Alright so I have been posting about how we were throwing a surprise party that will be having between 70-85 people. I figured that to be safe I will have to smoke 8 pork shoulders to have enough meat. I was going to do boneless but forgot how much more they were in price! I'm going to be smoking half one day and the other half another, and then the day of the party, I will be just warming the meat up for devouring time, the reason I'm doing half one day and the other half another is because I only have a MES 30 in and I will only be able to fit four in it at a time( I hope I can do at least that).
Here's my math on how I got 8 pork shoulders will be enough, please correct me if you see anything wrong:
so 8 pork shoulders x 10lbs avg. each = 80lbs raw pork shoulder, after trimming off fat and deboning AND smoking you get a 53% return on eating meat( I saw another guy post how he did 30lbs worth of shoulder and got 16lbs of finish product out of it so 16/30=0.5333333 so its a 53% return).. Multiple 80lbs by 53% and you'll get 42.4 lbs. of finished smoked meat after water lose, fat trim and de-boned... We figured that people will eat between 1/4-1/2 lb. sandwiches... so 1/3 is in the middle... take 42.4 and multiple it by 3 = 127.2 sandwiches worth of meat
How's everything lining up so far??
smoking: I like to smoke at a temperature of 250... I'm stuck on either using a 1:1 ratio hickory & apple wood or use my jack Daniels chips... with this much meat should I even spritz or mop( I prefer spritz)?? I figured doing 4 at a time will increase over all smoking time as well
next thing I need to figure out is should I keep them whole and not shred them until I have warmed them up the day of the party? or just go ahead and shred them into big chucks and then put them in the fridge and the day of the party after warming them up, shred them down completely? I figure it would save on moist in the meat if I leave them whole but to have room to store 8 pork shoulders "whole" is going to be quite challenging.
I'm going to have a tin pan to caught all the juices and dripping from them smoking, and I was going to mix them with a little apple juice and add it too the warming meat as well, does that sound good?? Or should I change something with that?
We are going to( I hope) barrow those big electric roaster pans from our church and That's how I'm going to warm up the meat and well everything else.... cough cough 75$ worth of scalloped potatoes
.... that's a story in its own!
please any insight, comments, suggestions.. even if you wanna stop by and just say hi... would be appreciated!
and cause this is a big thing to be doing in a smaller smoker, I definitely will be posting pictures and updating on how its going... we never had hosted this size of an event before so it'll be something new
Sorry for such a long post!
Here's my math on how I got 8 pork shoulders will be enough, please correct me if you see anything wrong:
so 8 pork shoulders x 10lbs avg. each = 80lbs raw pork shoulder, after trimming off fat and deboning AND smoking you get a 53% return on eating meat( I saw another guy post how he did 30lbs worth of shoulder and got 16lbs of finish product out of it so 16/30=0.5333333 so its a 53% return).. Multiple 80lbs by 53% and you'll get 42.4 lbs. of finished smoked meat after water lose, fat trim and de-boned... We figured that people will eat between 1/4-1/2 lb. sandwiches... so 1/3 is in the middle... take 42.4 and multiple it by 3 = 127.2 sandwiches worth of meat
How's everything lining up so far??
smoking: I like to smoke at a temperature of 250... I'm stuck on either using a 1:1 ratio hickory & apple wood or use my jack Daniels chips... with this much meat should I even spritz or mop( I prefer spritz)?? I figured doing 4 at a time will increase over all smoking time as well
next thing I need to figure out is should I keep them whole and not shred them until I have warmed them up the day of the party? or just go ahead and shred them into big chucks and then put them in the fridge and the day of the party after warming them up, shred them down completely? I figure it would save on moist in the meat if I leave them whole but to have room to store 8 pork shoulders "whole" is going to be quite challenging.
I'm going to have a tin pan to caught all the juices and dripping from them smoking, and I was going to mix them with a little apple juice and add it too the warming meat as well, does that sound good?? Or should I change something with that?
We are going to( I hope) barrow those big electric roaster pans from our church and That's how I'm going to warm up the meat and well everything else.... cough cough 75$ worth of scalloped potatoes
please any insight, comments, suggestions.. even if you wanna stop by and just say hi... would be appreciated!
and cause this is a big thing to be doing in a smaller smoker, I definitely will be posting pictures and updating on how its going... we never had hosted this size of an event before so it'll be something new
Sorry for such a long post!