50 Lbs of butt on a WSM


 
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Paul H

TVWBB Gold Member
Decided to test my "new" pork butt rack this weekend. Told a friend if he wanted some to bring over a couple of butts around 9-10 lbs. He shows up with two huge 12 pounders. To test my rack I needed three more since they wouldn't fit in the rack. I got 3 around 9 lbs. I rubbed the butts down and put the smaller ones in the rack. They were tight but they fit with the bone end perpendicular to the grate.They were injected so they were wider than normal.The rack fit exactly on the bottom grate. The big ones barely fit on the top grate.I didn't use any water in my pan. Just covered it with foil. Total weight of the butts going on was 49.89 lbs. Fired up the WSM. Got the temp at the lid hotter than normal since I was going to put so much cold meat on. Put the meat on and figured I'd wait until the cooker came up to temp and cut them down. Two hours later the grate temp was only about 220. It took another couple of hours to get the grate temp to 240. Around 10 o'clock I added some more charcoal even though the ring was still about 3/4 full. Never really shut down the vents. In the morning the temp at the grate was 235. I added more charcoal. Total cook time for all this meat was 17 hours. I cooked at a higher temp than I normally do. Finished weight of butts was a little over 28 pounds. Things learned. The rack worked well. The butts were tight initially but shrunk up. Smaller butts would have worked nicely. Watch the vertical height. The top grate didn't sit flush but with those big boys on top and the shrinkage of the meat I didn't feel it would be a problem. Normal grate settings have to be adapted for the large amount of mass.The cook requires more charcoal than usual.Be careful when taking the bottom grate of since it stuck to the foil and dumped the grease into the hot coals. Make sure that your grate temp probe is protected from dripping grease. It got coated pretty good. Will have to test it before my next cook. If you have a thermopen it is easy to check the temps of the bottom meat by just opening the vent door. You have access to all three butts. I noticed there seemed to be more unrendered fat when I was pulling the pork.I don't know if it was because the meat was straight up rather than horizontal.Would have liked to have put the smaller butts on the top and the bigger ones nearer the heat but couldn't. You'll get good bark,not as much on the middle one however. I will post pictures of the rack and the cook later. All in all it went well. The WSM performed great. The procedure needs to be tweaked but it is definitely doable. Oh, used maple and pecan wood on the smoke. Smelled wonderful.
 
congratulations on a great cook and a great modification to make a third rack. Very cool.

You'll be able to really load up on chicken too.
 
HEY!! Where's the pictures and directions for building your Butt rack. It's been.....um....2 days.

You can't say "50lbs of Pork butt on a WMS" and then walk away. That's just mean.
 
Clay, sorry. I keep forgetting to take my camera into work to download the pictures. I'll try for the first part of the week. The rack was simple. I just cut out the inbetween metal loops about 2 -3 inches from the bottom of the rack at a slight angle with a sawzall. This gives you prongs to hold your meat on both sides. You can bend the outside metal loops outwards to give you a little more room.
 
Clay, try this.http://www.kodakgallery.com/SelectPhotos.jsp?UAUTOLOGIN_ID=89554439908<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Clay Jackson:
No luck, I must be doing somehting wrong...took me to the same site entry page. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
 
Ok, I know there was a thread recently about posting pictures.I'll try another picture site if one of you kind people would direct an old man to that I would greatly appreciate it.
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Sorry, no. Same deal. You have at least succeeded in creating demand for these pictures. Wish I had some advice. I haven't posted any pics myself.
 
I know with Shutterfly, I can "share" the pics I want to with people through e-mail with a link. Can you do that with kodak? If so, send yourself the link, and post that link here.
Something else to try, go to the pic you want to share, right click on it and go to properties, then copy/paste the link here, that "may" work. Hope so, I want to see them!
 
That link opens a small thumbnail image. It looks like it may be pork! If you can just get the link to the picture when it is larger...

We're getting there.
 
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