I learned this weekend that it is really hard to screw up a butt and they are pretty resilient to tempermental fires and bad thermometer readings.
I decided to cook 4 butts for a football party, knowing that I would have too much but would foodsaver the rest. I started the fire around 9pm Friday night. I did Minion method with about 12 lit coals. I rubbed the butts with mustard and then the basic BBQ rub from one of Raichlen's books. Butts were all between 6 and 7 pounds. I decided to go back to water this time instead of the clay pot for no other reason than I was cooking for a crowd and had only done the clay pot once and wanted to make sure I didn't screw it up. Meat went on around 9:30 and about midnite, I went to bed with the temp around 225. Any time I woke up in the night, I would check the temp and it did fall a little to around 190 but I decided to just let it go and worry about it in the morning. Morning comes, I got the heat back up, too high for a while, and around 9, one of the butts was showing 205 so I removed it and wrapped in foil. I probed one of the others and it showed 195. A little while later, I looked again, and it showed 175. Odd. I tried different probes and some would show in the 190s and the others, the ones that came with my ET73, would show in the 170s. I finally decided that the non-Maverick probe was more accurate and just used that. Later, I decided to save some time for later and went to shred the one I had taken off. I determined it wasn't done so I put it back on.
Finally took everything off around 1:30 pm.
Even with the fluctuations of temp and the bad probe readings, it was deemed by my harshest critics, my wife and 17-year old son, as the best I have done to date. The whole crowd just raved about it and couldn't get enough. They especially liked the bark, which I put on a separate plate. I hoped to be able to freeze two of the butts, but only had one left at the end. A successful cook in the end and my Buckeyes beat up on Purdue so a good night for me.
Thanks for listening to my long tale. I do now see some of the problems with the Maverick ET-73. It seems to go haywire about 2/3 of the way through a long cook. Anyone have any other good recommendations for thermos? While I love the smoker temp option, the inaccuracy is killing me.
Bob
I decided to cook 4 butts for a football party, knowing that I would have too much but would foodsaver the rest. I started the fire around 9pm Friday night. I did Minion method with about 12 lit coals. I rubbed the butts with mustard and then the basic BBQ rub from one of Raichlen's books. Butts were all between 6 and 7 pounds. I decided to go back to water this time instead of the clay pot for no other reason than I was cooking for a crowd and had only done the clay pot once and wanted to make sure I didn't screw it up. Meat went on around 9:30 and about midnite, I went to bed with the temp around 225. Any time I woke up in the night, I would check the temp and it did fall a little to around 190 but I decided to just let it go and worry about it in the morning. Morning comes, I got the heat back up, too high for a while, and around 9, one of the butts was showing 205 so I removed it and wrapped in foil. I probed one of the others and it showed 195. A little while later, I looked again, and it showed 175. Odd. I tried different probes and some would show in the 190s and the others, the ones that came with my ET73, would show in the 170s. I finally decided that the non-Maverick probe was more accurate and just used that. Later, I decided to save some time for later and went to shred the one I had taken off. I determined it wasn't done so I put it back on.
Finally took everything off around 1:30 pm.
Even with the fluctuations of temp and the bad probe readings, it was deemed by my harshest critics, my wife and 17-year old son, as the best I have done to date. The whole crowd just raved about it and couldn't get enough. They especially liked the bark, which I put on a separate plate. I hoped to be able to freeze two of the butts, but only had one left at the end. A successful cook in the end and my Buckeyes beat up on Purdue so a good night for me.
Thanks for listening to my long tale. I do now see some of the problems with the Maverick ET-73. It seems to go haywire about 2/3 of the way through a long cook. Anyone have any other good recommendations for thermos? While I love the smoker temp option, the inaccuracy is killing me.
Bob
