Hybrid Turbo pork shoulder


 
DanHoo

DanHoo

TVWBB Olympian
No, not that kind of hybrid. No batteries or electricity.

Starting slow and letting the pit ramp up to turbo temp after a couple of hours.

Bone in pork shoulder was on sale for $1.97 lb and it's been a while since we've had pulled pork so let's get it rolling.

Adding a layer to insulate the drippings

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Some apple chunks and JD XL.

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On sale was half the price listed

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Will be smoked fat cap up with the cap scored

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11.15 am PST starting time.
 
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Alright...LETS GO!!!!!!!!!
Would like to see the turbo version for sure.
Ate the last bag of frozen vac packed pulled pork this weekend.....it means make another one this weekend so maybe carnitas!!!!!

I go exclusively fat cap side down as it appears as the fat is a good blocker of bark and possible even the smoke.
 
1.15 pm PST.

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Temp slowly came up to about 290F. Opening the throttle a bit. Let's cruise between 325 and 350F for a couple of hours and get this to the stall.
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4.15 pm. Wrapped at the 5 hour mark. Temps about 175 to 180 I put the butt in the steamer pan that caught all the drippings.

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one probe read 20 degrees lower than the others. swapped in a new one and then the three probes were within 2 degrees.

At six hours it went into the cooler with a second layer of foil. The steamer pan fits nicely on a quarter sheet pan. Temps at 204 to 206.

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Looks really good......vac pack in packages for 2 and now you are good on fresh smoked pork for month or 2 down the road.
That technique makes me want to do 2 or 3 butts at a time.....quality product on hand is awesome.
So a quick run down and how happy were you?
Like I see some time and temps posted above but if you could post it in short that would be easier to follow if you didn't mind....
If you had time.....thanks!
 
Darryl - swazies said:
Looks really good......vac pack in packages for 2 and now you are good on fresh smoked pork for month or 2 down the road.
That technique makes me want to do 2 or 3 butts at a time.....quality product on hand is awesome.
So a quick run down and how happy were you?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I vac sealed and froze three one pound packs and have about a pound left over for lunches this week.

I was pleased with this style. Moist and tender with solid smoke flavor and bark, even with the fat cap on. For a dinner cook this is the way. If I was cooking this for lunch serving time, I'd do overnight.

side note: I'm not going to debate cap up or down, trim or don't trim. I don't have enough recent cooks to compare. The last time I smoked a bone-in shoulder was about 15 months ago. I usually buy two-packs of boneless from Costco which have most of the fat cap trimmed. In short, this was as good as any I can remember.
 
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You need to copyright the “Turbo Method”

I agree with not worrying about fat cap in general with shoulders. The whole concept with that cut is that is should be an easy and low maintenance cook!
 
Darryl - swazies said:
Like I see some time and temps posted above but if you could post it in short that would be easier to follow if you didn't mind....
If you had time.....thanks!
Click to expand...

Timing and temps.

note: this is on a Large BGE. Grate temp was with a thermoworks smoke X4 ambient probe and an accurate dome thermometer.
Santa didn't bring me a signals, and I didn't bother with a meater probe so I don't have a temp graph to share. I took a few pics so I didn't have to take notes.

10:20 big pile of used and new JD XL lump. Lit a very small spot using paper towels and leftover oil.
I slowly let temp come up to about 200F grate / 225F dome. smoke was clear after about 20 mins.

11:10 added two chunks of apple wood. pit temp 180F grate
note: smoke was a bit heavy for a few mins and became thin blue after about 20 mins.

11:13 the shoulder went on.
pit: 205F grate / 225F dome meat: 40F

Normally I would watch the temp closely for about 10 to 20 mins to hold a target temp, but for this cook I wanted the temp to creep up. and between 11:15 and 1:15 temp climbed slowly from about 220 to 300F.

11:35 pit: 233F grate / 250F dome meat: 50F
12:50 pit: 271F grate / 270F dome meat: 80F
1:15 pit: 296F grate / 300F dome meat: 100F

after two hours of smoking I brought the pit temp up to about 350F. It overshot a little up to 365, but it drifted down.

3:00 pit: 355F grate / 390F dome meat: 160F
3:15 pit 344F grate / 380F dome meat: 165F

4:15 wrapped. pit temp up to 375 grate.
I put the shoulder fat cap down into the steamer pan and covered it with one sheet of HD foil.
Temp alarms started chirping at 5pm. probing with my thermapen showed it needed a little longer.

5:15 wrapped with a second layer of foil, and put into the cooler wrapped with towels.

6:45 removed the roast from the cooler, set on a board for a minute then shred it.
 
