Cooked 9.5 lb pork shoulder using this site's recipe. Weber kettle with Smokenator and water pan on top of the grate. Used Kingsford blue bag charcoal and hickory chunks. Maverick digital remote thermometer. Ambient temperature was 90 degrees with high humidity. Rain shower in the final hour of the cook but did not seem to affect grill temp. Average cook temp was 235 degrees.
Expected close to a 12 hour cook with a shoulder of this size. After 8.5 hours it stalled at 181 degrees. The stall lasted about an hour. Then it jumped from 181 to 205 in less than 20 minutes. It was boneless so I used the fork method to confirm tenderness. By the time I took it off the grill it was at 207. It finished well ahead of our schedule dinner party so I kept it in a faux cambro for 2 hours and 45 minutes. The shoulder maintained at 194 degrees in the cambro.
Great bark, great aroma, great taste. However, when I pulled the pork it pulled easily until the bottom third of the shoulder. That far down it was hard to pull and was not particularly tender.
This is only my second pork shoulder so perhaps all of this is typical but was curious about how fast a shoulder this size cooked, the short stall at 181, the quick jump from 181 to 205, and the tough pull at the bottom of the shoulder. Something amiss in my technique or just the way this particular shoulder cooked?
Expected close to a 12 hour cook with a shoulder of this size. After 8.5 hours it stalled at 181 degrees. The stall lasted about an hour. Then it jumped from 181 to 205 in less than 20 minutes. It was boneless so I used the fork method to confirm tenderness. By the time I took it off the grill it was at 207. It finished well ahead of our schedule dinner party so I kept it in a faux cambro for 2 hours and 45 minutes. The shoulder maintained at 194 degrees in the cambro.
Great bark, great aroma, great taste. However, when I pulled the pork it pulled easily until the bottom third of the shoulder. That far down it was hard to pull and was not particularly tender.
This is only my second pork shoulder so perhaps all of this is typical but was curious about how fast a shoulder this size cooked, the short stall at 181, the quick jump from 181 to 205, and the tough pull at the bottom of the shoulder. Something amiss in my technique or just the way this particular shoulder cooked?
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