Pulled pork once again on the 18.5" WSM. 17.5 lbs worth... boneless pork butt from Costco. Cut in half as usual to speed up the process. Smoking with apple wood and a modified rub from Costco Flavor Connections (added some cayenne pepper). I decided to grind down the rub into a powder using my Blendtec blender to see what that does to the taste and texture. The pit temp is around 230 degrees currently.
The upper rack finished after 4 hours. The middle rack took 6.5 hours, but that one pulled with ease!
Top Rack
The middle rack meat finally finished after 6.5 hours, but that meat pulled with ease!! Talk about soft and easy! Just goes to show you that even if you put two of the same item in the cooker, the meat will finish at different times. Also, cutting the butts in half is why these things cook so fast. Consider doing that the next time you do pulled pork. You are going to pull it anyway, so it doesn't need to be pretty. I sprinkled on some additional rub since the middle of the meat usually never gets much seasoning. The "powdered" version of the rub made it a lot easier to incorporate.
The middle rack meat never went above 197 degrees internal. It sat there for 2 hours. I finally gave up and decided to check the meat with a probe of the ThermoWorks Thermapen MkIV and it went in and out of the meat with ease. I decided it was done. I guess some meat just don't go higher even if you want it to! I even moved the meat to the top rack for the last hour and it didn't do anything to raise the internal temp. 197 is the temp needed to break down the collagen, so I guess it really didn't need to go any higher. It came out much better than the meat that started out on the top rack.
Middle Rack
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