Need a little help with my butts

[chris88]

That's the one I have I will have to go to Lowe's to see if they have any. I got the one I have from Academy for 15 bucks.

 

[pinkmeat]

It surely takes out ALL of the guess work...

 

[chris88]

Yes it does be careful with the wire going into the probe. I did have two but something happened to one of the wire going into the probe.

 

[chris88]

Thanks to all that helped I put the butts on at 7am Sat and removed them at 10pm. The butts came out great

. It was a long day but with yalls help things get better. I think I will remove the therm that's in the door and pug the hole. That thing is junk. I know the next one will be easier to do because I am going to get me two more digital therms. And I will have to start a lot earlier.
Thanks again
Chris

 

[bb53chevpro]

Looks great. Can see alot of pink from the smoke. YUMMY.

 

[teleburst]

As usual, I'm going to offer an alternative opinion.

I don't worry about 300-plus temps during the first 4 hours. I didn't have any problems with the two butts that I've done where the INITIAL temps were that high. In fact, the temp was that high for much of the first 4 hours (I was using a Weber kettle).

I think that where you might have to worry about it during the last half of the process. I think that since most of the meat is "cool" and mostly uncooked in the first half of cooking, that higher temps aren't all that much of a problem when it comes to potentially overcooking the butt. That's a large thick piece of meat to have higher temps overcook it (in the beginning, at least). And I never had a problem with the outside of the butt being tough and overcooked.

I realize that your smoker is different than the Weber. However, until the internal meat temp gets to around 150, I don't think you have much to worry about. Of course, once it hits that time/internal temp point, temperature becomes more mission-critical.

Just my observation based on my limited experience.

 

[richtee]

I would tend to agree on a "macro" scale. It's a big hunk. But the "barq" contributes alot to the final flavor profile. One reason I believe pulled meat is better after a bit of storage is the "barq" slowly assimilates it's flavor into the interior meat. I would worry about bittering the substantial amount of pepper and garlic in my rub with too high a temp for any long amount of time even in the initial portion of the smoke.

Then again, I may be fulla crap :{)

 

[teleburst]

I can see that as well.

It didn't seem to hurt my first butt, the one that I charred at the beginning. And, since it had a slathering of palm sugar to hold the rub, I'd think that the danger of "scorching" or "bittering" the flavor would have been even greater. The barq was incredibly good.

My second butt had just the slightest hint of creosote, but of course, that's a different issue. I didn't char that one.

The higher heat sure gets it to 150 pretty quickly though <chuckle>.