My work schedule has really been cutting into my cooking time for the last year or so, and I've decided to see what I can do with the time I have. First up was a SVQ bone in pork shoulder. This was an easy choice since I had one bagged up in the freezer, and pulled pork is always a hit at work.
Sunday was my first day off in a couple of weeks, so it was go time. Step one was to give it a nekked 165° bath for 20 hours. I then drained off the purge, rebadged it, and gave it a 3 hour soak in the sink filled with water and a bag of ice. At this point, I thought, "I should have taken a picture or two of this" I didn't, but I know most of you will forgive me. The ones that don't, will have to get over it, because I know I have. 😜
Fast-forward to Tuesday, and it was time to do the Q of my SVQ plan. I cut the shoulder in half hoping to maximize bark, gave it a good rub of Spice House KC Rub. No way was I wasting my limited supply of Hanks for an experiment, the Spice House stuff is good enough for testing anyway.
From here I went to the tried and true DLX 24 set for 275° and assisted by a smoke tube filled with hickory chips. Figuring out how to get smoke flavor and run higher temps on a pellet pooper is a wonderful thing that I highly recommend. The plan was to take the meat up to an internal of 160°, shred, mix in the reheated sparge, add some more of the rub, a little bbq sauce, and see what we ended up with. It was a good plan. It's simple, what could go wrong?
First hint of trouble was an hour in and the Fireboard said that my average temperature in the cooker was 220°, and the max had been 250°. That's odd for my pooper, but hey, I'm busy, it's pork shoulder, and really, what can go wrong? Well to start with you can get an alert that you cooker temp has dropped below 190°. Then you can go out and find out that the auger is turning, the fan is running, but your temp is dropping fast. Well crap on a cracker, I don't have time for this.
First response was to get the oven heating up just in case, grab a sheet pan plus the tongs, and then back outside to see if we can get the pooper up and running again. Using the pellet dump I was able to see that the auger was actually turning, so all seemed good there. I could hear the fan running, so nothing to worry about there. And usually once things get going, there is no reason for the ignitor to fire up.
​​​​​ Gee Scooby, we got us a real mystery here. However, being smarter than the average bear, I knew exactly what to do. First , unplug everything, and then plug it back in so we are starting fresh. After all, what could go wrong? Those of you with pellet poopers probably know the answer to this, but don't ruin it for everyone else. The good old DLX starts up, and begins feeding pellets into the burn pot, the fan kicks on, and in short order we have climbing temps again. Phineas J. Whoopee, you're a genius! And the temp is still climbing. 275°, 300°, 325° and it's also getting louder. Hmm... We'd better take a look in there and see what's going on. Boy, there sure is a lot of bright orange under the heat deflector. I wonder what that means?
At this point I decided that I had seen all there was to see in my colon, and it was now time to look elsewhere for the answers to this problem.
First off, SAVE THE MEAT! On to the sheet pan it goes. Next up, save the temp probes and the Fireboard. With those secure, it's now time to deal with that other little problem I have.
I did take the time to get a picture, and for those of you that don't know, this is what a pile of stupid, combined with a handful of bad decisions looks like up close and personal, this is it.
Like the farmer said when his cow died. Huh, she ain't never done that before.
Luckily for me my dear Mother often battled for the title of Queen of the Kitchen Fire, so this was not my first time on this ride. Lid goes down, power is disconnected. That should cut the air supply down by a lot. Next, grab the hose. Yeah dummy, it's Winter in Wisconsin. The hose got put away a month ago. And why exactly do you think spraying water at a fire with a fair amount of grease in it is going to be a good idea? Oh, by the way, there is an ABC fire extinguisher, about 10 feet away, maybe grab that instead. Again, you have studied your colon in great detail, there is nothing more to see there.
So, with the fire extinguisher in hand I did a mental check of my situation. There was no longer flames coming out of every crack and gap. That's a good thing. The source of the fire is under the heat shield, so there is no good way to get at it with the extinguisher anyway. Plus, to try and put the fire out means opening the lid and give my little orange monster a big rush of fresh air. Umm... I think we're going to take a step back and see how this plays out. All said and done, this was probably the best decision I made in the last couple of minutes. The fire put itself out, and I don't have to go search for the thread where CaptainMike explains how to clean up the mess a fire extinguisher makes. Life is good.
I know the real question here is, how did the pork turn out? Well, I'll tell you. After finishing getting it up to temp in the oven, it was pretty good. There was not a lot bark, but some. The smoke profile was very light, but it was there. And after mixing in most of the sparge from the SV plus a little BBQ sauce, the end result was a perfectly eatable, and moist pulled pork. Not my best, but far from my worst. Normally I QVQ instead of SVQ meats, and I may stick with that going forward, but given what it took to get there, I was happy with the results. I was out time at this point, so no plated pics.
