butts for tailgating


 
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Theron Crowder

New member
I am plannig on smoking a few pork butts for tailgating for an upcoming football game, but I'm runninginto a problem. The game doesn't start until 6:00 in the evening. the butts will have to be finished by 6:00 that morning. Is it feasible to keep the butts wrapped and in a cooler for at least 6 hours. I will have no way of reheating the meat at my tailgate spot. Please help me out.
 
I think you could hold them for six hours. I would go with three layers of heavy duty foil and plenty of insulation around the butts using towels or newspapers or whatever. It also wouldn't hurt to add something else to help keep the cooler warm. If you had a couple of fire bricks that you could heat in your cooker, then wrap with foil and a towel, then stash at the bottom, that would be one way to do this.
 
Theron, I would definitely use the fire bricks if you need to keep them for that long. I wrap mine in foil and put them in the over at 500* for 45-60 min. They will hold heat above 150* for several hours.
 
Theron, I've left wrapped pork butts in a cooler for up to 6 hours before without a firebrick, and I'm still standing today! Which Clemson game are you cooking BBQ for? I will say that the more insulation you give the meat (foil, towels) the better off it will be, but expect to throw away those towels as they will be fully absorbed with grease.
 
Russell, I'm doing them for the CU-Va Tech game. I'm running into the problem b/c I'll be at our tailgating spot around 7 - 8 that morning. Hopefully everyone will be ready to eat about noon.
 
I plan on doing butts for the BG tailgate this coming weekend. I have done them in the past, and I use a crockpot to keep the meat warm.

I would HIGHLY recommend adding a power inverter to your tailgate supplies. Mine is 550 watts and attached to the battery with jumper cable type connections. It manages to run a crockpot (at least on the warm setting). We use it all the time for things like XBox, TV, etc. It will not run electric cooking elements like Electric roasters or griddles.

Still, I find it to be an invaluable addition to my tailgate setup, and it works great with a crockpot for keeping the butts warm
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Another thing that might work for keeping it warm would be a chaffing dish with a sterno for heat.
 
I've never had grease-soaked towels. You just have to use the right type of foil and make sure that you have a good seal. I use heavy duty reynolds wrap which is 18" wide.
 
You can easily hold them for way over 6 hrs in one of them Extreme coolers. I did 2 butts for work a couple weeks ago and held one hot till I got back home from work, we only ate one of the 2. It was like 9 hrs with no extra heat source in there. I didn't even have time to preheat it with hot water for 15 min before I left for work. The key is to use a cooler that's just big enough. My extreme cooler is huge so I had alot of dead space but as mentioned some foil wrapped bricks would be a great heat source, they don't kneed to be fire bricks, trust me I have a all brick house and those suckers get quite hot in the summer and hold their heat for a long, long time.
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Plenty of newspapper for insulation and no worries.
 
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