ready for 9am and give an hour rest at a minimum if I did all 6 at one time. If I did two session I would do one set of three on thursday night and the other friday night.
 
Jas, my rule of thumb is to allow at least 36 hours before serving the meat. That gives me time to trim, rub, season (in the fridge at least eight hours), smoke, and rest the meat (in the oven - wrapped in foil).

I guess one could beat that time if necessary.
 

 

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