Does a bone conduct heat inward?

[pbpruett]

Greetings!
I have a question for the community. I recently moved from Atlanta to Knoxville and haven't been able to fire up the smoker (camp chef smoke vault) during the transition but got a chance this weekend. I bought a 2 pack of pork shoulders to make pulled pork. When I opened the package,I discovered that the shoulders had been deboned. I thought, "Great, I can just tie these up and they will cook faster." I have cooked tons of bone in shoulders and have a good sense how long they take. These bad boys took 6 hours longer to come to temp. I slept on the couch and set an alarm to monitor my Temps overnight. My question is... Do you think the bone makes the meat cook faster? I know they don't impart much flavor but are they conducting heat inward? Could you add in a bone to cook meat faster? Maybe my lack of sleep has me thinking strangely.

Just curious. Might try to insert a shoulder blade between the point and flat of my next brisket to speed up the process.

[Jerod Broussard]

"bones heat at a different rate than muscle tissue because they are filled with air or fat, so in most cases they warm more slowly than the rest of the meat"

Thickness determines cooking time. The above quote is from the link below next to the T-bone pic.


http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_tech...f_cooking.html

[pbpruett]

I read the bone article too. That was referring to a hot grilling method and not low and slow. My question was kind of poised at the end of that piece but not really answered. Anyone else seen this? Or did I just have a strange cook.

[Huskee]

I've also read that bones heat up slowly but then retain more heat, thus speeding cooking,

Check this out, from http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_tech...is_better.html

"Bones can have an impact on heat transmission. Some bones, particularly those that have a honeycomb like interior, are slow to heat up because they are a Styrofoam-like insulator filled with air pockets. Then when they get hot, they can retain heat longer than the meat. It's sort of like a pizza stone. If you throw it in the oven, turn on the oven, and then add the pizza, the stone will be cool and the bottom of the pizza undercooked. But if you let the stone heat up for at least 30 minutes, it will crisp the bottom of the dough, and if you serve the pizza on the stone it will keep it warm for almost an hour. So, depending on how long you cook, the meat closer to the bone can be slightly more or less cooked than the meat just half an inch away. In the case of a steak, the insulation properties of the bone will leave the meat closest to the bone about 5 to 10°F cooler than the center of the steak. So if you take the steak off at 130°F, medium rare, it may be rare along the bone. That can make it slightly more tender and juicy closer to the bone. Or it can be undercooked and stringy.
If you leave the bones on a big rib roast, they make an effective base upon which to stand the roast (hence the name standing rib roast), and they act like a heat shield, at first blocking heat from below until they get fully hot and then they conduct heat and continue to cook the meat after you take it out of the cooker."

[boftx]

And then we hear that it is difficult, if not impossible, to take the temp of ribs because of the bones. My "common" sense tells me that a bone-in butt will cook somewhat faster than a boneless one. My sense of touch tells me that I can snitch a piece of meat but if I try to hold the bone while doing it I'm going to get burned.

[Huskee]

I think with ribs it's becasue of two things: a) such narrow space of meat between the bones, and b) the bones are either holding cooler, or holding hotter, so throwing off the avg meat temp. I don't know, I've never tried to measure rib temp. I just do bend test and tongue test. Tongue don't lie baby!

[boftx]

Okay, let's think about it a different way. Potato spikes work. And we all know to take the internal temp away from the bone. Those two things suggest to me that a bone-in will cook faster than a boneless.