Cutting butt to save time?

do em whole before you go, tear em up and pan..do a couple whole for show..

It would cut the time but I have never done it that way, I just cook them like normal.

We have tried that but didn't like the way they turned out. They were somewhat dry and tough. They just didn't seem to cook the same as a whole butt. YMMV

For vending, I suggest the following:

Precook, plastic wrap and chill. Reheat on site and break the butts as needed as close to serving as possible. Quality will not be ultimate, but better than pulling and panning in advance.

we have never cooked ahead of time and hope we never have to.

CivilWarBBQ said:

For vending, I suggest the following:

Precook, plastic wrap and chill. Reheat on site and break the butts as needed as close to serving as possible. Quality will not be ultimate, but better than pulling and panning in advance.

Click to expand...

I've seen many people that like this process but for me it's a pain. I have to spend an additional day cooking then and hour or two breaking down the butts and shocking cold with an ice slurry then get the cold butts out the next day and break apart in pans and a couple hours of reheat time. I find it much easier to just cook hot and fast when need and can get butts in 6 hours or less cooked fresh.

HBMTN said:

I've seen many people that like this process but for me it's a pain. I have to spend an additional day cooking then and hour or two breaking down the butts and shocking cold with an ice slurry then get the cold butts out the next day and break apart in pans and a couple hours of reheat time. I find it much easier to just cook hot and fast when need and can get butts in 6 hours or less cooked fresh.

Click to expand...

This all depends on how many you plan on selling. 100 sandwiches or 1,000. What is the projection of sales? When you have all pulled, sauced and wrapped you can slowly heat what you need, especially if the day weather went sour. At the end of the day if sales were slow you will be spendiing this time pulling and protecting your meat for selling the next day. Quaility will not be sacrificed properly wrapped and heated. Also your clean up time at the end of vending will be easier, unless you have extra staff pulling as you go will not keep up, in my opionion..
bottom line is how many served in a day? It it hard to keep fresh ribs and brisket going, side dish or two and pulling a butt apart at the same time?