First Pork Shoulder w/ Q-view

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onoku

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Feb 27, 2011
99
30
Denver, CO
Doing my first shoulder today. They are calling for isolated thunderstorms, so lets hope that they are isolated somewhere else. Got off to a decent start this morning; I got the smoker fired up pretty quickly and the shoulder is on. My ET 73 receiver isn't getting any readings though, so I have to walk outside and look at the transmitter. Kind of defeats the purpose of the damn thing. (edit: my transmitter seems to be giving me too high of readings for internal temperature too, so I'm probably just gonna say screw it and use a manual probe) If everything was working how it was supposed to though, I'd think I was dreaming.

Here's the shoulder all prepped and ready to go


About 3 1/2 hours in. It isn't nearly as blackened as this picture makes it seem.


All done and pulled


This sandwich filled me up real good and was delicious!


I'm quit content with how my first try turned out. Ran into some road blocks, but in the end it was well worth it. I will definitely be trying this again.
 
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Try turning off the transmitter and turning the receiver first then the transmitter or the other way around. How big is the butt? What time did you get started?
 
I don't know if i want to bother too much with the thermo now that the meat is already in. If my gauge on the smoker is right (and I'm pretty sure it is), then the ET73 is 20 degrees too high. The butt is about 3.75 lbs and I put it in at 930 CDT. I'm going to check it at 11 and get a reading with the manual thermometer. 
 
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Since I am smoking my shoulder in the aluminum pan, when I foil it, should I just foil over the pan or foil the shoulder itself?
 
I would change the Batteries and test the MAV in Ice/Boiling water...JJ
 
Yeah, I'm going to test out my maverick later. I just checked the butt though with the manual probe and it is right on target: 160 degrees at an hour and a half in. Since Jeff suggested foiling it at this point to bring it above the plateau and keep in some of the moisture, I poured some beer on top and put foil over the top of my aluminum pan. Not sure if I should be leaving the foil on for the rest of the smoke though, or if I should pull it off in an hour or so.
 
I just checked the smoker again and my charcoal was starting to go out. I stirred up the coals and threw some wood chunks in there. It started coming back up to heat again but I'm not sure if it will hold or not. Any ideas?
 
Looks good. Can't wait to see the results.

On the pit Thermometer most of the ones that come with the smokers are off so I would trust the ET73 over the pit unless you have tested them both and know that its more accurate than the ET.
 
throw a double handful of unlit charcoal in there... You say it got to 160` IT (internal temp) within an hour and a half ??? that seems mighty fast... I would be putting new batteries in Mav. and checking it real quick in boiling water... sounds like you are running pretty hot to get that kinda temp in 1.5 hrs...
 
I just checked again, and in the last hour my meat temp went from 160 to 210!!! That is WAYYY to fast. What do i do?

False alarm. I went back out and checked again, this time probing another section and it is at 182. I am doing boneless, so i must have probed into a gap where there were some juices boiling or something.
 
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Shoulder is doing good so far. I am finding out though, that the temperature you get all depends on where in the meat you stick the probe. Earlier I probed it and it was close to 200 so I started getting stuff ready to pull it out, then I checked it again in a different spot and it was about 185ish.
 
I'm finding out what this stall everyone has been talking about is. My meat has been at 185 for an hour and a half now. 
 
Got through the stall and everything turned out great. Check out the original post for some mouth-watering qview.
 
Congrats on your first shoulder, it looks great 
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