Ok pull up a chair this may be lengthy. Recently I had my GF go to the store to get some bone-in boston butt pork shoulders. That was a mistake I won't make again. The butcher gave her two Picninc cuts which in the end weren't bad, just a bit more prep work involved. Anyways I cut the skin off and tossed, no time for frying it. Trimmed a lil fat, rubbed good, and put in fridge for overnight. Yesterday I got them on the smoker around 6:30 PM and started smoking.
At this point I want to address the, "poofing" issue that some other MES owners have mentioned. Its my opinion that the poofing is caused when the chips actually catch fire, I saw the bright orange flames thru my chip loader when it happened to me several weeks ago. Since then I've been trying different things to avoid this. I'm still on the fence whether I should soak or not and have found that poofing can occur either way. What I find helps the most to prevent poofing is by only adding a small amount of chips at a time until you get a good layer of ash. If I add a cup like the directions suggest I am almost sure to get poofing, especially if its hot. By adding just small handfulls to begin with I have been able to avoid the poofing. I have to add chips more often but it is worth it to me. Another thing I have tried is to open the vent more, I used to keep it mostly closed but yesterday I opened it up about 3/4 open. No poofing but I did find that the roast directly above the chip box had much better smoke penetration than the one that was on the left side. My guess is my vent was open a bit too much allowing the smoke to go straight up and out and not circulating throughout the smoker to get even smoke penetration. I will close my vent a little more on my next smoke to test this theory.
So around midnight I rolled my groggy arse out of bed to wrap them in foil for the final run. In my grogginess I forgot to turn the alarms back on and I slept right through the 200 degree mark. I forgot to see exactly what the temp was in my rush to get them off, oops. Anyways they came out pretty darn good imo. Some of the meat just melts in your mouth, mmmmmmm.
The other thing I did different yesterday was I set my smoker temp to 240, not the 228 I usually set it at. I did this because it is now getting a bit cooler here in Norcal and I had to be to work this morning so time was important.
All in all they came out quite well and I'm sure it will all disappear this weekend.
I hope this may help some other MES owners that might be experiencing some of these same issues.
all the best,
Jeff
At this point I want to address the, "poofing" issue that some other MES owners have mentioned. Its my opinion that the poofing is caused when the chips actually catch fire, I saw the bright orange flames thru my chip loader when it happened to me several weeks ago. Since then I've been trying different things to avoid this. I'm still on the fence whether I should soak or not and have found that poofing can occur either way. What I find helps the most to prevent poofing is by only adding a small amount of chips at a time until you get a good layer of ash. If I add a cup like the directions suggest I am almost sure to get poofing, especially if its hot. By adding just small handfulls to begin with I have been able to avoid the poofing. I have to add chips more often but it is worth it to me. Another thing I have tried is to open the vent more, I used to keep it mostly closed but yesterday I opened it up about 3/4 open. No poofing but I did find that the roast directly above the chip box had much better smoke penetration than the one that was on the left side. My guess is my vent was open a bit too much allowing the smoke to go straight up and out and not circulating throughout the smoker to get even smoke penetration. I will close my vent a little more on my next smoke to test this theory.
So around midnight I rolled my groggy arse out of bed to wrap them in foil for the final run. In my grogginess I forgot to turn the alarms back on and I slept right through the 200 degree mark. I forgot to see exactly what the temp was in my rush to get them off, oops. Anyways they came out pretty darn good imo. Some of the meat just melts in your mouth, mmmmmmm.
The other thing I did different yesterday was I set my smoker temp to 240, not the 228 I usually set it at. I did this because it is now getting a bit cooler here in Norcal and I had to be to work this morning so time was important.
All in all they came out quite well and I'm sure it will all disappear this weekend.
I hope this may help some other MES owners that might be experiencing some of these same issues.
all the best,
Jeff
