... if I cut a pork shoulder in half? I love pulled pork, but there's no way my wife and I can cope with 12-14 lbs of it, which is what they have at Costco at the moment. My thought was to cook half, freeze half, on the theory that, whatever effect freezing might have on the frozen half, it would still be better cooked from scratch sometime in the future, rather than as an additional six pounds of left-overs (which would also get frozen).
Glad for any thoughts or advice. Which would you rather have: six pounds of frozen, cooked pork shoulder, or six pounds of frozen, raw pork shoulder?
That is a good point! Duh! HorseDoctorBaltassar You do have two 7 pound butts in that package. However, you can still split those too. Make one and freeze the other. Good call Doc!
Honestly I don't know. I just looked at the package. Not sure what the normal weight is. Up to now my only experience has been eating the stuff :-) But it would be like Costco to take two six-pound chunks of meat and make you buy both of them.
That is where I get all of the meat I cook. There are two 6 to 7 lbs shoulders in that package. Cook them both. What the heck? Who doesn't love some left over pulled pork? Baltassar
Lots of uses for pork shoulder. I recently bought one of those boneless packs at Costco. Made some char siu with some. Made Italian sausage with some. Froze the rest in 2 lb packs awaiting a future call to duty.
I have an 8 pounder in the freezer now that I plan on doing SV then smoke on the Lang for the holiday weekend. I can not tell a difference in fresh or frozen.
I will cook this one in the water at 155 for 36 hours then cool the meat back off in an ice bath and fridge. When I go to the smoker I will try to go for about 160 IT or when the bark looks good. The last one I did was done at 155 IT and had a good bark. It fell apart it was so tender.
It was very good, the long time in the water seemed to amp up the flavor from the rub also so it was the best that I have done so far, very tasty and very juicy we saved some of it in the freezer to use in beans so some of that will go in the baked beans this weekend.
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I have no qualms about freezing for the future. If it will be frozen for months, wrap as tightly as you can and get as much air out of the package as you can before freezing.
You could be right about that Ron, sometimes you can't tell how many pieces are in those cryovac packages. I don't usually buy my butts from Costco just because they are so big, I think the smallest one that I have seen there is around 14 lbs buy they all look like one big hunk of meat. I may just have to get one and if it is one big hunk of meat cut it in half and have 2 7 pounders to cook. Never thought about that.
I'd cut those bad boys in half, dry brine and rub them all, and then put one in the smoker and the other 3 in the freezer individually wrapped and ready to go as needed. I do this all the time and it works great.
stever Sounds like the right approach for me. I don't know what's in the bags at Costco, other than 12-14 lbs of meat. But I figure to just cut it into useable-size pieces and go from there. My wife says bring on the left-overs, so ...
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