Family Pork Butt

[binarypaladin]

I think I did fine on the temp. It took time to get to 165, but the water was around 130 from the start. Additionally, when I smoked it, I ended up hitting right around 180 anyway so everything should be dead.

[binarypaladin]

At the end of the day, good insulation and a lid are imperative for big cooks. The cooler is brilliant. I think I'm going to nab one this weekend. I ate leftover pork basically all week and was not sad in the least.

[Oozzy]

Okay, I could not figure out how to start a new post, so I will put it here and hopefully get a response from some of the seasoned veterans. I have a 3.5 lbs Snake River Farms collar I am smoking this weekend for pulled pork, I am hoping I can get a rough estimate on the time it will take to smoke at 225. We are going up to our townhouse in State College and I do not want it to finish while I am playing golf and have to relay on my girlfriend or one of her family members to care for the hunk of meat.

[dtassinari]

binarypaladin If it was 8-10 gallons of water and you left it uncovered, then yeah, I'm not surprised it took that long: the maths works out (1 kW for 6 hours to increase water temperature by 35 F = 20 C gives about 82 litres or 21.5 gallons, so you lost about half your energy to evaporation, dispersion and warming up the meat, which is about typical).

I think your arms and back are a better judge of weight than your eye. 16 lbs of meat, plus 8 gallons of water, plus the weight of the container adds up to over 100 lbs. I trust your avatar but I wonder how easy it was to move around

fzxdoc makes a great point about food safety: in this case I think you were ok because your water was at 130 and rising, and because you had two pieces next to each other instead of a massive shoulder, but yeah, generally speaking it's a better idea to get the water up to temp and break up larger chunks. Plus, I understand the convenience of plonking your cryovac-ed meat straight in, but I prefer to do my trimming with raw meat.

I am exactly talking about the cheap-o flimsy coolers boxes: they're waterproof and a lot more solid than they look, and they make amazing faux cambros as well.

Big polycarbonate containers are the gold standard in commercial kitchens, and I have a large gastronorm-sized one that I use for this purpose. When I want to pull all the stops I nest it inside one of the cheap coolers and it basically holds the temp by itself.

[fzxdoc]

One thing to keep in mind, binarypaladin , from a food safety viewpoint, is that the very center of any food put into the sous vide bath has to come up to 130°F within 6 hours, according to Douglas Baldwin, sous vide food safety expert. He recommends that large pieces of meat be cut into smaller chunks to make this happen.

I like the Lipavi polycarbonate containers with lids that I bought at Amazon. I have the smaller and a larger one. I use the smaller one for longer pieces like pork tenderloins as well as for pieces that are too large to fit into the stockpot. I use the extra large one when sous vide-ing several pieces of meat, like pastrami. The lids fit nicely and work great with no evaporation, at least over the 36 hour cooks I've done.

Small Lipavi with Lid: 3 gallons (12 qts) 13" wide 10" long 8" high

Large Lipavi with Lid: 6.5 gallons (26 qts) 13" wide 21" long 8" high

Kathryn

[binarypaladin]

I used a pretty large container. As soon as I start measuring things in gallons, the likelihood of reduction is pretty low. Haha.

As for the stall on the sous-vide, I think I was working around 10 gallons, but maybe 8. There were no markings on the container, I just had to find something that would fit. It was way deeper than it needed to be though. The hottest water from my tap is right around 130ºF. It took hours to climb. The butt was fridge temp when I put it in and I didn't wait for the water to come to temp first. (I generally don't on cooks over 90ish minutes.)

I'll check again on my next big cook. It's possible it was the result of me getting the WiFi notification late or something but when I was downstairs checking it periodically, it was rising really slowly.

My next kitchen upgrade is going to be a better sous-vide container. Some kind of hard polycarbonate unit and maybe something with one of those expanding racks and a lid. Although I hadn't considered polystyrene. You're talking about those white, cheap, throwaway coolers, right? (Of course, Google answered that for me.)

I don't mind the two butts. I like more surface area anyway. But I'll keep in mind that's what's in there. I remember thinking, "Man, that must have been a huge pig."

[binarypaladin]

Well, that answers that. I feel a bit silly now.

[ecowper]

That's two butts ... Costco sells pork butts in a two pack with bone removed. :-)

[dtassinari]

binarypaladin That looks like two butts in a single pack: it seems to be pretty common. I wonder if the "loose connection" you saw was just gunk that gave the appearance of it sticking together. Anyway, no trouble there.

The bag incident isn't so bad: water doesn't really come gushing in, you just have some dilution of the juices (and lose some of your purge to the bathwater). No reason to throw away the contents of the bag, just reduce them and resign yourself to having less.

I'm a bit more curious about the "stall" you mention between 130 and 165 F, because that's way too long for anything under 20 gallons What are the mechanics here? Is your hot water 130 F, so you fill your container from the tap and bring it to temp with the Anova? Or did you get the water up to temp, drop the meat in, notice that it dropped to 130 and it took hours to climb back to 165? What container did you end up using?

The single most important thing you can do to reduce heat dispersion is to cover your water bath with plastic wrap to reduce evaporation, especially at relatively higher temperatures like 165. (Of course it wouldn't really matter if you cooked a steak at 131 F for an hour.) This is absolutely paramount in case you're using a wide shallow container like a half-filled cooler, because it's the surface area at the water/air interface that matters. So, for instance, if you're using an open container, a tall round pot is more heat efficient than a wide rectangular box. I cannot overstate how much of a difference this makes: cover your containers, people!

The second most important thing you can do is to use an insulated container (covered, of course!). For some reason I can't find them with a quick amazon search, but most restaurant supply stores have 24"x16"x12" polystyrene containers that cost a few bucks and are perfect for this job. Not the fancy Cambro ones with indentations to slide hotel pans in them: just crappy little boxes of 1/2" thick polystyrene with removable lids. They will easily contain 4 gallons of water plus 20 lb of meat, which is round about the limit of what an Anova can comfortably heat and circulate. You can even cut a hole in the lid to accommodate your circulator so you don't need to worry about plastic wrap.

Or you could buy a 20 qt Rubbermaid container with a lid. That's more expensive for less capacity and worse heat retention, but it can double as your bacon/corned beef curing vessel if you can fit it in your fridge

[binarypaladin]

You can actually see the line down the middle where it split. It was connected though, just loosely.

[binarypaladin]

The butt was whole. It pretty much "fell" in half after I took it out of the broken sous-vide bag. I cut it a little. I also cut off the mushy tip that was the most directly exposed to the water.

The butt was 16 lbs. I got the biggest one I could from Costco.

[HouseHomey]

Was that 16pounder cut in half already! That's usually the case. Great write up! I've done that SV pork now 3times but shut them into smaller pieces.

[HouseHomey]

Looks like a fine breakfast. What do you mean?

[Hulagn1971]

Excellent write up. Where in the world did you find a 16lb. pork butt? Largest I've seen around here are 9-10lbs.

[Danjohnston949]

binarypaladin, Just what fuzzydaddy Said! I appreciated your description of the Souix Veee Doooo Process! I have a New Unused Joule still in the Box❓
I just don't PARLEEE VOOO SOUIX VEEE DOOO so Gutte❓
Eat Well and Prosper! From a Backyard Cremator in Fargo ND, Dan