- Oct 26, 2013
- 13
- 10
Hi All,
First post on here, I found the forum by searching all about the 40-140F in 4 hours rule and it seems this forum is very active regarding that topic. I understand the rule, and know it has been revised in '09 to 41-135F, but I ran into a situation last night that I've never had before.
I've got a 9 lb. pork butt on my Green Egg right now, put it on at midnight after defrosting it since Tuesday in my refrigerator. This was a fresh butcher cut, that I had to freeze because I wasn't able to cook it the weekend I ordered it for. I did one ice bath in the sink while it was still sealed up in wrap and freezer bags to help defrost it a bit more, but I suspect the core near the bone was still closer to frozen when I put it on.
Regardless, here's where I screwed up. I put my Maverick temp probe in the meat before putting it on the smoker, which I now know is a no-no, but I didn't know that until I started researching the topic further. About 3:45AM which was 3 hours and 45 minutes after I put it on, my grate temp alarm started going off on a temp minimum, the BGE had dropped to 200F. The temp outside had dropped to 20F and the wind had shifted heavily so I had to adjust my air intake, no big deal, but my IT was only 130F @ 4 hours because of the smoker temperature drop... I got everything situated back to 235-240F, but the IT didn't clear 140F until the 5 hour mark.
I know this wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't pierced the meat with my temp probe, but I had never researched enough to realize this was stupid to do incase your IT never cleared in 4 hours. Under the 2009 revision I was only 5 degrees short, but I'm still concerned.
I've got a house full of people coming over later, and I certainly don't want to make anyone sick! Any thoughts on this? I definitely want to learn from my mistake.
First post on here, I found the forum by searching all about the 40-140F in 4 hours rule and it seems this forum is very active regarding that topic. I understand the rule, and know it has been revised in '09 to 41-135F, but I ran into a situation last night that I've never had before.
I've got a 9 lb. pork butt on my Green Egg right now, put it on at midnight after defrosting it since Tuesday in my refrigerator. This was a fresh butcher cut, that I had to freeze because I wasn't able to cook it the weekend I ordered it for. I did one ice bath in the sink while it was still sealed up in wrap and freezer bags to help defrost it a bit more, but I suspect the core near the bone was still closer to frozen when I put it on.
Regardless, here's where I screwed up. I put my Maverick temp probe in the meat before putting it on the smoker, which I now know is a no-no, but I didn't know that until I started researching the topic further. About 3:45AM which was 3 hours and 45 minutes after I put it on, my grate temp alarm started going off on a temp minimum, the BGE had dropped to 200F. The temp outside had dropped to 20F and the wind had shifted heavily so I had to adjust my air intake, no big deal, but my IT was only 130F @ 4 hours because of the smoker temperature drop... I got everything situated back to 235-240F, but the IT didn't clear 140F until the 5 hour mark.
I know this wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't pierced the meat with my temp probe, but I had never researched enough to realize this was stupid to do incase your IT never cleared in 4 hours. Under the 2009 revision I was only 5 degrees short, but I'm still concerned.
I've got a house full of people coming over later, and I certainly don't want to make anyone sick! Any thoughts on this? I definitely want to learn from my mistake.