Sorry dudes, I spent the entire weekend feeding ~130 people at the Granite Curling Club in Seattle, breakfast/lunch/dinner, and slacked on the picture posting. I was starting to feel like a caterer, though I am far from. Along with the ~70lbs of smoked pork shoulder I also roasted ~80lbs of NY Strip Loin.
Anyway, everyone LOVED the pulled pork, especially with
Jeff's BBQ sauce and Dutch's beans. In fact I got more compliments on the beans than the meat lol. I also made a super spicy version of Jeff's sauce; Amazing.
Overall the shoulders took about 12 hours. I'm STILL having problems getting the
AMNPS to work in my MES, but I plan to keep at it. I tried to cook at 250, but once I put that much meat in the MES it never got back up to temp. I'd say it was about ~225 most of the time, at least that's what the internal thermo reported, I have a feeling it was actually hotter. I tried real hard not to open it too much. No foil, no flip. Here is a pic after ~6 hours.
Once done I let them chill bit, covered in towels.
It took me about 40 minutes to pull by hand, and at least 40 to clean up. I agree with those who say don't use claws because when doing by hand it's easier to pull out the large fat chunks. You can see I also set the burnt ends aside; they were gobbled up super fast.
So my biggest lesson learned .... ~70lbs of pork shoulder creates a LOT of fat and juice. The main grease trap over flowed, the smaller lower trap also overflowed, and grease was running down the back porch toward the hot tub. It was messy, but actually turned out to be a good thing. I started collecting it, so when I got done I had a large amount of fat and juice, or as I call it meat jello once it congeals. I used this when reheating later, and in beans, and other applications. I can not stress enough the amazingness of the meat jello.
As I type this I'm drinking Bourbon and watching a cheesy Christmas movie to let my feet rest from being on them all weekend .... and perhaps a pulled pork taco or two. :-)
