Saturday, December 8, 2018

Second Engagement Party - Pulled Pork




In preparation for a second engagement party for my daughter's upcoming wedding, I am smoking 13 lbs of pork butt for pulled pork on the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain smoker.

This time, I am using Famous Dave's Rib Rub with Apple Wood for smoke.  I've never used this rub before, so I hope it's ok.  As I usually do, I purchased the butts from Costco and cut each butt in half for faster cooking.  The outside temp is currently 19 degrees with very little wind, so I am not going to wrap the smoker with a welder's blanket.  After 1/2 hour, the pit temp is hovering around 244 degrees.  I am monitoring the two pieces of pork butt in the middle grate and also the larger of the two pieces of pork butt on the top grate.  The pit probe is on the top grate.  I am monitoring with four probes, but now I wish I had five!  I am using two ThermoWorks Smoke units.

I'll let the smoke go until the meat is well into the stall and then put the butts in aluminum pans and will cover the pans with aluminum foil.  I'll spritz the meat with apple juice every hour and put some apple juice in the aluminum pans.  I expect to go around 6 hours which would be just in time for the party.  The meat was placed in the smoker at 6:50 AM.
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Two Hours into the cook:


The meat stalled at about 3 hours into the cook.  Temps were 153, 159, 164 degrees.  I don't know what the last meat was on the top grate since I didn't have a probe in it and I didn't remember to take it with a Thermapen.
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The finished product.  This is the meat from the top rack.  It finished at 195 degrees after 6.5 hours.  I could not wait any longer since guests were anxious to eat, but even at 195 degrees, it pulled easily.  Lots of compliments from my guests too!  The meat in the second grate was pulled out after 7.5 hours, but the internal temps only reached 185 and 191 degrees!  Still, the temperature probe was easily poked into the meat and when I pulled it, it was even softer than the first!  Who knows why the temp didn't reach my normal 202 degrees, but it turned out great anyway!!



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