Question on a pork butt cook


 

BobJ

TVWBB Super Fan
Did my 3rd butt yesterday, 8lbs on a WSM 14, came out pretty good but I'm wondering if it was overcooked.

Put it on 10pm Sunday @ 225, bumped up the temp to 250-275 as it was cold out and the meat temp at 6am was pretty low.

Struggled with the temp all day finding it hard to get up to 250, using KBB for the first time. Ended up having to start some coal in the chimney at noon and adding them to it at one point.

Stalled at 150. Around 2:30 pm the meat temp had come up to 194. Checked it with a Thermapen, it varied from 200 at the bottom, to 194 in the center, then about 185 at the top.

Smoker temp was between 235 and 245 towards the end, meat in the center slowly dropped from 194 to 190, when I took it off.

The meat came out good but not as good as the last. The bark was pretty hard, and very black, the whole thing shrunk a lot too. There was almost no fat when I pulled it.

I did not wrap, I had spritzed it with apple juice about once an hour for the last 4 hours or so.

Does the temp drop mean it was over cooked? I had not been messing with the coals or opening the cover (when I checked the temp with the Thermapen, for the last hour, which is when the temp was dropping.
 
This was a costco Butt, no bone. Does bone in or out make a difference in the finished product?
 
This was a costco Butt, no bone. Does bone in or out make a difference in the finished product?

In all honestly, I don't know if it really does all that much, but I prefer to do them bone in. If it was deboned, they might have trimmed a lot of the fat out of it as well. Some people want it out of there. I think the fat makes it juicier if you can get it reasonably rendered. No idea why that meat temp dropped the way it did, but I don't think the means up over cooked it. You might have had the thermometer in a weird place.
 
I gauge based on the feel when I stick the temp probe in as much as the actual temp. If the probe slides in with virtually no resistance I deem it done.
 
I really don't now about the temp drop; but unless you tented it or wrapped it after, I would think the temp would naturally drop once you remove it from the cooker.

Like Dustin said, when somebody starts cutting out the bone, there is no telling how much fat they might trim. However, I also cook my butts at a higher temp than you; I've never felt the 225 target was a good one. I run my temp between 250-270 for butts. I also always do bone in, and I always wrap.
 
I gauge based on the feel when I stick the temp probe in as much as the actual temp. If the probe slides in with virtually no resistance I deem it done.

And Mike is 100% right; I do the same. Once I am around 195 (center) I start to probe and stop thinking about temp. In fact, I use the temp probe, but don't even look at it.

It's done when it's done!
 
Seems the butt took a very long time to cook. Wonder if all the fat render out. I use Costco butts too but may switch back. While Costco butts are better in a few ways, no added saline weight, trimmed, no bone, i find them a bit harder to get perfect. And the bone can help with knowing when to pull. But seriously how long was this cooking. Seems too long for that size. Course the bark sounds great
 
The cook took from 10 pm till 3:30 the next day so 17.5 hrs, exactly what the last cook took in late June. From my notes the 1st 11 hours were under 235, roughly 250 after that with a bump even higher when I added the newly started coals. I guess I should have taken it off the smoker when it first hit 194 and felt cooked with the probe, instead expecting to to keep rising up to 200 or so I left it on, at which time it started to drop. It cooked for 70 minutes while the temp dropped. Sounds like I didn't do anything wrong, just relied on the thermometer instead of stopping when the probe slid through, live and learn.

On a side note, I'm finding these long cooks pretty tiring on the 14, an awful lot of tweaking.

For the first time, my wife got selective and cherry picked much of the pork with bark on it for here 2nd round!
 
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Bob, I think I've noticed the temp start dropping on long cooks like that when they go into that overdone state. You might be onto something. I typically go check for probe tenderness if that happens.
 
Bob, what didn’t you like about the final product? Was it a little tougher or chewier than the last? As others have said, I cook my butts at or around the 275° range, so I’m no help as far as the time frame goes, but I can offer you one piece of advice; I found every piece of meat will cook differently. You may purchase 2 but’s at the same time, same weight, same size, for all intents and purposes they may as well be twins. But one will cook slower, one may stall longer, one will shrink more. It’s for this very reason, I no longer use the meat temperature as a finishing point, rather just a guide as to when to start probing for tenderness. I begin checking or probing at or around 190° and if it’s not finished,( the probe doesn’t slide in or out without any resistance) I will check it about every 30 minutes until probe tender. I may cook one butt that will be probe tender at 195°, then the next won’t be finished until 205°, so try using the temp as a guide and not the only measure to call it finished.
I hope this helps and good luck,
Tim
 
Tony, both my Thermopro that I leave in the meat and the Thermapen gave the same readings so I'm figuring they are fine.

Tim, the problem was not the finished product, the issue was that the thermometer reading started to drop which is what I was going by to determine if it was done, keep in mind I'm a rookie at this. From this thread I've learned to NOT count on the thermometer, which ultimately I didn't. I'll be doing the same as you from now on, just using the temp as an indicator and checking for tender with a probe tip.

I did/do wonder if other folks bark gets hard in places and ends up pretty much black like mine does.

I am going to try the higher temp next time, 19 hours made for a long cook. long enough to where I'm thinking of changing to a pellet smoker so I can get some sleep.
 
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Bob, scroll down to the bottom of this cook from Chris's " Cooking Topics " page, its a high heat version .........

https://www.virtualweberbullet.com/pork4.html

I did this high heat version many times before I bought my offset, and its really good. There's no need in the long cook. And I don't do a long cook with my offset, I run it between 275 and 300.
 
5-6 hours, that's worth experimenting with.

I was more or less following the directions for Chris Lilly's slow cook method for this cook.
 
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Bob, as far as your bark being black; that’s exactly what your hoping for. You will often see a finished but referred to as a “meteor” for this very reason. A few weeks ago I smoked 3chuck roasts for faux burnt ends for some friends of ours. When I pulled the roasts off the smoker and brought them inside, the look on their faces was priceless. The bark was black (as you described yours to be) and to them the meat looked like it had been laid over an open fire for several hours! I explained to them that it was not burned and that the black part was probably the best tasting part of the meat. So fear not, as it sounds like your bark was spot on!
Tim
 
The reason for the temp drop was that fat where the probe was making the phase change from solid to a liquid. which removes heat by the liquid. During the process all heat energy goes into phase change not raising the temp of the meat. Once the phase change occurred and the liquid drains out the meat temp will start to increase. To stop the lost of chamber heat, Refuse the idea of lifting the lid during the cook.
 
The meteor does sound like you got the bark perfect. Job well done. Maybe the spritzing helped. Still wonder if the cook temps were lower than wanted.
 
The meat temps were lower then I was shooting for at certain times, when I tried to raise the temp I had trouble doing so. Final meat temp was also lower then I was looking for although I've since found this to not be an issue.
 

 

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