LA Pork Butt and jfmorris, i’m inclined to keep the meat on the grill for the long-haul, as long as I’m able to maintain the temperature. However, if either of you thinks that I should take it off now and move to the oven for whatever reason, please let me know.
Should I be worried about its drying out on the grill? Somehow, I think the oven would lead to more drying out than the ceramic grill, but I have no past experience doing any of this!
If I do end up having to move it to the oven, I was thinking about taking some of the rendered fat from the drip pan and pouring that on top of the meat to help keep it moist while in the oven. Please let me know your thoughts on that.
LA Pork Butt, assuming the meat makes it till the end on the grill, which probe would you go by for pulling it out at 200. The probe in the back is in the bigger/thicker side of the meat. The one in the front is the thinner/smaller side.
Looking good! Meat is almost done. I would wrap in foil and an old towel, and put it into a cooler if you have one, and let it sit for a couple of hours before pulling the pork. If put in the cooler right off the grill, it will stay very hot for hours.
LA Pork Butt I think I remember you saying last summer that it was so hot that the dial thermometer in your BGE read 150 in the sun (or something like that). You also said that you were thinking of loading it up with charcoal just to see how long it would 'cook' at 225. Out of curiosity, did you ever try it? How long did it go?
Grillin Dad I think I did it but I don’t remember the results. But, I do remember a number of years ago Walmart had a close out on a brand of charcoal I had never heard of. It was like 30#s for 5 dollars. This would have been late August or early September. I ran a test without meat and as unbelievable as this sounds it ran for 72-74 hours @ 225. There was a little charcoal left when I shut it down.
It is getting close to your food tasting time. It has been a 30 hour cook and inquiring minds want to know, how was it? That is especially true for jfmorris and me. We have a lot invested in your sucess.
It is getting close to your food tasting time. It has been a 30 hour cook and inquiring minds want to know, how was it? That is especially true for jfmorris and me. We have a lot invested in your sucess.
LA Pork Butt and jfmorris, We were astounded by the results. The meat spent a total of 25 hours and 8 minutes cooking in the Kamado and we were bracing ourselves for dried-out and chewy meat. Instead, we were treated to the best pork shoulder we’ve ever had! The meat was very tender and delightfully smoky (I used three hunks of Cherry Wood). While I’m inclined to think that the meat would have been somewhat juicier with a shorter cook time, it was not dry by any means.
We made homemade rolls from scratch, homemade Cole Slaw and homemade South Carolina Barbecue Sauce to go with the pork. Mind you, even after preparing all of that, we still had a back-up plan to go to Culver’s!
We washed it all down with Manhattans made with cherry bitters and garnished with Italian Black Cherries. Sazerac Rye went into the Manhattans in honor of LA Pork Butt!
Here are some photos:
I remain grateful to everyone who participated in this thread, but especially to LA Pork Butt and to jfmorris for all of their highly attentive and detailed advice and generous assistance. Gentlemen, it was mainly the two of you who made this turn out so well today!
I hope your confidence is soaring. I love Boston Butts. They are the most forgiving piece of meat you can cook as witnessed by the length of your cook, Next time you want to serve at 5pm you might start at 5am and cook at 275. Wrap when it goes into the stall. You can recognize the stall when the internal meat temp goes up one degree and back down a degree. You should be able to complete the cook in 7-9 hours which should give you a couple of hours to hold in an ice chest before serving. Have fun!
If not cooking outdoors, I am cooking on the stovetop with my 14" carbon steel wok, 12" CI skillet, or in the oven with my two Lodge CI pizza pans, or two dutch ovens. I've also got a nifty Lodge carbon steel grill pan that rocks for veggies outdoors.
So glad this turned out good with that "math error" that turned a 12 hour cook into a 24 hour cook, haha. I was slightly worried for you, but not TOO worried, knowing how much fat and moisture a boston butt has.
Curious with so many probes in the cooker - did the two air probes eventually converge on the same temperature during the cook? I would think they would. At least they do for me the few times I've used 2.
Next time try it hotter and faster per LA Pork Butt 's advice above. I've even started at 7am and gotten done before 5pm, cooking at 275, and if the meat is not past the stall by about 2pm I then wrap in foil, bump the temp to 300, and it is usually done at 4pm, wrapped for an hour, and ready for 5pm dinnertime. I prefer NOT to wrap the butt during the cook, as the bark suffers, but the pork itself does not.
I'll be honest. My favorite part is the barky bits, so if the butt is for ME and the family, I will start it at bedtime the night before, at 225, to get it done before dinner the next day, with no foil wrap to impact the bark. If it is for something like meals to take to friends or a potluck, I will start it the morning of about 6am to light the fire, and put the meat on at 7am, and use the hot and fast approach at 300F, and wrap in foil if it is not done yet by around 2pm.
Last edited by jfmorris; February 23, 2024, 07:56 AM.
Curious with so many probes in the cooker - did the two air probes eventually converge on the same temperature during the cook? I would think they would. At least they do for me the few times I've used 2.
The 2 ambient probes on the grill surface came pretty close in their readings during the last two hours or so of the cook. I think the closest they came was .6, and if memory serves, that was during the last 15 minutes of the cook.
Well, .6 degrees is indeed close, and considering even the high end probes and thermometers are probably only accurate to +/- 1F, Anything within a couple of degrees is probably good.
I've never put multiple ambient probes in my kamado. I've done it as a test once or twice in my offset, as I really wanted (and needed) to know what the differential was across a 24" x 36" wide cooking surface, with all the heat coming in low at one end and leaving high at the other.
On most cookers, I try to end up placing my ambient probe a couple of inches away from the meat, in the indirect zone. You don't want to get closer than about 2 inches, as I think the cold from the meat at first will throw the readings off.
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