Pulled pork for 130 -- questions

My two cents: 130 people/.3 pounds per person: 43 cooked pounds x 2 (for loss):86 pounds raw. So probably 10ish butts.



As far as vac sealing, I like chunkier because the pork always gets more and more broken down as it goes from bag to pan to bun etc. So if I start with bigger chunks, it ends up breaking down less.

I have done this for 500 with one helper and pretty easy tbh. You will be running around like crazy tho

Id do 100-110 lbs raw. Allow plenty for leftovers and you can provide saran wrap for people take home

Cook butts as you normally would. I prefer to vac seal and refrigerate vs freezing but depends on if you have space in fridge and can cook them 1-2 days before event. Shred before vac sealing and add in some juices before bag sealed.

Take a few large stock pots and reheat bags in hot water. I put pots water in smoker and reheated roughly 20lbs at a time. You can do smaller. Keep rotating out of pots and dumping into serving pans as needed. This helps keep moisture and smoke flavor intensifies 1-2 days after.

I had long lines outside my trailer at football games when I did this every week for home games. Smooth process


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I would think 50-60 lbs raw weight for 1 per person

I'd do .4lbs per person. 130x.4 = 52lbs finished meat. I'd buy 90-100 lbs of pork butt to allow for shrinkage. Should be plenty.

I'm not a professional caterer, but I often do this same thing for fairly large groups. I get a bunch of 1/2 size disposable steam table pans with lids from Sam's to hold the cooked pulled pork.


Smoke and pull the pork normally. Put the pulled pork in the pans and crimp the lids on tight. A 9 - 10 pound butt will fill a pan.



I cook one day ahead, so freezing is not required, just refrigeration. Get to the event in time to put the tightly sealed pans in a 200 degree oven for a couple of hours to re-heat. It turns out great.

This is one of those hard ones to calculate the right amount. Also depends on the activities before they eat. Some of those boys may eat three sandwiches. Some may only eat one or less. Given that, while I agree with Chad's numbers in a normal setting, I would tend to with Robb's numbers given the crowd ages. I figure on 60% yield as I used to use 50% yield and always ended up with an overabundance of meat left over.


As for processing finished meat for freezing--I have tried all of the above methods. While I prefer to keep the pork in larger chunks in vac sealed bags for greater quality, I have found the bags often spring leak in the water bath method. The bags are generally good up to about 275* and can be reheated in the smoker or oven. However, I generally pull the pork and place in half pans with a cup of chicken broth before freezing. Reheating in a 300* oven takes about 3 hours to get the temp up to about 160*. A regular 30" residential oven will only hold 4 half pans, so keep that in mind for your planning to reheat the meat.


Good luck and have fun.


Robert

Monday afternoon I worked on the prep (injection and rub) crew and yesterday I was on the daylight crew in charge of wrapping and finishing 80# of butts and 4 legs of lamb, then was one of 4 meat tenders on the serving line. Not everyone made sandwiches as we had sloppy Joes and dogs for the kiddos as well. There were roughly 180 guests and around 50 were kids.

We figure 50% yield on the butts and 60% yield on the lamb (it was bone-in). These are conservative numbers but the serving takes place over a 90 minute period, so breaking down the butts in real time in front of the guests might not be as efficient as when breaking butts down one at a time at home. Your yield will mostly be higher since you can spend more time cleaning the fat, and working with individual muscle groups.

Vacuum sealing to reheat later is very doable. Before I had SV circulators, we used Nesco tabletop roaster ovens with water. 3 or 4 can handle a lot of bags of pork. I allow about 90 minutes with a water temp ramping up to 155° or so. Reheating too fast can draw out some fats, and you don't want that. It's not shown, but I take the folding rack normally used under the meat as a weight on top, but if you rotate the bags during reheating a weight is not always needed. I will put a little Coca-Cola or smoked pork stock in the bags. And have some reserved foil liquid to moisten when serving.



I prefer breaking down butts into chunks or plugs instead of finer stringy shredding. It stays moister and looks more appealing to me. The center muscles (the lighter colored ones) have a slightly different texture than the money muscle end, and the horn muscles surrounding the blade bone. My pork looks like this.