British BBQ Society Forums

Hi everyone.

OK, so my first foray into the big leagues is approaching. I've ordered 3 pork butts which are about 6-7lbs each from my butcher.

I'm going to put them in my Excel20 and was wondering if anyone could give me a run down of the timeline for these things.

Like, if i light at 00:00 and put them in at 01:00, what temperature do i need to let them get to? How long should it stay there for? How long do you guys rest them for?

I'd like to get a really thick crispy outside. I have enough meat for the party to make sure everyone gets some innards, but if i can give people a clink of charred goodness from the outards, I'll be happy.

I wasn't going to brine mine at all, just get them from the butcher, let them get to temperature and put them in.

Cheers for your advice.

Hi Harry,

2 things are a must IMHO for pulled pork.

• A good injection marinade
• A Rub with enough sugar to ensure the maillard effect works well on your meat.

Pork isn't the most flavourful of meats and a simple marinade will not penetrate deep enough into the meat to get the flavour all the way in there, this is why you should inject it. You can pick up a meat injector very cheaply from a cook shop, online or in department stores. As for a marinade, you can go as simple as injecting with apple juice, cider or coke (I love telling people I'm going hope to inject coke into my butt ) or you can find a more sophisticated marinade. I have a couple of beauties but they have to be cooked then cooled before injecting so I don't know if you could be arsed doing that. For a 7lb butt Id likely inject the best part of a pint of marinade in, it's very difficult to over inject pork butt.

The maillard effect is the brwoning on the surface that gives you your bark. It is a reaction between the amino acids in the meat and sugars. You'll find you get it without adding sugar beacuse of the naturally occuring sugars in the meat, but a sweet rub will give you much better bark, colour and flavour. Pork will take a lot of sweetness in the rub. I actually rub mine with a sweet rub then add demerrera sugar over the top.


Going on to your other questions...

Internal temperature will vary depending on how you cook it, if you go at a solid 225F-250F cooking temperature you'll probably find they're done around 195F. If you power cook in the 300F range you'll find that they might need to go as high as 210F. The sure way to know they're done is when that probe slides in like a warm knife into butter.

The best way to cook PP would be to get it to between 160F & 170F and hold it there for 12hours but this isn't really possible. The reason for this is that this is the temperature range where the collagen and connective tissue in the butt breakdown and soak through the muscle flavours and this brings me on to the plateu. When you're pork get s to aroung 160-170 the temperature is going to stop rising, and may even drop a couple of degrees, and this will continue for a good couple of hours. Don't worry about this, it's just what I mentioned above happening, as the collagen breaks down, water is released into the muscles and cools them.

As for resting, if you foil it, wrap it in a towel and bang it in a pre-warmed cooler, you can rest it for several hours. I like to rest mine for at least three.

Last tip, if you want a really thick bark, then don't foil your butt during the cooking process, this will soften the bark. Personally I prefer to foil, I've done lots with and without foil, but I think that the advantages of foiling outweigh the disadvantages but each to his own, there's a lot of experimenting that could be done.

Hope that helps.

Steve

I think Steve is right on with his advice -- other than the foiling part, that is .

For marinade, I like to use apple juice and beer. You can also add some of your rub, but make sure it has been ground to a pretty fine powder. You can do that with a mortar and pestle, then put it through a sieve. To be honest, I seldom inject if I'm just cooking at home. But a lot of folks think it is a "must-do", particularly for competitions.

My rub is sweet / spicy. My basic rub is 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup paprika, 1tbsp each onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and chile powder. For a spicier rub, add 1 tsp cayenne powder.

You can figure, with the smoker at 225 - 240 degrees, the butts will take right around 1 1/2 hours per pound. As Steve mentioned, the meat will get up to around 265 then sit there for at least a few hours. Just when you think it will never be ready on time, the internal temperature will start rising, sometimes at the rate of 1-2 degrees every 5 minutes or so. To get it to pulling consistency, leave it on the smoker till it hits 195, although you could take it off at 190 . I don't know about the probe going through butter, but if you think it is ready, give the bone a pull. If it starts pulling out easily, it is done.

I try to never foil the pork unless absolutely necessary to speed up the cooking. Leaving it unfoiled gives it a better bark, I think.

Agree with you on the bark point Mike.

I see foil doing the following:

Good
* Speed up the cooking process
* Protect the meat from the smoke
* Braise the meat in its internal juices and help it retain moisture
Bad
* Steam some of the flavor out of the pork
* Soften any bark

Some people are foilers, some people are foil haters. My view is foil is your friend, I use a foil marinade and I think it adds another dimension to the flavour around the outer sections of the meat. I can sacrifice the crispiness of the bark for that. I still find that I have an acceptable bark.

Cool, that's just what i was looking for!

I'm really looking forward to this. I've got about £100 worth of meat to cook, i feel about 12 again. Like when i knew i had the Millenium Falcon Lego set for Christmas tomorrow!

Anyone know a good beer keg supplier in the west midlands?

Cheers!

Big Daddy Walters Boston Butt

For the rub
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup bakers chcolate
1/3 cup garlic salt
1/3 cup kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Pork injection
3/4 cup apple juice

1 Boston bone in Butt

Inject Boston Butt evenly with injection . Apply a generous amount of rub onto meat. Pat so the rub will adhere. Place in a smoker and cook with indirect heat for 12 hours on 250°F. When done, the pork should pull off the bones easily. The internal temperature of the pork should reach 195°F.

How close to the bone should I place the prob to the bone in my pork butt? Worried if I put it to close that it will give me a wrong reading?

Tucker wrote:How close to the bone should I place the prob to the bone in my pork butt? Worried if I put it to close that it will give me a wrong reading?

Just avoid touching the bone with the thermometer probe and you'll be fine. Get as close to the center of your joint as you can.

So I cooked my 7lb pork butt for 11.5 hours between 225 and 250, I injected the but with 1 pint of marinade before the cooking and put a dry rub over the outside. Once the butt reached 190 I took it off the smoker and wrapped it in tin foil and placed it in a cooler box for 2 hours. The bone pulled straight out however the meat didn't fall apart that easy and was a bit dry.

Any ideas why?

It may not have been cooked quite enough, or it could have been a joint without enough collagen in to keep it moist. I assume you didn't foil it during the cook, I always foil when the butt gets the colour I want.

Also I inject much more than you did, I'll put a couple of pints in a Butt that size. I use a brine pump to do this easily.