Sunday was my first day off in a couple of weeks, so it was go time. Step one was to give it a nekked 165° bath for 20 hours. I then drained off the purge, rebadged it, and gave it a 3 hour soak in the sink filled with water and a bag of ice. At this point, I thought, "I should have taken a picture or two of this" I didn't, but I know most of you will forgive me. The ones that don't, will have to get over it, because I know I have. 😜
Fast-forward to Tuesday, and it was time to do the Q of my SVQ plan. I cut the shoulder in half hoping to maximize bark, gave it a good rub of Spice House KC Rub. No way was I wasting my limited supply of Hanks for an experiment, the Spice House stuff is good enough for testing anyway.
From here I went to the tried and true DLX 24 set for 275° and assisted by a smoke tube filled with hickory chips. Figuring out how to get smoke flavor and run higher temps on a pellet pooper is a wonderful thing that I highly recommend. The plan was to take the meat up to an internal of 160°, shred, mix in the reheated sparge, add some more of the rub, a little bbq sauce, and see what we ended up with. It was a good plan. It's simple, what could go wrong?
First hint of trouble was an hour in and the Fireboard said that my average temperature in the cooker was 220°, and the max had been 250°. That's odd for my pooper, but hey, I'm busy, it's pork shoulder, and really, what can go wrong? Well to start with you can get an alert that you cooker temp has dropped below 190°. Then you can go out and find out that the auger is turning, the fan is running, but your temp is dropping fast. Well crap on a cracker, I don't have time for this.
First response was to get the oven heating up just in case, grab a sheet pan plus the tongs, and then back outside to see if we can get the pooper up and running again. Using the pellet dump I was able to see that the auger was actually turning, so all seemed good there. I could hear the fan running, so nothing to worry about there. And usually once things get going, there is no reason for the ignitor to fire up.
​​​​​ Gee Scooby, we got us a real mystery here. However, being smarter than the average bear, I knew exactly what to do. First , unplug everything, and then plug it back in so we are starting fresh. After all, what could go wrong? Those of you with pellet poopers probably know the answer to this, but don't ruin it for everyone else. The good old DLX starts up, and begins feeding pellets into the burn pot, the fan kicks on, and in short order we have climbing temps again. Phineas J. Whoopee, you're a genius! And the temp is still climbing. 275°, 300°, 325° and it's also getting louder. Hmm... We'd better take a look in there and see what's going on. Boy, there sure is a lot of bright orange under the heat deflector. I wonder what that means?
At this point I decided that I had seen all there was to see in my colon, and it was now time to look elsewhere for the answers to this problem.
First off, SAVE THE MEAT! On to the sheet pan it goes. Next up, save the temp probes and the Fireboard. With those secure, it's now time to deal with that other little problem I have.
I did take the time to get a picture, and for those of you that don't know, this is what a pile of stupid, combined with a handful of bad decisions looks like up close and personal, this is it.
Like the farmer said when his cow died. Huh, she ain't never done that before.
Luckily for me my dear Mother often battled for the title of Queen of the Kitchen Fire, so this was not my first time on this ride. Lid goes down, power is disconnected. That should cut the air supply down by a lot. Next, grab the hose. Yeah dummy, it's Winter in Wisconsin. The hose got put away a month ago. And why exactly do you think spraying water at a fire with a fair amount of grease in it is going to be a good idea? Oh, by the way, there is an ABC fire extinguisher, about 10 feet away, maybe grab that instead. Again, you have studied your colon in great detail, there is nothing more to see there.
So, with the fire extinguisher in hand I did a mental check of my situation. There was no longer flames coming out of every crack and gap. That's a good thing. The source of the fire is under the heat shield, so there is no good way to get at it with the extinguisher anyway. Plus, to try and put the fire out means opening the lid and give my little orange monster a big rush of fresh air. Umm... I think we're going to take a step back and see how this plays out. All said and done, this was probably the best decision I made in the last couple of minutes. The fire put itself out, and I don't have to go search for the thread where CaptainMike explains how to clean up the mess a fire extinguisher makes. Life is good.
I know the real question here is, how did the pork turn out? Well, I'll tell you. After finishing getting it up to temp in the oven, it was pretty good. There was not a lot bark, but some. The smoke profile was very light, but it was there. And after mixing in most of the sparge from the SV plus a little BBQ sauce, the end result was a perfectly eatable, and moist pulled pork. Not my best, but far from my worst. Normally I QVQ instead of SVQ meats, and I may stick with that going forward, but given what it took to get there, I was happy with the results. I was out time at this point, so no plated pics.
Comment