Dabaras
Knows what a fatty is.
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2013
- Location
- McKinney...
So my wife and I both went to a boarding school in Louisiana called the Louisiana School for Math, Sciences and the Arts. Every summer for the last few years, a bunch of alumni get together and do projects for the school over one weekend that the school would have trouble getting budgeted. Last year I built benches in the 100 degree heat and almost died (or it felt like it) so this year I volunteered to cook.
We were supposed to have about 120-130 people, so I figured on 90-100 pounds of raw pork butt and 40 pounds of chicken drumsticks. Went to Restaurant Depot with my KCBS membership and picked up the meat.
That is a lot of pork.
Due to some scheduling conflicts, the wife and I were in Chicago and flew back Friday night with the event on Saturday. We had the truck loaded up and parked at my office parking garage which isn't far from the airport. We got to Natchitoches, LA at about 2:30 am, unloaded and started the smoker.
I'm using an extended Party.
The wife goes to bed (the school makes the dorm available for this event) and I start prepping the pork butts.
The first discover I made is that the butts from Restaurant Depot aren't as partially trimmed as I am used to from Sam's. This takes a bit longer to trim and I start thinking that my savings/pound aren't what I was expecting with all this extra trimming. Got everything prepped and the smoker was up to temp, so it was loaded up. I've got the auber temp controller hooked up with a Pit Viper fan just for easy feelings.
Everything settled in nicely and by 7:30, I'm headed upstairs to shower and get some sleep (I've now been up for about 27 hours). I get to sleep about 8:30. Next thing I know it is 10am and my wife is telling me that the temp is dropping.
The fan is running, doors are closed. The charcoal was almost completely gone. Getting that much meat up to temp really drained it. Okay lesson learned. Pulled out the basket, shook all the lit coals to one end and refilled. About ten minutes and a lot of smoke later, the temp starts coming back up.
After that, it was a whole lot of this:
I did play with the igrill 2 with 4 temp probes. That was convenient, except it wouldn't work with my ipad2. Something about the version of bluetooth tech.
Dinner was scheduled for 6:30, and my plan was for the pork to be done by 4, giving me enough time to crank up the temp and do the drumsticks. No such luck. That much mass really slowed everything down. By four I knew plan A was screwed, but luckily the school had a large grill 2' x 5' open grill with adjustable height on it, so I went down the road and bought some charcoal and lighter fluid and started plan B of grilled drumsticks.
Started the drumsticks at 5:30 (the first butts still weren't ready) and went back and forth. The first two butts were ready at 6:00 and got all of 15 minutes rest in the cambro before they were pulled. Luckily, one of the spouses used to work in a BBQ restaurant and came down and helped with the pulling. Over the next hour we finished grilling all the drumsticks (about 120 of them) and the last butt came off at about 7:30 and was immediately shredded. Sorry, no pictures of the finished product, it was just too busy.
A few lessons learned were:
1. Tightly packed meat takes a lot longer to cook (I knew this, but it just wasn't possible to start earlier)
2. The far back of a Party cooks faster than by the door. The butts in back were done before the ones in front.
3. If you cook good BBQ, you are going to get volunteered to cook more good BBQ.
I got a standing ovation when I finally came inside, and I was told that without a doubt, I was cooking again next year.
That's okay, my wife told me I was allowed to get a bigger smoker. I see a Shirley special in my future.
We were supposed to have about 120-130 people, so I figured on 90-100 pounds of raw pork butt and 40 pounds of chicken drumsticks. Went to Restaurant Depot with my KCBS membership and picked up the meat.
That is a lot of pork.
Due to some scheduling conflicts, the wife and I were in Chicago and flew back Friday night with the event on Saturday. We had the truck loaded up and parked at my office parking garage which isn't far from the airport. We got to Natchitoches, LA at about 2:30 am, unloaded and started the smoker.
I'm using an extended Party.
The wife goes to bed (the school makes the dorm available for this event) and I start prepping the pork butts.
The first discover I made is that the butts from Restaurant Depot aren't as partially trimmed as I am used to from Sam's. This takes a bit longer to trim and I start thinking that my savings/pound aren't what I was expecting with all this extra trimming. Got everything prepped and the smoker was up to temp, so it was loaded up. I've got the auber temp controller hooked up with a Pit Viper fan just for easy feelings.
Everything settled in nicely and by 7:30, I'm headed upstairs to shower and get some sleep (I've now been up for about 27 hours). I get to sleep about 8:30. Next thing I know it is 10am and my wife is telling me that the temp is dropping.
The fan is running, doors are closed. The charcoal was almost completely gone. Getting that much meat up to temp really drained it. Okay lesson learned. Pulled out the basket, shook all the lit coals to one end and refilled. About ten minutes and a lot of smoke later, the temp starts coming back up.
After that, it was a whole lot of this:
I did play with the igrill 2 with 4 temp probes. That was convenient, except it wouldn't work with my ipad2. Something about the version of bluetooth tech.
Dinner was scheduled for 6:30, and my plan was for the pork to be done by 4, giving me enough time to crank up the temp and do the drumsticks. No such luck. That much mass really slowed everything down. By four I knew plan A was screwed, but luckily the school had a large grill 2' x 5' open grill with adjustable height on it, so I went down the road and bought some charcoal and lighter fluid and started plan B of grilled drumsticks.
Started the drumsticks at 5:30 (the first butts still weren't ready) and went back and forth. The first two butts were ready at 6:00 and got all of 15 minutes rest in the cambro before they were pulled. Luckily, one of the spouses used to work in a BBQ restaurant and came down and helped with the pulling. Over the next hour we finished grilling all the drumsticks (about 120 of them) and the last butt came off at about 7:30 and was immediately shredded. Sorry, no pictures of the finished product, it was just too busy.
A few lessons learned were:
1. Tightly packed meat takes a lot longer to cook (I knew this, but it just wasn't possible to start earlier)
2. The far back of a Party cooks faster than by the door. The butts in back were done before the ones in front.
3. If you cook good BBQ, you are going to get volunteered to cook more good BBQ.
I got a standing ovation when I finally came inside, and I was told that without a doubt, I was cooking again next year.
That's okay, my wife told me I was allowed to get a bigger smoker. I see a Shirley special in my future.
