Trouble cooking with stacker


 
W

William Schmitz

TVWBB Fan
This weekend, I offered to cook pulled pork for sale by my daughter's softball association at their season ending tournament. On Friday I did an overnight cook with 8 butts totaling 60 lbs; using my new WSM stacker. On Saturday I did half that and therefore didn't need the stacker.

Friday's cook never seemed to work right. First I had trouble getting the cooker up to temp . . . finally propping the door open to get things moving, but, then halfway through the cook, all of my charcoal was gone, and temps had dropped to 150. I had to disassemble the cooker (thank god for sand in the water pan) and essentially start over. Still I never really got these butts done. By the time I pulled things off the following morning, they were only barely pullable, with a fair amount of knife work needed to slice/chop.

Saturday was the polar opposite. The four butts went on, and two hours into the cook, the cooker had settled in at 240, and didn't waver more than 5 degrees one way or other until the end of the cook Sunday morning. These butts were perfect. I never touched my knife, simply pulled it all by hand using my silicone gloves.

So, question is what went wrong Friday? Was I simply too impatient with the cooker? Due to the extra volume of both meat and air, do you need a bigger fire to get things going? Or should I just have waited an allowed the fire to bring the cooker up to temp on its own.

The good news was that everyone loved the pulled pork sandwiches at the tournament, and we raised almost $900 for the association. No one there had any idea the troubles I had with Friday night's cook. That said, I want to correct my mistakes for the next time I do a large amount of food. Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill
 
William,

Friday's cook had a lot of meat (60 lbs) and sand acting as a heat sink. With that amount of meat, I would have skipped the sand; you don't need to worry about a temp spike with that kind of load. 60 lbs of meat will take a while to heat up, so you would have needed more coals going; it's a physics thing. More cold mass requires more heat energy to get up to temp. The additional air introduced helped the coals burn and thus raised the temps somewhat, but again, you were dealing with a very large load. It just takes longer and more fuel to get up to temp. For faster cooks, you could split it up into 3 cooks and freeze/fridge the meat. Your initial plan seems fine, just allow more time, more fuel and eliminate the sand or water.

Paul

Paul
 
Bill, I just got the stacker and did only one cook so far. My experience was the same. I needed a bigger fire and more charcoal. I adjusted by leaving the door off for a while after adding charcoal. Once I got the cooker up to temp with the stacker, it was very steady at about 245 for the second half of the cook.

Next time I will make sure more charcoal is ignited before closing up the cooker. I will also add charcoal (I use lump) sooner. I think the extra volume and extra meat just needs more heat, therfore a bigger fire.

Regards, Mark
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Paul K:
William,

Friday's cook had a lot of meat (60 lbs) and sand acting as a heat sink. With that amount of meat, I would have skipped the sand; you don't need to worry about a temp spike with that kind of load. 60 lbs of meat will take a while to heat up, so you would have needed more coals going; it's a physics thing. More cold mass requires more heat energy to get up to temp. The additional air introduced helped the coals burn and thus raised the temps somewhat, but again, you were dealing with a very large load. It just takes longer and more fuel to get up to temp. For faster cooks, you could split it up into 3 cooks and freeze/fridge the meat. Your initial plan seems fine, just allow more time, more fuel and eliminate the sand or water.

Paul

Paul </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Paul, I agree on leaving the sand out for such a big cook, just use the water pan with a sheet of foil about an inch or two up off the bottom of the pan. Also to start with more lit, at least a full chimney of lit IMO. But to split it up into 3 cooks, that kind of defeats the stacker purchase doesn't it.
icon_confused.gif

William, The more cold mass you have in the WSM equals the more lit you need start with, and longer it will take the WSM to come up to temp. Heck people here have cooked 6-8 butts in their WSM, with no Stacker used, I've done 6 already. You also have to try and set up the meat so you get good airflow around and inbetween all the meat for proper combustion and cooking of the meat. HTH
 
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