35-50 lbs (yes, pounds!) of pulled pork - advice please! (I'll beg if I have to!)

[heyer5]

Alright ladies and gents, I received the dubious honor of smoking a LOT of meat for a surprise party I have coming up.  Now, we are looking at 75-100 people coming and we think it is going to be more cost effective to smoke some boston butts then to have food catered in, but this is where I get lost..

I will be using my 18.5" WSM along with another smoker that I have never, not once, used.  I'm thinking I can probably get 4 butts on mine (WSMers...PLEASE chime in, I'm not really positive how many I can do on mine) and the rest on the other one. 

I have a killer rib rub that I have made up on my own, but I'm thinking I will need something a little sweeter for the butts.  However, I do not want to buy it, I want to make it!  I'm thinking of starting the smoker late the night before, going all night and finishing around noon - should leave me PLENTY of time - then rest the butts in a cooler for a few hours, pull, and serve fresh.

Since I have never catered to this many people, ideas and input will be GREATLY appreciated.  I know SmokinAl has given me TONS of advice once I started on this forum, which I thanked him greatly for, and I will be just as appreciative if someone can give me some pointers!

 

[smokey mo]

I have done the same thing but I had to smoke in sessions.  We did 120# of butts over three days cooked them and then waited to pull it.  Made a finishing sauce and brought it to not quite a boil and added it to the pulled meat and warmed and served from a chaffing dishe (double boiler type).  It worked well but I would much rather have had a larger smoker to cook all at once.  

In a pinch you can smoke a few at a time until they get to 160-ish foil them and out them in an oven to finish while you start another batch to get the smoke flavor. Makes the temp control after smoking much easier.  

Pulled pork is very forgiving to serve and finishing sauce will even things out a lot. Get lots of flavor in the meat and it will do well for you.

Good luck.

 

[ohm]

Just smoked a shoulder (Pinic) this weekend in my "new" electric smoker this weekend ~9 pounders and they took a good 12-14 hours... Just make sure to take the time for the butts into consideration and you should be good. Also since your are using a second smoker you have not used before see if you can smoke up something like chicken or a fatty and make sure you are use to it. I am guessing the second one will need some modifications and knowing that ahead of time will help out a ton.

Get some of those big foil tens and if possible some racks with Sterno warming things...keep that food warm! Don't forget some sides :-) or even better yet get someone else to bring them since that is going to be a lot of butt to handle :drool






or



Finally get your hands on a pair of these!!!!



http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/products/meatrake-meat-shredding-tool

Those will save your hands!

Also to speed things up a bit you could cut them in half and even remove the bone (assuming you are getting them bone in). I did that last weekend with a butt and if I remember correctly they took 6-7 hours and I did foil them towards the end.

 

[rbranstner]

I guess the first thing is to figure out how many butts you are going to need  to smoke and see if you can physically get the into your smokers. If you can't get them all in the two smokers you will have to do a couple of loads. I am lucky as I have a smoke house and I can get 100+ lbs of meat in it at once so I would just do one load and rest them in the coolers and pull before serving but if you have to do several loads you might want to do them ahead of time and just reheat that day. Also it would probably be a good idea to get that other smoker over to your house and try it out so you aren't messing with it and trying to get it to run where you want it on the day you are trying to smoke all of those butts. At least that is what I would do.

 

[heyer5]

So, for all of you experienced smokers, how much does the typical person eat of the pulled pork?  Should I be looking at .25 lbs a person, .5 lbs a person?  I don't think that I will need 50 lbs of pork butts for a max of around 100 people, all of which probably won't eat.  There will be PLENTY of sides to go with it, no worries there!

Thanks for the input thus far!

 

[ohm]

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/forum/thread/105199/how-much-meat-per-person

Check that recent thread out. I think that is what you are looking for.

 

[raptor700]

All good advice,

I think your in good hands

Just remember the Qview 

 

[SmokinAl]

Rap X2

 

[bigr314]

This past weekend I smoked 30 pounds of pork butt. I have a UDS that has a 22.5 inch cooking grate. I fit the 3 butts on it fine but putting a fourth would be hard to do. You want to make sure you have room for the smoke and heat to come through.My party started at 2:00 and I started smoking at 8:00 pm the previous night. I am glad I started early. They were done 16 hours later. I wrapped them and put in a cooler until ready to pull. About 3 hours. The best pork my guests ever had. By wrapping and putting the pork in the cooler itI worked great.3  hours in cooler they were still hot and fell apart when I picked them up. Start early and good luck.

 

[sunman76]

sounds like a good plan came together for ya!