Pork butt on but temp probe LLL

[bgidcumb]

Not wanting to hijack jasonwilliams14 thread so here is similar but needing feedback - I was thawing a 7.75 LB pork butt in the fridge and I thought it was thawed but after I prepped and lit the smoker, got it to temp, put the pork butt on and inserted the probe, the unit was reading LLL. I thought maybe the Inkbird was having an issue with the probe so tried a different port - same thing. Got out a new probe, and same LLL. So I am thinking the middle of the butt is still frozen at this point. Do I leave it alone and let the smoker finish thawing and cooking the hunk of meat or what would you suggest?

Thanks in advance!

[Steve R.]

I cook butts from frozen almost every time nowadays. Leave it alone until the bark forms. Monitoring the IT before then really accomplishes nothing.

[bbqLuv]

Cook Pork butt from frozen, interesting. Do you do any trimming, injecting, and seasoning with rub?

[Steve R.]

bbqLuv there's a whole other thread or two about this, but yeah. I once bought a two pack at Sam's and only needed one. So I got the idea to go ahead and prep both, then put one in the smoker and the other one tightly wrapped into the freezer. No thawing required and you can be ready to cook in the time it takes to heat up the smoker.

[bgidcumb]

Thanks - I appreciate the response. I am concerned with the bark getting too hard and crunchy. Should I spritz with apple cider vinegar and water every so often?

[Steve R.]

I sometimes wrap in foil once the bark is the way I like it, just to speed things up if necessary. That kind of takes care of the crunchy bark.

[Santamarina]

I don’t wrap pork butts during the cook, but i do spritz and keep a full water pan. However, in this case I probably would wrap so the exterior doesn't get too dry. You can always unwrap it near the end of the oook if the bark softened up while wrapped.

[jfmorris]

Too late for my feedback to help, but I have started butts, brisket and ribs from frozen many times, and other than adding an hour to the cook, it doesn't really seem to cause any ill effects. If you could get the probe into the meat, it was not frozen that hard. I've had times I had to wait a couple of hours to add my probes, coming from the deep freeze and -20F. I've gotten probes in successfully when the meat was maybe 25F or so, but not much colder than that.

I don't have an ink-bird, but with my Thermoworks Smoke and Dot thermometers, I only see an LLL if I have a bad probe, where it thinks the probe is reading outside the range of the unit (LLL for too low, HHH for too high I think I've seen both). My probes were always shot and needed replacement, usually from a kinked or damaged probe wire. I hope this issue cleared up for you.