I have kind of a unique opportunity/problem, and once again I am turning to the folks in the Pitmaster Club for some advice. I have been smoking for probably close to 15 years, but always with Charcoal. WSM and Pitbarrel. Tried a Traeger and hated it. It didn't last two weeks and I got ride of it. I have smoked meat for a number of office potlucks and have gotten a rep at the office. So, now we are have a company wide event (160 people) and the boss wants me to cook the lunch, and is offering to buy me a smoker large enough to handle that large of a cook. I am thinking I would need at least 100 pounds of pork shoulder before trimming and cooking. Any ideas on what kind of smoker could handle that? Or should I tell him to hire a caterer?
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Find someone local with a big pit and hire it for the day. Unless you can wrangle it where the company buys it and you continue to use it when you want
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Not sure where you’re located at, but if you’ve got a HyVee supermarket near you... they’ve all got massive smokers that they use to cook and peddle bbq meals, and I believe they rent them out.
However, if boss man is offering to buy YOU the smoker (ie it’s yours after the purchase, not the company’s), remember EVERYTHING is a negotiation... 😈
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Know what your upper limit is will help. I would look at a, insulated cabinet smoker. You can fit a lot of food on a unit like that. I would look at something like the Back Woods, Mixon Cabinet smokers.
Or you could go old school and get a big old pull behind. Like the Lang
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I would add Humprey's to the list https://www.humphreysbbq.com/collect...red-red-pint-1
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Old Glory I can't find anything that says what the Humphreys burn. I like the look of the Ironside. Does anyone have experience with Cascade smokers? www.cascadesmokers.com. They are close enough to me that I could drive and pick one up.
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I was thinking the same thing as Spinaker. Think about a large size vertical cabinet. You could score a nice one for around $3,000. I'm thinking 80#, or 8-10# butts would do the job and easily fit into a vertical. Your problem may be actually getting a nice high end cooker quickly enough to pull it off. What kind of time frame you looking at? Perhaps a stick burner rental may be out there to fill the need.
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I am not positive but I am thinking that about 2k would be the upper limit of what the company would be willing to pay. For the right smoker I would throw some of my own money at it also. So, probably around 3k would be the top. Time is an issue, I only have about 3 weeks. This may sound like sacrilege but what if I smoked the butts before hand, pulled them, vacuum sealed and froze it until the day of the gathering? I have three smokers and could easily smoke around 50 pounds at a time. I've never tried that before. Could be OK, or it could be really bad.
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Yes, cook more than one round and refrigerate. No problems with that. I would refrigerate whole and then pull when you rewarm, if possible. I have warmers, which makes rewarming so much easier. So your plan of cook, pull, vacuum bag and rewarm would be best if you don't have dedicated warmers. In a vacuum bag, you can rewarm in a regular oven just fine.
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I smoked 9 butts - 74 pounds precooked - using a small offset and 2 kettles, for a party of 80 people, and pulled and packed in foil half steam table pans with foil lids the night before the party, and reheated in warm oven and served from crockpots. We would replenish the crockpots from the pans in the oven. No one complained and I got s lot of compliments. And with 80 folk we ate about 5 of 8 butts. This was a lot of 20-somethings, about half of them guys, as it was my oldest daughters engagement party. Oh, we also had about 20 pounds of chicken wings but those were gone in 20 minutes! All of those frat brothers of my now son in law can pack it in!
I think doing it ahead is fine. A WSM 22 can probably handle 8 butts, and is a lot cheaper than any decent offset. Maybe just add that for the capacity you need?
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Thanks for the replies everyone. I am liking the idea of cooking ahead of time. Just the logistics of finding, buying and learning to use a smoker with that capacity in the amount of time I have is kind of daunting. There is a slightly used Yoader that I could pick up for about 2k a couple of hours from here. It is tempting but the thing weighs 800 pounds. Jeez what a beast! I keep wondering what I would do with it after the picnic. The event is at a park, so there won't be any ovens available. PaulstheRibList what kind of warmers are you talking about? I have a WSM 22, WSM 18 and a pit barrel so I think I could do enough in two cooks but it would be way easier if I froze it. That way I could do the cooks over a couple of weekends.
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jfmorris I smoked 6 butts overnight last night pulled them, vacuum sealed and froze them this morning. Part of the problem with doing all of them at once is just space considerations in my kitchen and refrigerator. I froze a couple of smaller packages and I am going to test reheating by dropping the package in hot water. We will see how it turns out. If I don't like it I may end up doing them all at once the day before and storing in some coolers.
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We had the event today and everything went well. I smoked 18 pork shoulders and it ended up being way to much food. We also served 80 hot dogs, beans, coleslaw, chips and cookies. Needless to say no one went home hungry. So, I ended up pulling the pork and immediately vacuum sealing and freezing it. Then reheating it by dropping the bags in hot water for about 30 minutes. We used 3 turkey fryers and it really worked well. The pork was tender and moist. It honestly tasted like it just came off the smoker. Will definitely use that method again. Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions.
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I’m glad to be part of this group, quite the array of problem solvers. I know where to go for any ‘Q questions I come across.
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