1st pork butt disaster

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links16877

Newbie
Original poster
Sep 26, 2007
26
10
should of called FEMA... yes it was that bad i have an SnP and i tryed to keep it betwen 225 and 240 it naver worked out that way and it took about 7 hours for a 2 or 3lbs butt. it was good eating it had a good smoke ring to it but i cooked it to about 170 and we put 2 other thermometers and they read 140 my et73 was what i was useing for the meat it showed 170 and then the next day i put it in the oven and it still wold not come apart for pulled pork i think it took so long bc i would open and close the fire box door to try and keep the heat with in the 225-240 it was juicy i sprayed cider on it and flipped it a few time o and there was no bark on it i dont know what i did wrong PLEAS HELP
 
Should not pull it at 170º at any rate needs to be 195º to 205º
Check your them. calibration with boiling water adjusted for altitude.

Don't give up ... keep trying ... you'll get it!
 
Sounds like themometer issues. Sounds like your smoker temps were lower then what they showed. 2-3 lb butt should take about 3-5 hours at 225-240 but if you kept lifting the lid and the therms were off or if it was a particualrly ornery piece of meat it could take that long. Seems like a long time for it just to reach 140 which is probably closer to the correct temp then 170.

I'd check all the thermometer using boling water or freezing water and see if you can calibrate them.
 
i did the hot water thing and it worked good its a [font=arial, helvetica]Maverick ET-73 Redi-Chek. then next day in the oven it would not pull im thinking the meat can u [/font]calibrate the et 73 why would it not pull even after the oven
 
Assuming the 170 in the butt was accurate per the maverick, we can assume that your smoker temp was atleast 170........but probably not much more. A 2 to 3 pound butt out there for 7 hours only to get to 170 was probably cooking at around 170 to 180. In that case, it would pretty well be jerky............putting it in the oven would not have mattered at that stage the damage was done.

Long times at low temps just dry out the meat making pulling unsuccessful.

Just my best guess.
 
the temp in the smoker read arund 200+ but it would go up or down i could not get a stable temp it was not to bad to eat. how could i of got the temp to rase faster in the SNP it looks like it leeks smoke/heat all over im on the edge of giveing up or geting a new smoker
 
It could very well just be that it wasn't up to temp yet. Like everyone else is saying it needs to be around 195-200 for pulling. Sometimes it just takes time. I had a 6lb butt 2 weeks ago that took 18 hours at 235 in my GOSM. That bad boy plateaued at 155 for 6 hours.
 
Also the fact that you didnt finish cooking it till the next day in the oven would probably result in the issue you had.

I dont have a SNP smoker but there are others here who use them. I think I've read of several mods you can make to help regulate the temperatures.
 
I don't think you can achieve the same results with an interrupted cook (2 days)
I'd like to know what temp your oven was set to and how long was the oven portion in time?
 
I think your disaster was just misunderstanding temperatures and not having checked the thermometers first. No biggie next time you'll have it down!
 
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