Pork Shoulders Stalled at 178 degrees???


 
J

JR Williams

New member
I attempted my first overnight smoke with my WSM 18.5" this past weekend and I had a weird situation that I wanted to run by the group and see what you all thought. My meat of choice this weekend was two pork butts (boneless), about 8 lbs each. I put them both on the top rack and used my ET-73 to track meat and rack temperature. I was able to keep the WSM temp at an average of 215-220 overnight and was very happy with how it performed.

Somewhere around the 10-11 hour mark (don't remember exactly) the temperature on the meat probe stalled out at 170 degrees. After doing some Google searches, I realized that this was probably the "plateau" and was normal and expected. Sure enough, after a while (probably 1.5 hours or so) the temp started increasing again and I thought I was well on my way to my target temp of 190 for doing pulled pork. The strange part is that after another couple of hours, the meat stalled again at 178 degrees and then it actually started coming down a few degrees in temperature. My rack probe was reading 230 degrees as the temp for the smoker so I don't understand why the meat was actually decreasing in temperature. I finally pulled the meat off after 16 total hours and a final meat temp of 176. The meat seemed very tender (haven't actually gotten to eat it yet) but I was disappointed about not reaching the final target temp. Should I have just left the meat on there until the temp started rising again? Anyone have any idea what would have caused this? I tested the two probes in a glass of water later in the evening and they both gave the exact same reading so I don't think it is a probe problem.

Jason
 
Nothing unusual about two plateaus. Happens to me pretty often. Probably should have left it on to around 195 degrees for pulled but the true test is tenderness. I use 190 as a guide and test for tender by poking a probe into the meat. If it slides in easily I know it is ready.
hth
 
Thanks Steve. I kinda thought that might be the case, but I also thought 16 hours was pretty long so I got a little paranoid that I was having an equipment malfunction. Guess I'll just have to learn to trust my instruments next time and be prepared for a really LONG smoke (part of the reason I pulled it off at 16 hours was that I had to leave).
 
Like Steve said nothing unusual there. You may want to try going a bit higher next time. I usually keep a range of 250 to 275 with butts and find it to work well, high enough to speed things up but still not too fast so that the fat still has time to render.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Eric Michaud:
Like Steve said nothing unusual there. You may want to try going a bit higher next time. I usually keep a range of 250 to 275 with butts and find it to work well, high enough to speed things up but still not too fast so that the fat still has time to render. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

+1, Eric. I agree that higher heat tends to reduce and/or eliminate the stall, and your butts get done faster but are still just as tender as cooking lower & slower.

I cooked butts for a few years @ 225°, and found that they would stall once and sometimes twice, which was unnerving at first. Once I tried cooking butts over HH, I haven't looked back.
 
It's good to be suspicious of the probes. As an antidote to that somewhat common problem, buy a Thermapen next time they're on sale.

That way, you won't sit worrying (or worse, lie awake worrying).
 
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