Pork butt safety question, first time ever had this problem.


 
Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson

TVWBB Member
I have never had a cook go this way. So I am smoking 6 pork butts about 8lbs each on my wsm 22. The butts were frozen so i moved them to the fridge on Monday night. I believe they were thawed by today. I started the smoker at 7:30 pm. Took the butts out, removed from cryovac, rinsed, trimmed, rubbed. No injection but I did cut the fat out that pretty much splits the butt. When I finished at 9:30 the smoker was at 245. I have a cyberq atc. Put the butts on and the temp dropped as normal. Opened vents and set cyberq damper full open. Could only get the temp to 215. I normally run 235. The temp finally came up at 12:45. The outside of the butts are only at 126. I know the guideline of 40 to 140 within 4 hours. Normally the outside will reach that without a problem but not today. This is for a memorial service for my uncle. My question is...... are they safe to eat when they finish tomorrow? And any ideas what happened? I would assume that the cold water rinse brought them above 40 at 7:30 but I don't know. Thank you for any help.
 
Not sure of the cause, perhaps they weren't completely thawed despite what you thought. But if you get the meat up to your internal target temp, I'd serve it.
 
Water pan dry and foiled. 2 vents were fully open. Cyberq atc damper fully open in the third and was running 100 percent. Verified thermometer with another and a thermapen. The highest it would go was 215 for the longest then finally came up to 250 as i had set. Normally that would have caused my wood chunks to catch fire. I can't figure it out unless the butts were still frozen in the middle and absorbing that much heat and producing steam in smoker.
 
Isn't there normally a flat spot during the internal temperature rise? I probably would have allowed a longer time to defrost in the fridge.
 
Mine has normally risen steadily when warming up and shut down the vents and close atc damper to 1/8th. Setting the temp at 240 and it holds rock solid until meat put on. Temp drops to about 230 until meat temp raises to return temp to 235 for me. If your talking about the meat itself, yes it will enter a stall. My problem was the smoker after meat added, it dropped to 215 and wouldn't return for anything even fully opening everything.
 
About 48lbs. Normally temp gets to 240 then drops when meat put on but the atc running with no other vents open and damper only open an 1/8th returns temp to 235 which is what I run mine at. This time I had the additional vents and the damper fully open and it wouldn't rise. I've done runs before of this size and haven't had a problem. This time I just can't figure out what was happening. Charcoal was fully loaded. After it raised to 250 it cooked until 10 this morning without a problem.
 
48 lbs of PB in one 22" WSM is pretty good load. Even with an ATC you'd need to light off quite a bit of charcoal at the beginning (maybe more than one large chimney) to get into that 250F range. Another theory (maybe far far fetched) is that maybe that there was so much water evaporating off the meat that the flow was choked going out the top vent? Also, if you don't have any sunshine and outdoor air temperature is lower it's harder to get to temperature.
 
I think your theory could be what happened. I do remember having water on my hand after holding above top vent to check my temp. I thought it was really strange considering I run an empty water pan.
 
I did that a few times. The last time I did it for about 4 minutes. Wood chunks caught on fire. Closed the door and after about 2 minutes the temp came up to 250. I was kind of wondering what happened but I guess it was so much meat that it took a fire to get the temp up. Go figure.
 
I agree. I have run about this amount quite a few times before but it took the atc with fully open damper and the other 2 bottom vents fully open and still wouldn't rebound after I put the meat on for a looooooong time...... until my wood chunks caught on fire after opening the door.
 
I always light with a Minion start and put the meat on right away. Avoids the problem. Regardless, Chris was correct upthread: as long as you got your temp back up and cooked till done food safety wouldn’t be a concern. 140 is 10 degrees over the actual top of the zone of 130; 135 (a 5 degree cushion) has been the standard among food safety professionals for years though 140 has stuck with the public (and, ridiculously, IMO, with some county health departments). Also, there really isn’t a time factor (like 4 hours) that’s applicable across all foods and temps. It’s very circumstance dependent.
 
K Kruger said:
.........135 (a 5 degree cushion) has been the standard among food safety professionals for years though 140 has stuck with the public (and, ridiculously, IMO, with some county health departments). Also, there really isn’t a time factor.........
Click to expand...
I respectfully disagree based on this article. I am a doctor a chiro and have taught Health Science for several years at the community college level. Please let me know if there's some new information out the and I'll gladly eat crow!!!!!!! 8)) And there is a time factor base on final temperatures. . Here is one article at google
 
K Kruger said:
I always light with a Minion start and put the meat on right away. Avoids the problem. Regardless, Chris was correct upthread: as long as you got your temp back up and cooked till done food safety wouldn’t be a concern. 140 is 10 degrees over the actual top of the zone of 130; 135 (a 5 degree cushion) has been the standard among food safety professionals for years though 140 has stuck with the public (and, ridiculously, IMO, with some county health departments). Also, there really isn’t a time factor (like 4 hours) that’s applicable across all foods and temps. It’s very circumstance dependent.
Click to expand...
I would also look at this older article at the forum where you posted in 2010:

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Another bacon smoking question

Somewhere at this forum (methinks) a poster mentioned to not taking the temperature of the pork side/belly, while smoking, above 110F and absolutely do not take the bacon temp above 125F according to the master chef for who he worked. Why is this discrepancy when everyone else takes the belly...
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