Advice on Pulled Pork

[jlazar]

Great idea. Will do.

[FLBuckeye]

I would read the article on pulled pork

http://amazingribs.com/recipes/porknography/perfect_pulled_pork.html

It answers many of your questions and if you follow it exactly, you will have a great cook. The fat doesn't baste the meat.

[David Parrish]

Sounds good. Cook two. Wrap one. That'll really help show the differences.

[jlazar]

Thanks Pit Boss. I will probably do that on the next one.

[David Parrish]

Great looking pulled pork! Looks like y'all had a great meal.



Sometime when you have longer to cook, you owe it to yourself to cook all the way to 203*F without wrapping in foil. It truly takes pulled pork to another level.

[jlazar]

Guy. Nope, I don't write for a living. But being able to write helped me through my career (24 yrs in Air Force and 15 yrs working for USAA). I have a new (2014) WSM. Did not need a bottom gasket as you indicated. I am retired in San Antonio. First started smoking in mid 70s on a $50 converted oil drum offset. Really didn't smoke again until about 7 years ago when my wife got me a Brinkman electric. Decided on the WSM after reading reviews on this website and the Virtual Weber website. Convinced me I wanted to go back to smoking with charcoal. Most of what I have learned in the past year has been from you folks on this forum.

[Guy]

John, wow do you write for a living?? This was an awesome description. I have modified my WSM too except for the hinge. I have one but have not installed it yet. I don't know if you have a newer WSM than me but the newer ones don't take the gasket on the bottom stack. It does not seem to leak though. John what part of the country are you from if you don't mind me asking.

[Guy]

Penskefile, yeah I had to read it twice again to understand what I wrote. It does not matter now but I thought you split them when they were half cooked already. That is interesting though about the different color meat. Maybe closer the bone darker the meat. Does anyone know about this?

[PenskeFile]

Yes, I definitely would say that splitting the meat was more like cooking two small butts. One point I didn't make above is that the mix of meat types in the two halves were a little different.

I'm probably using the wrong terms here, but the side that did NOT contain the bone was more "white meat" and more consistent. The side that contained the bone had some "darker" meat in it. Both were very good though.

We gave the half that was whiter to some friends, which is why I noticed the difference as I pulled it about a day later.

Not sure what you meant in that last sentence though Guy, can you restate? I split them before cooking and cooked both halfs on the smoker at the same time

[Huskee]

@Guy, I guess that depends on your cooker, if you have a smaller cooker it would likely extend the cook somewhat due to a larger mass of cold meat in it, but in most cases it shouldn't affect the timing much.

[jlazar]

Guy. This is in response to your questions. Never responded to a comment so I'm not sure if this will appear behind your comment or after PenskeFile.

I filled the charcoal ring completely full and then piled some of the charcoal from the middle to the outer edges (I created a small crater about 2 inches deep. I lit a full Weber chimney and let it heat for 30 minutes. When I poured it on the unlit coals, I spread it across the top 1/2-2-3 of the surface. There was a slight mound to the charcoal in the ring with the lit coals on. They were what I would call red hot -- bright orange in color and flaming. Temp went above 230 immediately and I quickly started shutting lower vents. Put meat on immediately and was able to stabilize at 230 within about 20 min by further tweaking the lower vents.

I use a Brinkman charcoal pan as the water pan so I did not have to worry about the water pan resting on or being too close to the hot coals.

After all the cooking was done, I opened all the lower vents and let it run wide open to use all of the charcoal and see how long it would last. I never added any additional charcoal, but did add more wood chunks at 7 in the am. I added cherry chunks before smoking the fatty and sausages.

So from starting the smoke at 10pm the night before, it ran until 6pm the next day at which time the Maverick finally dropped below 230. The main cook was with top wide open and bottom vents around 1/4-1/3 open and temp of 230. Once I foiled the pork, I opened one bottom vent 1/2 way and that took the temp up to about 250 for the next three hours for the pork and two additional hours for the sausages (I was going for 165 for the fatties). I was done cooking at noon and the coals had been going 14 hours. I opened the bottom vents all the way to see how long it would remain over 230. Temp quickly went into the 320s and stayed there before starting to drop between 4-5 pm.

Bottom line - with the charcoal ring completely full (or mounded), I would feel very comfortable in expecting 20 hours of cooking time (but I don't think I will ever need that). I was testing the max time so that the next time I cook overnight I would have some idea of how much charcoal I could remove and be sure to run overnight. My guess is that it would be one unlit chimney and one lit chimney. That should get me easily through the night and then allow me to add more coals as needed the next day.

I should mention that I have modified my WSM with the Cajun door and the gasket kit. Also use the hinge on the lid.

For Huskee: When I opened the 13 pound package from Costco, the pork was already in two pieces. I would guess about 7lb and 6lb. So I cooked two butts not three as you recommended. I trimmed all the fat off and tied with cooking twine. I was going to use some Salt Lick rub but after tasting was afraid it had too much pepper. I used John Henry Pecan Rub instead. Pork was great and John Henry Pecan Rub is great on ribs and chicken, but if I had to do it again, I would try your Huskee Rib Rub. The bark could have used more kick and once pulled, the pepper flavor would have been spread throughout the pork. Lesson Learned.

John

[Guy]

J. can I ask you a few dumb questions? A lot of folks don't say how they started their fire so it was good to hear what you said about it. Did you pour a whole lit chimney on the full unlit coals? I am not sure about what you mean, "as a test I let it keep running empty". Did you let it run out of charcoal and then add more? How much?

Thanks for this great post on your cook.

Guy

[Guy]

Yeah Spinaker, why do you ask about Huskee?

[Guy]

Huskee, have a question and I may know the answer but wanted your input. Just because you cut it into thirds does not mean that you have 3 single butts that will cook in the same time as one, correct. Hope that makes sense after reading it myself not sure. How much time would it take to cook one 4.5 butt vs. three 4.5 butts?

Guy

[Guy]

Glad to hear that experience. I will file it away. This is what I love about this site. You can get experience just by reading. LOL Only cost is the subscription. LOL Do you think spliting the meat was more like cooking two small butts instead of one? Plus I assume they were half done anyway so when split you only had to cook one half of a half.