22lb chuck roll smoke

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dward51

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
Nov 24, 2011
2,864
538
McDonough, GA
Well, we have one of our semi-regular office outings planned for tomorrow, and the gang has put together a covered dish lunch.  Seems like by default I'm "the guy" for the main meat that is served, it's time for me to step up again.  Normally I smoke a couple of pork shoulders "old school" for 20-22 hours in a 18.5" WSM.  But I wanted to do something different this time.  So, the quest for a beef clod began.....

First snag....  A regular shoulder clod is huge.  Actually too large for my 18.5" WSM, so I looked a the cousin of the clod, the chuck roll. I found a nice Angus beef chuck roll at my local Sam's Club that was a little over 22 pounds.  That should work!!!!!

Going to smoke it over lump charcoal, with some apple and oak whiskey barrel wood for smoke.  Fired up the WSM at 7'ish this morning and started to prep the meat.   This chuck roll was fairly well trimmed out of the cryovac packaging and I only had to take a little of the hard fat streak out on one side.

This thing is HUGE!!!!!!  That is a normal sized cutting board and filet knife!!!


I decided to use some butcher's string to pull it in and make a more uniform mass on the ends.  Also this gives me a little wiggle room to get in on the WSM and keep the thinner end from cooking too fast as compared to the main body of meat.

I was originally going to go with my standard brisket rub, but of course I'm out and would have to make up a new batch.  When I picked up the chuck roll, I saw they had the Weber Kansas City BBQ rub for a decent price and upon reading the ingredient list, it was reasonably close to my standard brisket rub.  So in the interest of keeping it simple, I went with the Weber rub (figured the meat was going to be enough of a distraction).  Here is the plan...


I like to rub my beef with a beef bouillon base to add flavor and to give the rub something to help it stick.  I used some of the "Better than Bouillon" beef base and mixed it 50/50 with mayonnaise to thin the thick base out.  I often use mayo as a coating and binder for meats on the smoker.  It adds to the moisture and it basically melts into the meat (works great on chicken!!!!).  This mix was then put on the chuck roll and a liberal application of the Weber rub was made.


Here is the bouillon and mayo mix ready to be applied.


WSM is loaded, and ready to go.  I'm using a Brinkmann oversized water pan filled with water on this smoke (this is the pre-2008 WSM and the stock pan is the older smaller style).  Fired a full ring of lump al la Minion method (top down burn), with chunks of apple wood and a few oak whiskey barrel cuts for smoke. 

The meat just barely fits on the top grate.  Good thing I tied it up a little with the butcher's string.  This is one massive piece of meat!!!!


Yes sir, this is one full top grate for an 18.5" WS !!!


This should take every bit of 22 to 24 hours at 225* pit temp.  Once it hits 165* internal, I'm going to foil this monster and continue to cook to 200-205* internal.  It was on the smoker at 225* by about 8AM, so I should have some wiggle room for a stubborn stall and still make lunch tomorrow.  Once done, I will hold in a insulated cooler until time to pull at the event.

More to come as this progresses....
 
Following this one.    Wish I could find them around here.
 
Sam's Club stocks them.  Not on display, but if you ask for a whole chuck roll in cryovac they should have it.  They use this as the base for a lot of the cut meat they repackage and display at each store.  I would suspect Walmart also does the same if you don't have a Sam's near you. Ask next time you are in there.
 
 
Sam's Club stocks them.  Not on display, but if you ask for a whole chuck roll in cryovac they should have it.  They use this as the base for a lot of the cut meat they repackage and display at each store.  I would suspect Walmart also does the same if you don't have a Sam's near you. Ask next time you are in there.
Thanks for the info.   We have  a Sams Club here.   I will ask them next time I am there.
 
Hanging in for the ride! I picked up a 19 pound boneless ribeye roast yesterday from our local restaurant supply. I was eying the chuck roll as I need to make hamburger soon. They were just under $3/pound. Hamburger here is $4.99/pound.
 
$3 a pound for chuck roll is a good price.  I paid $4.08 a pound for this one. 

I usually get large cuts from Restaurant Depot, but my closest one was out of clods yesterday.  So plan "B" was back to Sam's Club for a chuck roll instead.  Difference was RD was $2.64/lb for single cryovac clods of Angus beef vs $4.08/lb for chuck roll at Sam's Club. Roughly $30 difference on a 22 lb cut. But on the flip side, I would have needed to trim the RD clod a little more as this Angus chuck roll was pre-trimmed pretty well.  Only had to trim out one area of dense fat on the surface.  So the $30 is probably less as I would have lost a little poundage on the full clod at RD. Oh well....

Porch is smelling real good about now..... No photos to update with as I'm not peeking and will only open the WSM when it's time to foil.

 
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About 9 hours in, internal temp is 150*.  I know I said I was not going to open it up until time to foil, but I'm sitting here pondering what to eat for supper and though there is some free grate space on the sides of the chuck roll.  I've got some sausage in the fridge, so why not toss it on the smoke for a while.  Figured I would take a photo of the chuck roll since the WSM was open.  Still got a long way to go, but starting to look GOOD TO ME!!!!

