Well, it's been far too long since I've been here and now I have a question. I've smoked tons of baby backs ribs, pork tenderloins, salmon and various other stuff. Just smoked a tenderloin yesterday in fact and it turned out great.
I also went out and finally bought two digital meat thermometers last evening so now I can tell what the temp is in my smoker and my meat temp. Now I'm smoking my first Boston butt for a New Years Eve gathering at my house this evening. The butt is about 9 lbs.
I read a number of posts yesterday to get a head start and I figured I had to start early this morning so I started my smoke at 5:30. I had everything ready last night so I could just fire up the smoker and get the meat going quickly. My wife took it out of the fridge about 3:00 this morning so it would be room temp when it went in the smoker. I also smeared with with mustard (per some posts I'd read here) and coated with my rub before putting it in the fridge around 8:00 last night. I applied more rub before putting it in the smoker at 5:45 this morning.
Since I haven't had thermometers in the meat and smoker before, I'm surprised at what I'm seeing this morning. I'm using an electric bullet smoker and just figured I couldn't reach temps much above 225 in this smoker. In fact, I'm getting as high as 300!
So the butt has been on the smoker since 5:45 this morning. I figured on about 12 hour. It's now 9:30 so it's been in the smoker almost 4 hours and the internal temp of the meat is already 147. That's high than I expected by this point but since I've not been about to monitor internal temp constantly before, I really don't have a base line. Right now the smoker temp is about 287.
So here are my questions.
Is this internal meat temp about right for the time in smoker?
Am I about right to expect 12 hours for a 9 pound butt?
Am I okay running this hot?
Here are a couple of pictures of the butt at 4 hours.
I also went out and finally bought two digital meat thermometers last evening so now I can tell what the temp is in my smoker and my meat temp. Now I'm smoking my first Boston butt for a New Years Eve gathering at my house this evening. The butt is about 9 lbs.
I read a number of posts yesterday to get a head start and I figured I had to start early this morning so I started my smoke at 5:30. I had everything ready last night so I could just fire up the smoker and get the meat going quickly. My wife took it out of the fridge about 3:00 this morning so it would be room temp when it went in the smoker. I also smeared with with mustard (per some posts I'd read here) and coated with my rub before putting it in the fridge around 8:00 last night. I applied more rub before putting it in the smoker at 5:45 this morning.
Since I haven't had thermometers in the meat and smoker before, I'm surprised at what I'm seeing this morning. I'm using an electric bullet smoker and just figured I couldn't reach temps much above 225 in this smoker. In fact, I'm getting as high as 300!
So the butt has been on the smoker since 5:45 this morning. I figured on about 12 hour. It's now 9:30 so it's been in the smoker almost 4 hours and the internal temp of the meat is already 147. That's high than I expected by this point but since I've not been about to monitor internal temp constantly before, I really don't have a base line. Right now the smoker temp is about 287.
So here are my questions.
Is this internal meat temp about right for the time in smoker?
Am I about right to expect 12 hours for a 9 pound butt?
Am I okay running this hot?
Here are a couple of pictures of the butt at 4 hours.