Biggest cook yet on a new (to me) smoker!

mikemci said:

Think about it this way:
What time frame, cooking butts of the same weight range, on your UDS, have you experienced?

An offset won't cook any faster. Especially one you don't know how it runs!

Please don't take the risk of ruining your son's graduation, and the respect of his peers.
Take the advise of the comments from the guys here. They know of what they say.

Click to expand...

I agree.

We just had a well meaning father around here, ruin his daughter’s wedding reception because he bit off more than he could chew when it came to preparing the food.

Those who knew good BBQ when they saw and or tasted it, and even those who didn’t, knew the cook was a mess because the food was.

It’s possibly better to have the event catered at this point by one of the local well respected bbq establishments, if there is one. That’s it it’s not too late for that.

One thing I do is cut the butts in half. Reduces cooking time, gets more smoke on the meat.

Bear in mind the party starts at what 1? The food does not have to be ready right then. Sometimes the process can be entertaining.

Also, Smitty has two great suggestions. Both are oriented to what you should be thinking - how to reduce stress and pressure on yourself.

If you have room on the smoker you might want to cook some sort of appetizer - wings or something - that you know won't take very long so the food comes out in shifts.

As an added note I really like the idea of cooking the day before. Then you could cook some appetizers on the rig while you shred the pork. As they said, for showmanship you could reheat the butts on the smoker.

OR...you could shred the day before too, and add some smoke to it in trays.

The possibilities are endless. But I would not count on starting at 5:30 and serving at noon.

JbTech said:

If i were asked ahead of time, I'd have said no.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as many married folks will understand.

Click to expand...

:laugh: This explains the background perfectly

While I wouldn't be happy about it I'd probably go with the midnight start and expect them to be done around 8. I agree with the quantity concern as well so would try to add at least a couple more. You could go Smitty's route and just rest them longer. That volume of meat will stay hot in the cooler for a long time.

Any chance he could bring the smoker early the day before? Then you could cook that day and just finish them out the day of the bash. Also, is he bringing the wood?

Why isn’t the father who owns the smoker doing the cook?

So your first major cook for 100 with a firm 12 noon serve time for all 100 people at once, will be cooking butts hot and fast on a stickburner that you won’t even see until the cook and don’t even know how to operate. Unless you can get a dry run with the pit owner today or tomorrow, I would back away from this current arrangement right now.

I do cooks for large groups of people with firm 12 noon serve times and that does not sound like nearly enough time. Week before last I did ribs for a small group of 25 with a noon serve time and my start time for lighting the fire was 5:30AM. I don’t know how you are going to pull off butts in the same time frame? Last time I did butts for a group I started the evening before.

On my big cooks I started making Gantt charts in Excel for everything so I know what I should be doing when so I don’t get buried with an impossible list of things to do in the last half hour. I suggest you do the same.

Here is a start on the butts alone assuming you have nothing else to do. You still need to add cooking and serving the sides, setup, etc.

Serve: 12 noon
Pull, sauce, and pan 6 butts of unknown weight. (15-20min). 11:40AM start pulling
Rest after coming off of smoker. (1 hour minimum, use 1.5hr) 10:10AM start resting
Smoke time for 6 Boston butts of unknown weight (no idea!!!). Let’s assume 7lb Boston butt at 225-250 (14 hours smoke time). 8:10PM the night before start smoking
Start stick burner and get up to temp (I have no idea so let’s assume an hour) 7:10 PM start time to light the smoker.

Others here can adjust these numbers for what they do, but I can’t see how you could light the fire at 5:30AM and serve pulled pork sandwiches an noon.

Chris

Wonder if there are any fellow brethren in your area who have experience with stick burners who can lend you a hand?? Chris

Shadowdog500; said:

Others here can adjust these numbers for what they do, but I can’t see how you could light the fire at 5:30AM and serve pulled pork sandwiches an noon.

Click to expand...

That’s crockpot times :heh:

Was the party today??? How did it go??? Any photos???? Chris

CHIT DUDE! You need those butts on the smoker at Midnight.

Cook 8 butts before and have them in gallon ziplocks.
At Least, you will start with something.


Re-heat in hot water.

I was looking for this thread to see how it went. Update please?

JbTech said:

Yowzers! What a day!

Turns out the smoker was a home built monster trailer. At least enough room to hold 8 or 10 catering pans.

Started a fire at 4am.
Ended up smoking 8 butts and 2 loins. First butt pulled at Noon.

Only took a couple pics, and today is my sons graduation, so I'll work on the pic part.

All in all it went pretty well considering the crummy hand I was dealt.

Not that I didn't try to heed all the good advice given, but my hands were tied.

Click to expand...

Glad to hear it went well for you. Congrats on your son's graduation. Tell him I say congrats on his major accomplishment.
Now go enjoy the day. We will all be here when you get back.

Glad to hear it went well!!!

Congrats to your son and family.

Glad to hear you pulled it off! I would have been sweating bullets if given the hand you were dealt! Can’t wait to see picks of the cook and the rig.

Congratulations to your son!

Chris