How best to cut large butt into two smaller pieces?

[abandonedbrain]

OK, it seems the pigs in our neck of the woods are all raised to be giants, as I can never find a butt when they're on sale which is smaller than 8 lbs! So I have a 9 lb butt which I'm hoping to smoke tomorrow (weather permitting, and it's not looking great, rain and temps dropping from 60s today to 30s tomorrow). After my last run with a 9 pounder (15.5 hours on a Weber kettle), I thought it might be prudent to cut this bad boy in half, to speed up time and get more bark!

Since I'm not taking this back to a butcher to cut, I want to know how best to cut this. The butt has its bone in, and I thought to keep it in (though it might still be frozen by tomorrow). I don't have a pic of the current butt, but my last one was almost the same, so I'll include the pic.

Should I use Cut A (and then toss the bone out), or Cut B? If Cut B, keep or toss the bone?

[MBMorgan]

Unless you own a meat saw, I'd go with "Cut B" (just missing the bone) ... then leave the bone in to preserve the physical integrity of the butt.

[MBMorgan]

... oh but the cleanup!

[abandonedbrain]

Looking at the cut, I like your thinking of using the bone, as that will likely make a split of 65/35 for the two pieces. Maybe add a couple of loops of butcher's string to keep both pieces from flopping around on the grate... Yeah. Sounds like a plan, thanks!

[Darchie03]

MBMorgan, Wish I had seen this post before I but the butt on the grill this AM. Oh Well.
Dave

[Huskee]

I always cut B...or B-ish. I don't worry about the bone. If it's close to the edge, oh well. If it's centered in the half, oh well. Never noticed a difference regarding bone placement, there's way too much going on in the cook and the cambro hold for the bone's precise location to matter much in the end product. I never cook a butt over 3.5 to 5lbs. I love the seasoning-, smoke-, and bark-to-interior meat ratio this gives me.

[abandonedbrain]

Well, if you watched ESPN at all earlier today, you saw the weather in Kalamazoo, MI (Western Michigan University's home); wet snow, 20+ MPH winds all day coming from several different directions... nasty. I'm north of KZoo, same weather. I decided I didn't want to fight snow/rain, wind, and 28F with an unprotected Weber kettle grill for 15+ hours (my last 9# smoked butt took 15.5 hours to get to 200F in the summer). I called it at 5AM.

So I'm thinking about trying it tomorrow; same wind and temps, but likely dry. I'll split the butt, get it on smoke for about four hours, then likely transfer to the oven indoors with a water drip tray under the pieces on the grate. At least I'll be able to hold a consistent temp.

Wish me luck! This time next year I'll have a pole barn built, and I'm planning to have an earthen embankment built up for protection of the new pit.

[Huskee]

Greetings neighbor to the south. I'm NE of you, up near Clare.

[abandonedbrain]

Awesome, we have a family cottage up in Harrison! I'm actually in Lowell, near Ionia. Enjoy the snow!

[abandonedbrain]

So I'm thinking about trying it tomorrow; same wind and temps, but likely dry. I'll split the butt, get it on smoke for about four hours, then likely transfer to the oven indoors with a water drip tray under the pieces on the grate. At least I'll be able to hold a consistent temp.

Well, I may have forced my wife to start divorce proceedings. Bringing the meat into the house after four hours of smoke outside filled the house with... burnt applewood smoke smell. This is great when you're outside, but it's quite a different experience when it's inside for hours on end.

Powering through the stall right now on the smaller of the two pieces (probably started around 3.5 lbs.), not wrapped but running in the stove at 250F (probe-temp) with the meat on the upper grate, drip pan below with water in it. We'll see how things work out. It's meat, can't be all bad, right?!

[Mr. Bones]

It'll be fine here directly. An' that smoke smell, I love it inside, especially when it's bitter out, and I don't wanna go out at all. Ain't got me no wife, t' tell me any different. :-)

[abandonedbrain]

And it was, once the meat got warm enough to start smelling like MEAT instead of smoke. About 80oz collected in vacuum-seal bags, and about 8oz in a plastic container for my lunch tomorrow... so 5.5 lbs. from an 8.9 lb. bone-in butt. I figure I shaved off about a solid 1 lb. of fat, maybe a bit more. I didn't take any pictures at all, as it was done exactly the same as my last one (including seasoning), which I posted tons of pics of in this thread:

https://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/forum/the-pit-mastery-program/porknography-ribs-pulled-pork-ham-etc/222186-first-pork-shoulder-butt-yay-but-the-dang-stall-two

I pulled the meat from the grill at 4 hours; air temps never got above 28F here today, and there was a decent amount of wind. I just couldn't keep the coals going well; the Weber kettle kept dropping below 190F, so I would've been smoking until the next day if I stayed outside trying to control that burn.

I finished the meat in my stove, with the two chunks set directly on one grate, and a drip pan with water on the other sitting under the meat. I kept the oven at 270F after the stall on the small chunk; the oven actually checked to 255-260F via my ET-732 (which has been about 1-2F under what my Thermapen Mk III checks in at). Time to calibrate my stove! I then raised it to 285F (270-275F actual) for the last hour on each (dropped it back to 270F when I pulled the small one out).

Total time: small chunk - 10.5 hours, large chunk - 13 hours. I let the small chunk go to 203F, the large one got pulled at 201F with the bone releasing cleanly.

Time to get the cleaning finished!

[Dr ROK]

I always cut my butts in half to get more bark. It doesn't speed the cook time much since the meat is still as thick as it originally was. I cut on kind of an angle to get a big hunk of meat with no bone, and a big hunk of meat with a bone. I mix the meat from the two after it's pulled.

[abandonedbrain]

Yep, that's what I ended up doing (the cut), but I didn't mix the two, as I had to get that first piece sealed up and frozen. The larger piece did end up a bit drier than the smaller one, but the leftovers I ate tonight still tasted spectacular.

[scottranda]

Cut B. Eyeballed.