I also checked the charcoal and it was about 90% gone.  Move the main body with meat off the base, stir and tap the charcoal grate to drop the ash (moved off the base to prevent ash on the food).  Added some more whiskey oak stave cuts and refilled with lump.  I'm out of Royal oak and using some Cowboy I bought a while back for 1/2 price.  It looks decent, but it burns a lot quicker than RO does.  I may have to reload before going to bed tonight and letting the BBQ Guru tend the pit.

 
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I'm in.

Looking to do a clod next cook and this thread is just the ticket, are you slicing and/or pulling?

Looking for a 20+ pounder but will probably half for the pit, some will be pulled and some sliced for French Dippers.
 
I'm sitting here pondering what to eat for supper and though there is some free grate space on the sides of the chuck roll.  I've got some sausage in the fridge, so why not toss it on the smoke for a while.  Figured I would take a photo of the chuck roll since the WSM was open.  Still got a long way to go, but starting to look GOOD TO ME!!!!
It's always acceptable to open 'er up for a Photo,

I know its late but you could have sliced some for dinner and placed the rest on the smoker.
 
That is one heck of a chunk of meat! I can't wait to see how it turns out! Looks great so far!
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Well, it's done.  Event has concluded, all were well fed and I got a lot of comments on the chuck roll.  Quite a few went back for "thirds" so I think that is a good testament to the how well it turned out.

Here is the rest of the story on how we got from peeking at the meat last night to a finished product at the event and the leftovers.  After reloading the charcoal ring and topping off the water pan, the meat hit 178* around 11:30pm.  I was originally going to pull and foil at 170*, but I let it go until I wanted to call it a night to give it a little more time in the smoke before foiling.  Roast was too big for even a doubled foil from the wide roll at Sam's Club.  Ended up triple wrapping it to make sure it was sealed up.  Bark looked good to me.


So, just how do you pick up a 22lb hunk of meat?  With one big ass BBQ tool or course!  The wife bought me this a few years back as a joke (she thought it was not a real tool).  This is one of the best things in the world for dealing with pork butts and now chuck rolls in a smoker.  Picked it up with no problems to move it over to the foil. No, that image is not distorted by a camera angle or a photoshop trick.  That is one big ass BBQ spatula!


Original plan was to just continue the cook in the WSM.  But I changed my mind and figured I would continue to cook the foiled chuck roll in our GE oven set at 225*.  I had not tried to finish meat in this oven at 225*, but had done so in our prior oven.  Of course this is a better model with convection oven, etc.... (not using convection for this though).  So I had preheated the oven to 225* and set up the Maverick 733 to keep track of the temps. Moved the roast to large pan with raised sides as I had doubts about the doubled foil holding the juices in.

First concern.  Oven way overshot 225* to 260*, however it was at the end of the initial warm up phase so I did not panic.  So for the next 2 hours I sat monitoring the Maverick to make sure I'm going to be in a satisfactory temp band in the oven.  Once it settled down, the temp cycle ran from 218* when the element click on to 234* when it peaked after the element shut off.  It would take about 1/2 hour to drop back to 218* and start the process all over again.  Very acceptable, so off to bed at 2:20am with the Maverick receiver on the night stand.  Alarm set for 205* food temp and oven range of 210* low to 260* high.

Not that I was sleeping well anyhow, as this was the first time I've run this particular oven like this. So basically every half hour or so, I roll over to peek at the Maverick display.  All is well....  Then at about 5AM... BEEP.... BEEP...BEEP....  Bingo, we have 205* internal and the meat is done!!!!!  Sorry I did not get a photo of the foiled meat and did not open the foil.  Transferred it straight into a medium sized Coleman cooler that I've had for decades and use for holding meat for cooks like this.  Now some of you may be cringing about now.  5AM!!! and it will not be served until around 11:30AM.  That's a long time.   Trust me, I've done this with 3 or 4 pork butts dozens of times and the meat is still smoking and too hot to pull by hand up to 7 hours later (and probably longer, but 7 hours is the longest I've gone).

So to the event.....  Pulled and moved about half the meat to a portable steam tray stand to keep it hot for the event. Still steaming hot and like I said too hot to pull with hands even 6 hours later.  Meat was a hit with the group.  I liked the pulled chuck roll better than pork shoulder.  I also brought some Redneck Bar Firecrackers and some of my own BBQ sauce which I cooked up the night before while the chuck roll smoked.

Nice smoke ring on the chuck roll!!!!  I cut into thick slices before pulling as some of the portions of the roll can be long and sort of stringy.  Cut to 1 1/2" to 2" thick slabs before pulling made uniform portions for sandwiches and plating. Nice and moist and pulled with the lightest touch!  Very tender and flavorful meat.


All said, this was a successful smoke.  I really liked the flavor.  Now for me, I would kick up the rub a little, but his particular chuck roll was for a varied group and a lot of them don't really care for spicy bark.  Bark was soft from foiling, but still came out great.  I would do this again (and probably will over the upcoming holidays as we have a large family gathering to cook for).

From a 22 lb. chuck roll, I had 7 pounds of meat left over at the end of the day.  I figure there was 3 or 4 pounds lost to the cooking process and the ravenous hoard consumed the rest at the event.  So I've got some for sammiches this weekend and two vacuum packed bags of 2 and 2.5 pounds for the freezer and later.
 
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