What was I thinking?
When a local charity asked me to smoke up "some" pulled pork for a fund raising event, I figured why not, How much do ya need? Oh, somewhere between a hundred and 150 pounds and by the way, the event will be on a weekend that you will be gone.
My mind started spinning with the logistics on how we were going to pull this off without knowing the crowd size and not being in the same state... throw out all the planning/portioning rules. Experimentation begins.
Using old tried and true methods, smoked up a butt, pulled and then vacuum sealed three ways (1. Dry (2. With the meat juices added (3. With the juices and a finishing sauce. The packages were then frozen.
The thinking here is that the folks serving the meal could have a large stock pot of boiling water on a turkey fryer burner, throw the frozen bags in to heat up the meat as needed, leaving the rest frozen for later events.
With the boiling water on the stove, we heated and tested...
Option 1, ended up tasting flat even with the juices added later.
Option 3, with a vinegar based finishing sauce added. seemed to make the meat mushy.
Option 2 had the best texture and flavor, in fact, the flavors melded throughout the meat and adding the finishing sauce just stepped it up a notch.
OK, the next step. Lets put the little MES40 and the AMPS to the test. At this point I am a bit concerned about the thermal mass of all this meat and could have put a bit more in but decided to try two batches of 8 butts.
Basking in all those wonderful herbs and spices
Turning pellets back to sawdust in an old blender. Being a person of altitude, (6700 ft) the pellets tend to go out, even when left to light/burn on the table. During a "hot" smoke they do fairly well but still go out every now and then. The AMPS does either dust or pellets, and this being an overnight smoke, just figured I would play it on the safe side and go with the dust.
A great little device Todd came up with. I have never had a load jump the rows at temps of 240+. Between this and the alarm/remote features of the Maverick, no worries about doing an all night run.
Started out putting the meat in pans. I was a bit worried about the cascading juices ruining the pieces below. But decided against it and placed the meat directly on the racks and placed an old broiler pan under the bottom rack to catch all that liquid gold. I have all kinds of hotel pans and when cooking up to four butts, I use half pans with wire racks in them. Note to Masterbuilt: Just a couple of inches wider would allow the use of commonly used pans ( up to 8 half pans or 4 full) and allow for smoke/heat flow!!
Reusable, easy to foil and clean.
First batch done, and the MES/AMPS combo came through like "The Little Engine That Could". About 20 hours, the stall wasn't as bad as I was anticipating, overall, about as routine as any smaller batches I have done.
The final product came out awesome... juicy, pulled evenly/easily, a dark rich colored bark, and the flavor is awesome. Went in at 75.5 lbs. Came out at about 46, right on the mark for the 40% shrinkage rule.
Sorry I didn't get pics of the finished product, I will try to get some from batch two. When news got out that the first batch was ready to come out, it got a little crazy around here. I know, hard to believe, helpers came out of the woodwork to help pull and vacuum pack the stuff. Believe me, at that point, the help was quite welcome, added a bit to the shrinkage though.
When a local charity asked me to smoke up "some" pulled pork for a fund raising event, I figured why not, How much do ya need? Oh, somewhere between a hundred and 150 pounds and by the way, the event will be on a weekend that you will be gone.
My mind started spinning with the logistics on how we were going to pull this off without knowing the crowd size and not being in the same state... throw out all the planning/portioning rules. Experimentation begins.
Using old tried and true methods, smoked up a butt, pulled and then vacuum sealed three ways (1. Dry (2. With the meat juices added (3. With the juices and a finishing sauce. The packages were then frozen.
The thinking here is that the folks serving the meal could have a large stock pot of boiling water on a turkey fryer burner, throw the frozen bags in to heat up the meat as needed, leaving the rest frozen for later events.
With the boiling water on the stove, we heated and tested...
Option 1, ended up tasting flat even with the juices added later.
Option 3, with a vinegar based finishing sauce added. seemed to make the meat mushy.
Option 2 had the best texture and flavor, in fact, the flavors melded throughout the meat and adding the finishing sauce just stepped it up a notch.
OK, the next step. Lets put the little MES40 and the AMPS to the test. At this point I am a bit concerned about the thermal mass of all this meat and could have put a bit more in but decided to try two batches of 8 butts.
Basking in all those wonderful herbs and spices
Turning pellets back to sawdust in an old blender. Being a person of altitude, (6700 ft) the pellets tend to go out, even when left to light/burn on the table. During a "hot" smoke they do fairly well but still go out every now and then. The AMPS does either dust or pellets, and this being an overnight smoke, just figured I would play it on the safe side and go with the dust.
A great little device Todd came up with. I have never had a load jump the rows at temps of 240+. Between this and the alarm/remote features of the Maverick, no worries about doing an all night run.
Started out putting the meat in pans. I was a bit worried about the cascading juices ruining the pieces below. But decided against it and placed the meat directly on the racks and placed an old broiler pan under the bottom rack to catch all that liquid gold. I have all kinds of hotel pans and when cooking up to four butts, I use half pans with wire racks in them. Note to Masterbuilt: Just a couple of inches wider would allow the use of commonly used pans ( up to 8 half pans or 4 full) and allow for smoke/heat flow!!
First batch done, and the MES/AMPS combo came through like "The Little Engine That Could". About 20 hours, the stall wasn't as bad as I was anticipating, overall, about as routine as any smaller batches I have done.
The final product came out awesome... juicy, pulled evenly/easily, a dark rich colored bark, and the flavor is awesome. Went in at 75.5 lbs. Came out at about 46, right on the mark for the 40% shrinkage rule.
Sorry I didn't get pics of the finished product, I will try to get some from batch two. When news got out that the first batch was ready to come out, it got a little crazy around here. I know, hard to believe, helpers came out of the woodwork to help pull and vacuum pack the stuff. Believe me, at that point, the help was quite welcome, added a bit to the shrinkage though.
