G
Guest
Guest
Well, last night I did my first overnight pork butt. Everything went as well as could be expected.
I put in on at 23:00 using the Minion method, closed all the vents because the fire was running about 243. I woke up at 01:30 and checked and the fire had dropped down to around 223. Went back to sleep until 04:30 when my ET-73 started beeping because the fire had dropped below 200.
A simple repositioning of some coals and opening of one vent got me back up past 230 so it was back to bed after adding a litre of water to the pan. The meat was running around 150 at that point.
Work up at 08:00 and checked -- the meat had reached 160 and the fire was doing fine. It sat at the 160 plateau until about 10:30 when it slowly started to rise again. I only had to play with the vents a bit as the wind shifted to keep myself in the desired temp range.
The meat seemed to hit a second plateau at 182 -- it sat there for more than 30 minutes and I admit I hit the panic button. I had planned to pull it at 190 and let ir rest for an hour, but the guests were expected soon so I yanked it off at 182 and only let it rest wrapped in foil for 45 minutes.
I was very impressed with the results. The meat pulled perfectly and was very moist with a great bark. It was a smash success despite not quite being up to the temp I wanted.
I was also very impressed with the overall performance of the WSM. Despite the outside temp falling to -17 Celcius overnight, I didn't need to add any fuel and I got a very consistent 15 hour burn time.
I just wanted to pass along my thanks to everyone who offers comments and thoughts here, because it has been a great help. I have only had my WSM for less than a year and I realize now that I was always rushing the cook and pulling it off while it was still in the plateau stage. I now know better and the results speak for themselves.
I am now sold on the overnight cook method. It's good that the WSM is a solid enough unit that it can run "unattended" that long -- although I sure wouldn't want to try it without a remote thermometer that will sound the alarm if something goes wrong.