Well, Friday evening was my first taste of failure (figuratively speaking). I had a request for a smoked pork loin for a family get-together. Dinner was supposed to be at 7, but my cook went about an hour over. I've done a couple of pork loins before, and they both went right at 2 hours at 250 degrees. The loin I cooked on Friday may have been slightly bigger than the previous two, but I didn't bother looking at the actual weight on the tag, since I was in a big hurry to get the smoker set up and get it cooking. So, I guess you could call that mistake #1. My next mistake was probably the one that hurt the most - I decided to take a quick shower and get ready for the event, which means for the first 20 minutes, I wasn't watching the temp on my smoker. By the time I got out to check on it, the temp had drifted down around 230. I ramped it back up to 250, but it was too little, too late. I went ahead and put the glaze on, when the IT hit 125 on my probe. I was thinking I was still right on time, but to my dismay, the temp stalled at 125 for a while, before continuing to rise. When the probe said 145, I pulled the loin, thinking everything was OK. I was only 15 minutes behind at this point - or so I thought. I put the loins on the counter and went to double check the IT with a pen type probe. As soon as I pushed the probe in, I could tell something was wrong - just from the way it felt when I stuck the probe in. Sure enough, IT was only 135. Somehow my cooking probe was almost a full 10 degrees off. Frustrated, I tossed the loins in the oven to finish them, but they ended up being about an hour too late. Fortunately, there was already brisket and plenty of sides to feed everyone, but I'm still pretty disappointed with the whole deal - especially since I didn't realize there was a problem until the very end.
I guess the moral of the story is that smoking meats is not something you can put together last minute. If you don't have time to do it, don't let family members talk you into trying to pull it off. On the bright side, I did learn some valuable lessons. Not to mention, I do have a whole smoked pork loin in the fridge that I don't have to share - which slightly offsets the shot my ego took when I had to admit failure. I apologize for the long rant, but I really needed to let off some steam about this. Besides, I feel like you guys might understand the feeling better than anyone else!
I guess the moral of the story is that smoking meats is not something you can put together last minute. If you don't have time to do it, don't let family members talk you into trying to pull it off. On the bright side, I did learn some valuable lessons. Not to mention, I do have a whole smoked pork loin in the fridge that I don't have to share - which slightly offsets the shot my ego took when I had to admit failure. I apologize for the long rant, but I really needed to let off some steam about this. Besides, I feel like you guys might understand the feeling better than anyone else!
