Pork Butts


 
M

Mike Bartlett

New member
I have been volunteered to smoke 4 or 5 butts for an upcoming wedding that I am also going to be the best man. The questions I have is I have never used the bottom rack in a smoke. I have smoked two butts on the top rack many times but never used the bottom one. How does using the bottom rack for two additional butts effect the smoke. Will it be about the same smoke time and will both racks finish up at around the same time? I have the 22" WSM.

The other question I have is I have never smoked a day or two early before serving the meat. I have always pulled in the late morning and serve in the afternoon. What is the best way to smoke the meat a couple days early and serve it a couple days later and the meat still be close to the quality and taste?

Any advise is greatly appreciated.

Mike
 
The more meat you have in the smoker the longer it will take to cook. The difference between 1 butt vs 4 butts on a WSM might be 10-20% extra time (educated guess here) That should be the main difference.

The bottom rack is 10-20* cooler when using water in the pan and 10-20* hotter when no water is in the pan. I usually rotate items when I'm wrapping to try to even this out.

As for cooking ahead of time and serving later the best thing I've found is to cook, pull into chunks or pulled pork (your choice), put into vacuum seal bags with some of the juices (or water/AJ), seal them up and refrigerate them. Then pull back out on the day of and boil the bags (unopened) in a pot of water for ~20-40 minutes to the desired tenderness, serve, and enjoy!

Hope this works out for you. Let us know how it went Mike!
 
Thanks for the reply and information. The wife just got a Food Saver for Mother's Day so we will try that out. Do you use a certain ratio of water/AJ?
 
How do you vaccum seal fresh cooked meat with out sucking all the moisture out?

I'd probably do them the day / night before wrap them in foil and let them rest in a cooler. Then pull them and put it in a roaster .
 
When I do raw meat I have to freeze it before I can seal it or the moisture gets sucked out of the meat. When that happens half the time the bag doesn't seal either.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. Got it done and was not the best day for smoking, it was so windy. Could not keep the temps stable. I put it on very early in the morning and took it off that evening after 12 hours at 225 - 250. The smoker was full and would not hold anymore meat. I didn't check the temp when I pulled it but when pulling on the bone the meat pulled away. It was so late that I pulled them to let them rest in foil before pulling. The meat was tender and juicy but not fall off the bone. Took a bit more effort pulling it. We used the vacuum sealer on them, again used it for the first time. We switched over to seal when the air had been sucked and the liquid was starting to be sucked up. The only mistake we made was not double sealing the bags. One bag opened in the water reheating and the meat fell into the water when pulling it out. Had one more bag that opened up on the end above water so no problem with it. The meat was great and everyone bragged on it. Again, thanks to everyone.
 
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