Step by step pulled pork on the PBC

[Beefchop]

I don't check my cooker temperatures. Just the meat.

That's one of the benefits, in my mind, of having a PBC. Just follow Noah's instructions: he designed this thing to be a set it and forget it cooker.

[Beefchop]

I let mine finish in the PBC only because I usually have a hot fire when my shoulder hits 160 and don't like wasting the coals.

[_John_]

Not sure, I don't honestly pay attention.

[fzxdoc]

John does it make a difference if the side with the hot coals is closer to the vent?

Kathryn

[_John_]

Mine tend to be my best ever almost every time. I have started a sort of mini-minion method procedure; fill the basket and remove 40 or so from just one side, then dump the hot coals back in that hole. Stays pretty darn consistent for 10 hours with rarely a lid-crack.

[Curtis Ellzey]

Thanks for the response PBCJim! So I cooked up a 10 lb. pork shoulder for pulled pork yesterday and it turned out PHENOMENAL! Quite possibly the best pulled pork I've ever had (and I've had a lot). I found I had to do what you did a few times - crack the lid about an inch to get the temp up - but one thing I did differently this time was crack the lid quite a bit at the beginning of the cook to get the temp to spike to around 350. That definitely seemed to help stabilize the temp. mine settled in the 280-300 range the whole time. I'll post pics later today if I can find time!

[PBCJim]

I'm with John that on "average" 275 is a good temp, I'll crack the lid a 1/2 inch if it starts to creep down to 250 and it will spike above 300 at which time i close it up and it will settle into something where it floats 260-290 which worked fine for me on a PB. I had to do that only a couple times for a long PB cook. Regarding the thermo location, i hang the cooker probe from one of the rebars so it hangs down around the middle of the cooker.

[Curtis Ellzey]

Thanks John. I start with a full coal basket too, but I can pull it any time and put it in the steel bucket and can snuff them, saving them for later (I posted about this in the main "lighting and temps" thread), so I wouldn't be wasting any coal by pulling the meat (and coals) early. I can just re-use whatever doesn't burn.

It's interesting that most people here have gotten good results at around 270-290 average cooking temp, whereas Meathead's recipe calls for a 225 cooking temp, but I guess that's because of the way the PBC works? I'm cooking my first pork butt right now! My cooking temp is hovering right around 280 and it seems to be doing just fine. Maybe the condensation or moisture or whatever keeps it from drying out too fast? I'm at a 155 internal meat temp at the moment (after 4 hours) so I'm planning on pulling it at 160-165 and wrapping in foil.

I'll continue to cook in the PBC (rather than the oven!), but I still wonder if there's a good reason for doing it that way rather than just finishing it in the oven...

[_John_]

I take the temp in a similar way. Pork shoulder doesn't really care that much as long as you get to the right end temp, I try to cook mine at 275. I don't ever really have to fiddle with the PBC unless it goes 10+hours and at that point it is just removing a bar, so I leave mine there. I could put it in the oven, but I start with a full basket of coals so why waste the heat? I get close to the same bark either way, but without wrapping it gets quite a bit drier and crustier. You can see in my pics I don't have much of a bark problem and those were wrapped.

[Curtis Ellzey]

One more question: once you wrap it in foil, why not just pull it off the PBC and finish it in the oven? Once you've wrapped it tightly in foil, the smoke isn't really contacting the surface of the meat any more, right?

You got all that great smoke flavor and the bark during the first part of the cook, and from reading what Meathead has written about smoke, it sounds like the meat has absorbed all the smoke it can by this point anyway. So why not move it into the oven where you can dial in the temp exactly rather than burning even more fuel (charcoal) and potentially having to fiddle with the PBC to maintain your cooking temp?

This may sound sacreligious, sorry, but is there a good reason for finishing it in the PBC rather than the oven?

[Curtis Ellzey]

Attempting my first pork butt tomorrow (Wednesday)! It's bone-in, about 10 lbs. Some questions:

What is the ideal temp to try and keep the PBC at for the majority of the cook (after the spike, where do you want it to settle for most of the cook)? It wasn't really clear (to me anyway).

Also, where/how do you all measure the PBC temp? I've been running my probe thermometer through the rebar hole and have been hanging it from the middle of one of the rebars (using a clip) so it's pointed inwards and not touching any meat. Is this ideal? It's near the top of the PBC, so temps would be hotter there, right? So is that an accurate reflection of the "average" overall temp of the PBC?

I'm planning on wrapping in foil at about 165 meat temp, as Noah suggests, but Meathead says to skip this so you get a better bark. I'm wrapping though to cut down on the total cook time, but wondering if you all have gotten a better bark from not wrapping and cooking longer?

Thanks all! Will check this in the morning to see if anyone chimes in before I start cooking. I'll take notes and let you know how it goes. :-)

[Jon Solberg]

FULL CONTACT BBQ! Love it!

[Ernest]

That's why I love lump charcoal or kingsford competition in my PBC. Starts hot as hell then settles in at hot.

[_John_]

I just cooked 3 of these and some other stuff for a football team. I set everything out, fed them, packed and left in under 30 minutes. That was 50 people, pretty impressive.

[PBCJim]

Jon - sorry no pics, had every intention, but the buzzards were circling and if I would have stopped what i was doing to take a photo, it might have turned ugly. I was getting pounded with questions such as, "how much longer? what temp does it need to get to? how long does it have to rest? how long does it take to pull?" The pressure was on!