cooking pork butt right now

[pal251]

I am cooking 2 pork butts and both are about 7 or 8 pounds each that I picked up from sams club. I cut off the fat cap and most of the major fat pieces.

The wsm has been cruising at 240 or so on my maverick and pretty close to that on the lid thermometer since 0200 PM and it's 10:00 PM right now. I just went outside and poked the food probe in the side of the butt on the top shelf and it registered at 163 degrees! (went in fairly smooth too)

Should I wrap it in foil and bring it up to 190 for pulling pork or let it cook all night?

I have to be at work at 10:30 am and I'm afraid it won't be done in time for me to be able to prep it before work.

[El Ropo]

You could foil and crank up the heat to 300ish, it should push right through. My guess is it's in the middle to tail end of stall at this point. Hard to tell from here though.

In the future, if you know you are on a tight schedule, just cook it at 300 from the start. Butts are very forgiving.

If I knew I had to work the next day, I would of started that cook at 9 am.

Now if you were planning on taking it to work, that's a little different.

[pal251]

Yes I should have started it earlier. I got lazy :)

[Travnemi]

So if you were going to keep it at 220 to 240 how long do you think it would take to cook?

[El Ropo]

Originally Posted by Travnemi

So if you were going to keep it at 220 to 240 how long do you think it would take to cook?

Each pig shoulder is gonna cook up differently, but at 240, maybe ~12 hours. @220 maybe ~16 hours. 220 is just warming the meat to death. I wouldn't cook a butt at less than 275 myself, it speeds up the process quite a bit.

[pal251]

I pulled them at 200 but the one on the bottom (I THink) was at 208ish when I temped it after I pulled it out.

I used a water pan with water in it and followed the guide on webervirtualbullet with the quick and easy pork butt.

Seemed like it took forver to pull it and pack it into vacuum bags to seal it. But now I got 8 1 qt bags of pulled pork to use. I'll be eating high on the hog for a while so to speak :)

[pal251]

For my rubs I put weber brand bbq seasoning all over it after I slathered it with mustard. It developed a decent bark I thought for my first pork butt.

On the other rub I believe i put the following in

1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon chili poweder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 table spoon of a mixture of kosher salt and table salt (ran out of table salt)

That seemed to develop a tough and spicy bark that was pretty good.

I will do it higher at 275 or 300 next time and try it out


Any easier way to pull the pork? I used a combination of my hands with food service gloves and forks. I wasn't smart enough to buy cotton gloves before hand so I got my hand pretty warm a few times.

[El Ropo]

Did you pull the meat directly off the cooker?

I like to let them rest foiled in a cooler for minimum of 2 hours before pulling.

Did the bone(s) wiggle freely when you removed from cooker?

Not sure why you had so much trouble. Some folks will take a heavy pan and smash the top of the butt, then quickly smoosh it all around with gloved hands and pick out any obvious hunks of fat and they're done. Larger hunks of meat and it's a fast process.

[pal251]

I only let it rest a half hr. I'll try letting it rest for a while next time


Do you wrap yours in foil when you let it rest? I pulled bone out without a problem.

[El Ropo]

Wrap in foil (some folks double wrap, I don't bother), then wrap in old bath towels and drop into a decent ice chest, fill remaining space in chest with more towels or crumpled newspaper, anything to take up the extra space. They'll easily hold for up to 6 hours like that and still be too hot to pull by hand.