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Richard S said:
You need to copyright the “Turbo Method”
Click to expand...
I can't claim it. Its been around for at least 10 years, maybe longer.

edit: I did some searching and found a few references circa 2010/2011 mentioning a cooking class taught by Myron Mixon where the term Turbo Butt was being used. I'm not sure who coined the term or when.

I called this cook a hybrid because of the two hours of low-and slow before cranking up the heat.
 
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Thanks for the very detailed time frames.......appreciate it, so much easier to follow than going through the whole thread.
I have been working with getting my butts cooking faster too.....
I always start around 6am and fight to have everything decent for 6pm eating time.
Lighting the fire and getting the crap white smoke out takes me way longer than I want to every time...like you noted above it being about an hour.
I almost always use lump from Weber or JD and using that seems to me like it takes a lot longer to get a good clean smoke going.
I have to try out the JD lump here soon.......I have about 24 bags on hand so I can afford to go for it for once.

I think I am cooking a pork butt either this weekend or next.....I will do 2 this time for left over vac packs. When I do it I will let it be slow n low for a while to get that smoke on it and some good flavour and then let it go hotter like you did......it has to be about the most forgiving cut so I think I can abuse it a bit. Supposed to smoke salmon on Sunday.....pork might have to wait until next weekend.
 
I neglected to say that this was not injected.

The rub was inspired by the rub in this thread https://www.virtualweberbullet.com/pork-butt-chris-lilly-big-bob-gibson-championship-injection/

I didn't measure accurately but more or less followed these ratios, and I omitted the white sugar.
  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup paprika
  • 1/3 cup garlic salt
  • 1/3 cup kosher salt
  • 1 Tablespoon chili powder
  • 1 teaspoon oregano
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
This was slathered on with a light coat of yellow mustard as a binder.

No spritzing, no water or liquid in the pan.
 
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Darryl, here are a few other small details.

note the air gap I made with pieces of foil. This separates he SS drip pan from the platesetter and holds the steamer liner to collect the drippings. This is a small detail with big gains. If you are smoking on your WSK, checkout Brett's first brisket cook where he did this on his WSK. You can fit a full sized steamer under the food grate on the WSK, and four balls of foil will work as an air gap.

When i wrapped I put the fat cap down in the drippings. This kept the bark up and away from the liquid.

The last little detail was at the end I used a quarter sheet pan under the steamer to stabilize it things heading into the cooler. If the steamer leaks a little, the sheet pan will catch this, and the sheet pan is not screaming.

If you have a cooler than will hold a full size sheet pan then you could use a larger steamer liner. If not, then two smaller ones like what I used might be the way to go.

Good luck and share your cook with us.
 
DanHoo said:
Darryl, here are a few other small details.

note the air gap I made with pieces of foil. This separates he SS drip pan from the platesetter and holds the steamer liner to collect the drippings. This is a small detail with big gains. If you are smoking on your WSK, checkout Brett's first brisket cook where he did this on his WSK. You can fit a full sized steamer under the food grate on the WSK, and four balls of foil will work as an air gap.

When i wrapped I put the fat cap down in the drippings. This kept the bark up and away from the liquid.

The last little detail was at the end I used a quarter sheet pan under the steamer to stabilize it things heading into the cooler. If the steamer leaks a little, the sheet pan will catch this, and the sheet pan is not screaming.

If you have a cooler than will hold a full size sheet pan then you could use a larger steamer liner. If not, then two smaller ones like what I used might be the way to go.

Good luck and share your cook with us.
Click to expand...
Yeah I use the foil ball trick every time.....if you do not that stuff just burns in the pan......it's not a good time.
I will try to be a bit detailed if I can on the cook.
I have been braising the shoulder once I hit the colour and temps I am looking for, sometimes it goes into the stall a bit and just takes a little longer. So about the braising.
To wrap and finish is a standard operation, I do it with many proteins. Last 2 times I hit my stall goals and then put the shoulder into a lasagna style pan like you did but I add lard to the bottom for the liquid part of the braise.
Now this softens the bark quite a bit, but the bark I created ends up to be pretty thick and fairly firm......it ends up working out really good to be honest. Remove the shoulder from that pan and pull in another the same size......let the lard cool and then strain it out and use it again on the next shoulder. Eventually I hope the lard becomes the supreme braising liquid.

Now the results will prove to pull in chunkier pieces that are much more moist than a red paper wrap. A lot less stringy is another note I made while doing this.....Once its vack packed up and cooled you will notice there is more fat in it. It is not the end of the world, you can get some of that back out when you warm it back up or make carnitas and you don't need to add oil to the pan for the most part.
I did post this cook a couple times but will do it again, along with the brined salmon too.
 
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