Going to smoke an 8.4lb pork butt this weekend for the first time in my MES 30 and am curious what setup y'all use. I successfully smoked a bunch of chicken thighs for my first smoke and they came out great. A few questions:
- Should I put an empty water pan in for smoking the butt to catch the grease? For the chicken thighs, I didn't have the water pan in while smoking them and noticed a lot of burned residue on the cover of the heating element.
- How often should wood chips be added for the butt? For the chicken thighs, I did two portions of chips (one at the beginning and refilled about 20 minutes in after I stopped seeing smoke come out of the vent) and they came out plenty smoky. Those are of course much smaller pieces of meat, so not sure if the butt needs more smoke.
- How open should the top vent be? For the chicken thighs, I had the vent closed as far as it would go to trap as much smoke as possible. Is that a good strategy for the butt too?
- Any other recommendations?
This is the first smoker I've ever owned and this will be the second thing I've ever smoked, so appreciate any advice or constructive criticism.
Hi there and welcome!
1. No need for water in pan in the MES
3. Leave the vent wide open the whole time
2. Well I would say feed wood chips every 30 minutes as long as you can stand to do so. I would strongly suggest you look into the A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker (
AMNPS) tray or tube. The tray will provide PERFECT smoke for up to 12 hours using pellets. The tube does like 3 hours of smoke using pellets as well. Almost all of us MES guys upgrade to using an
AMNPS tray or tube because it works amazingly and no more babysitting smoke.
Because you have an MES30 some guy shave trouble using the tray inside the MES. In this case you can build a "Mailbox Mod" where you just hook it up to the the chip feeder whole (remove the tube) and you put the
AMNPS tray inside the mailbox and the smoke feeds into the MES via the tube hole. This is my preferred method no matter what since it separates smoke from being produced inside the MES and allows max flexibility for things like cold smoking food especially without adding too much heat (think smoking cheese).
4. Other suggestions... Pork Butts, Briskets, and ribs really don't care what temp you cook them at so I suggest you crank up the heat to 275F. If you were to achieve a steady 275F and never open the door then the pork butt would finish in about 9hrs.
If you don't have a dual prove (or more probes) wireless thermometer then get one. Use 1 probe to measure smoker temp at rack level and another probe to measure meat Internal Temp (IT). MES probes are ALWAYS off so a good thermometer is needed.
Pork Butts are done when they are tender. They are tender when you can stab all over with a wooden kabob skewer and it goes in like butter. The IT of the meat tells you when to check for tenderness. Pork butts are NEVER done by Time or Temp only by Tenderenss. Same goes for brisket.
SOOOOooooo, with this knowledge at a 275F smoker temp (never opening door until thermometer tells you to check for tenderness) you can guesstimate that it takes 9-10 hours to be tender. So start your smoke an EXTRA 4-5 hours before you plan to serve and eat. So in this case start the smoke 14 hours before you plan to serve and eat. Why???
If you finish 4 hours early, then congrats! You tightly double wrap in foil, then tightly wrap in 3 bath towels and set on the table. 4-5 hours later it will be steaming hot and still ready to pull and serve, I promise!!!
If you don't finish 4 hours early... you have 4 hours for it to finish before people riot due to hunger hahaha.
Number 1 issue with failed pork butt and brisket smokes is pulling the meat out before it is done because people are waiting :)
I hope this info helps and I look forward to you posting the results :)
