I plan on smoking 2 8# picnic shoulders for Christmas..I'm going to have to smoke them 2 days in advance because of other committments on Christmas Eve..
Do I let them sit/refridgerated and pull them on Christmas day or pull them after smoking and heat them up later?
Thanks
Pull immediately after resting for a few hours in foil/towels and cover or bag and chill in a shallow layer for rapid chilling if serving at a later date. Three reasons:
1) cooling the whole picnic to safe temps after resting will ride in the danger zone temps too long before it reaches a refrigerated temp below 40* internal;
2) reheating will take almost as long as it took you to smoke it, and, this is passing it through the danger zone temps yet again (reheat to 160* minimum, treated as leftovers);
3) pulling the meat cold will be difficult at best...it will pull much easier while it's still reasonably hot.
Reheating should be reasonably fast, but not so fast that it heats through unevenly and/or dries out the meat. If oven or smoker reheating, a shallow layer of not more than 2 to 2.5" in depth with a covered pan @ 250* will do nicely. Probe the meat to be sure it has reached the minimum 160* temp when reheating prior to serving. Crock pots, slow cookers and roaster ovens can all be used for reheating as well. For deeper layered meats with reheating such as in crock pots, you may opt to fold the meat occasionally during reheating to avoid cold spots in the meat, but use a bit higher temp to accomplish a reasonable reheat time. I shoot for 2 hours max on reheat times, but do some in 60-75 minutes...just me. I do prefer a shallow layer and just let it heat through on it's own without disturbing the meat.
Eric
