Getting set for a Saturday experiment: cutting a 7.4lb/3.4kg boneless pork butt into two pieces so that I can do one in the pellet smoker and the other in my new SnS kettle with charcoal & wood chunks for a direct comparison. Here's yon butt:
Is there any particular preferred direction when cutting one of these in half? My initial thought is just right down the middle from left to right in this view...
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
Looks to me like the fat runs top to bottom in the photo. I'd be tempted to cut that direction, probably along the heavy fat that sticks straight down from the black/white border on the label. I'd cut along the left side of the fat.
You want each half to have similar profiles of each section of the butt so your experiment is fair. I would find the money muscle and cut it in half there.
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Yeah, agree, you have to find a seam. Normally, the ones I do are diagonal, but after cutting, it is close to being 1/2. That shoulder bone is what I feel for, and then evaluate my cut from there.
Thanks folks... my primary goal is for the two pieces to be as nearly identical as practical. For that reason cutting across seams rather than with them might be preferable, no? I guess I'm thinking of an analogy with a brisket - if one separated along the major fat seam then the point and flat would behave quite differently during cooking. Presumably pig shoulder muscles aren't quite so well-delineated? I have no real idea.
Great weather on tap for Saturday, looking forward to this experiment!
With brisket, you have 2 muscles (no bone), so, in theory, you can just slice down the middle, but a lot of people separate the two muscles out. With a pork shoulder, you have a bone. As I commented above, find the bone, and evaluate your cut. I have to slice my shoulders diagonally because of that bone.
Of course, now I see your shoulder is boneless... so, just approximate your cut for 1/2... and go for it! You may need to tie it together? Hopefully your halves stay in a decent form/shape. If not, it's ok!
I think you need to make a judgement call once you open the cryovac. Boneless butts often are sorta wanting to fall apart where they cut the bone out, and if you cut it the wrong way in relation to that, you may end up with a half that falls apart into several pieces. Only time I did boneless butts from Costco I had to tie them up with twine.
Agree with this. If you just slice down the middle, you may wind up with a bunch of smaller chunks that are halfway hanging off (don't ask me how I know...).
Best to try to separate out the individual muscles by following the seams. Otherwise, just split in half and hope you can tie them up well before they break apart into even smaller chunks
No, definitely won't be mixing them back together, I want to taste the difference between the half cooked on the pellet smoker vs the one cooked on the SnS kettle w/charcoal and wood chunks. For SCIENCE!
Okey doke, this morning I opened up the package to have a look. First up was to trim the fat cap, and as predicted, there is a definite separation where the bone used to be. But it's very asymmetrical, and I don't want to separate there. So I did a brute-force cut straight across the piece, dividing the money muscle between the two pieces. The one is definitely discombobulated compared to the other, and so I'll likely tie them both into roughly equant shapes before cooking tomorrow.
Trimmed off a good bit of the fat cap as well, it was pretty thick.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's thread, when one of these goes on the SnS kettle and the other on the Pit Boss vertical p-smoker...
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