I am new here, but not new to cooking or BBQ So Cal Style. I consider myself a more than competent backyard cook. I have however, decided try my hand at meats that I have not cooked before, several of which I have not even tasted before.
In November, I decided to add a SnS Grill with the SnS basket to my gear. Over the last 5-6 months, I have taken my tri tip from good to something I would put up against anyone’s. I’ve dialed in the temperature for these short cooks (230-ish for about an hour and 15 minutes), but am beginning to branch out into longer cooks. And here is the question:
When does a temperature "trend" (either up or down) become something that you must address?
Example:
I was setting up a long term cook for pork shoulder and was expecting a roughly 8 hour time frame. I had two pieces of pork shoulder (Boston butt), one at about 3.5 pounds and one at about 4.5 pounds. The meat went on the kettle at 9:00 am, I was shooting for a 260-280 temp range, as my lone previous experience with a small pork shoulder at 230 took way longer than I thought it should (8+hours).
At about 12:30, the temperature dropped 15 degrees in less than 10 minutes. I haven’t seen a drop like this in any of the dozens of short cooks, the one other long cook, and the two long test runs I have done. After 10 minutes, I decided this "trend" was worrying. I opened the kettle, there was plenty of fuel, so the fire wasn’t dying due to lack of fuel. I closed up the kettle and opened the lower vent for a few minutes, and right back to target temp. I had a few other variations that I made, including adding more fuel at the 6 hour mark.
If food wasn’t involved, I think I would have just let it go to see what would have happened. It would have been interesting to file away that info.
When I first got the SnS, I did a couple of test runs without meat, and on both tests, got very consistent temps over two separate 6 hour runs. The second run, the temp never varied by more than 3 or 4 degrees in either direction.
So where do you draw the line? Or is there one?
Obligatory pics attached.
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