A butt, some flames, and pork tonight!

[randalldad]

'Morning gents:

It's my third running with my Masterbuilt electric. I did Illini's mods this past weekend. (See my post with pics under Illini's "Mods that work...")

I promised my poker buddies pulled pork tonight so I got a 6 pound butt, preped it last night and was up at 5:00 am to get it going. It took a while to come up to 225, since my covered porch is a very chilly 18 degrees this AM here in Illinois.

I decided to use just 1/4 inch of Evan Williams bourbon in the waterpan, for a bit-o-flavor during the smoking stage. Loaded the recommended 4-5 soaked chips (again, per Illini...thanks for that great advice) and went back inside to get warm.

About 15 minutes later, I was enjoying a nice cup of coffee, when BAM! A flash, some sparks, and the door blew open! Yikes! I raced out to find that pan of bourbon doing a nice "flambe" with blue flames and all. Whoa! I put that out with a dash of Bud just to be sure and got everything back in place. Lesson learned: better burn off the alcohol if I decide to use bourbon in the water pan. :oops:

I'll update this post later today and let you know how my butt turns out. I plan to try the "foil/towel/cooler" trick once I get to 190. Question: should I wrap the butt in foil around 140-160 as some say, and let it finish like that in the smoker?

 

[illini]

I know that must have been frightening but that is really funny!....Glad the lesson was not disasterous!

I even have my wood chips puff a little bit occassionally

Wrap the butt when it reaches 195-200* and you can leave it in the cooker...if you reset the temp of the cooker to 140*...I know some will disagree but have found it works just as well as the cooler thing....while wrapping the butt leave the door open to cool the inside so it doesn't continue to cook when you are in the holding stage....You will have a nice butt to pull in 2 or 3 hours

 

[smoked]

now you can tell your poker buddies that they are having pulled pork flambe!!!!!!

and yes to what marvin said.....it's basically the same thing I do.

 

[randalldad]

[sorry the late update...crazy work week]...

Bottom line, the butt was very tasty.

Details: It was only 180 after 11 hours and I had to get to the poker game. So I stuck it in a 350 oven and zoom! It got to 195 pronto! I wrapped it and took it in a cooler as you guys said. After 1.5 hours, I took it out and was able to pull 85% of it. There were 2 spots in the butt that were still tough. Was that why it was stuck at 180?

I'm trying another one tomorrow. I may do a wrap and not open the door to spritz at all.

ILLINI: After smoke is over at 140, do you close your vent 100%?

 

[smokyokie]

Opening the unit greatly increases total cooking time. Not only do you let hot air escape, but you lower the temp of the entire inside of the unit, meat included. I know it's very tempting to get a look and see how it's going, but that type of smoker is more or less a Ron Popiel "Set it and forget it" type of machine. With one of those, you could set it, go to work, come home and have it be done.

Oh, and BTW, though I missed you debut here, Welcome to the board!

Tim

 

[illini]

ILLINI: After smoke is over at 140, do you close your vent 100%?

close the top vent to about 1/3 open to let out the excess moisture after the meat reaches 140 and you have quit adding chips....this keeps the moisture inside stay at a tollerable level and stops leaks out the bottom

for holding...after cooling the inside down to 140* just wrap the meat
, put back in, close all vents, reset to a holding temp of 140* and leave it in there for however long you want :)

Your scenario of transporting to another place will put you back to the blanket and cooler methof of course. :oops: