So I picked up a couple hundred pounds of brisket and Boston butts yesterday...

[sudsandswine]

I'll be cooking about 210lbs of brisket and Boston butts this weekend for my brother's wedding reception. Yesterday I picked up 10 briskets and 12 butts from Sam's and iced them down in two coolers, since it exceeds my capacity in my garage meat fridge.

While my Shirley has the grate real estate to do it all in one cook, I am going to do brisket one day and then pork the next so that I'm only having to focus on one type of meat at a time.

This evening I plan to trim all the briskets and will cook them starting tomorrow morning. During the cook tomorrow I will prep the butts with an injection and then throw them on the smoker early Saturday morning. When the meat is finished we will portion into ~5lb vacuum bags and quick chill the sealed bag in an ice water bath so that it's down to refrigerator temps in just a few minutes. Then the meat will go in the deep freeze until the day of.

This is the largest amount of meat I've cooked so far, and it's slightly intimidating...partially due to it being for an important occasion. Mess up a couple butts or a brisket and you're out $40 bucks, mess up this much meat and it gets to be an expensive proposition.

 

[SirPorkaLot]

That’s a lot of meat!

You will do fine, you’ve been practicing for this moment for years.
Plus you have a Shirley.

 

[legendaryhog]

I've done multiple weddings and cooks like that. It is a lot of work. I hope you have some helpers and if you are doing it on site a good place to sleep.

I also hope you have a commercial slicer for the brisket. That's a lot of slicing. Good luck with your party!

 

[pjtexas1]

Really big cook, at least for me it would be. I like to slice the brisket onsite so a sharp knife is a necessity. Without helpers you will wear yourself out. I've burned up an electric knife before trying to keep up with demand. Looking forward to seeing pics.

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[sudsandswine]

I'm doing the cook in my driveway, and the wedding isn't this weekend, so it'll be fairly leisurely in that I have no hard timelines I'm working with. I'm hoping to run the cooker for < 12 hours each day so I don't think it'll be too terrible. I do intend to minimize the amount of walking in/out of the house and up/down the stairs by doing as much of the work under an easy up, on a table next to the cooker in the driveway, and by parking myself in a lawn chair next to it for much of the time. Walking down and up my front stairs and out of then back into the house 40 or 50 times over the day does add up.

I do have a pretty nice slicer I planned to use, mainly because I want to make the slices thinner than the pencil thick slices I normally do by hand. I figure people will be more likely to "over serve" themselves with thicker slices, where 3 or 4 slices might weigh close to half a pound.

I'm hoping for 50 - 60 pounds of each cooked meat, and figured most people would probably take 1/4lb of each, or averaging a half pound of meat total per person.

 

[Garyclaw]

^^ Good points about having some help and a slicer. Good luck!

 

[Jason TQ]

Awesome!

 

[Stingerhook]

Hope the beer cooler is full.

 

[LloydQ]

You are a good man to do that for your brother!

 

[sudsandswine]

It's my wedding gift to him....figure it beats a blender or something :thumb:

And yes...as soon as one of these coolers is vacated of its meat contents it will promptly be filled with icy cold beers.

 

[redchaserron]

Question for you. On the wedding day, how will you be re-warming the meat? A water bath in vacuum bags?

 

[sudsandswine]

Yep, I'll have a few Anova circulators (my own and borrowed) that we'll use to hold the meat. The reheated meat is nearly identical in quality to that of fresh, so it's my preferred way of reheating barbecue.

 

[TravelingJ]

What temp do you run the Anova at for reheating? Do you have enough for your event? I'm the next town over and can loan you mine if you need.

 

[sudsandswine]

Appreciate the offer, I have 3 which I think will be enough but I'm going to do a test run to see how long it takes to bring the water up to temp I might need 2 of them per cooler so I'll definitely keep that in mind. :thumb:

Apparently I only bought 9 briskets not 10 like I thought, so I may pick up another brisket to cook with the pork on Saturday. I'm at 83.475lb raw post trimming, which i think may be cutting it a shade close. I trimmed off 28lb between the 9 briskets.

In the store I felt like the black canyon briskets were floppier and less fat than the excel brand, but when I did the trimming I had less loss on the excel and thought they had better marbeling. We will see if the end result is any different, I doubt I'll be able to keep track of which is which through the cook anyway.

I didn't go quite as aggressive on the trim as I normally would doing just one or two briskets but I got 75% of the way. I'll post pictures of some of the pre and post trimming tomorrow but maybe someone will find my numbers interesting.

It took me 2 hours and 40 minutes to do the 9, a lot of work but I think that was a decent pace. My goal in the trim was to get each brisket to lay flat so there was a uniformish thickness end to end.

 

[pjtexas1]

That's quick work trimming that many briskets. And you are correct about losing track of the briskets during the cook. Unless you pull and wrap individually that's where I lose track. I get busy and pile them up to make wrapping in bp quicker.

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[Jason TQ]

Cool! When doing bulk briskets I get the hard kernel fat from the one side and maybe if there is crazy excess around the point/flat, but not much else. It can easily be trimmed off after, but of course it all depends on how you want the end product you want to shoot for. Most folks I've found don't want any fat regardless so something to think about that can save time especially at events with lots of kids and ladies.

What are you injecting the butts with? Also how many people is this for? You might have enough. Every time I do my normal "x amount of yield meat per person" based on common catering quantities and experience I always have leftovers.

 

[sudsandswine]

It's for 200 people, 10% or slightly less are kids but I'm counting on regular portion sizes for them as my buffer. If there's a next time I might do what you said and just hit the basics on the travel job but I wanted to control the outcome for this one as much as possible, and deviating on my trim is just another new variable that I would be working with. If I had to do more than 10 I don't think this level of trim would have been workable.

I stopped by Sam's when they opened at 7 this morning and got one more just to be on the safe side. if my finished weight yields higher than I expect then I'll have some goodies for the bachelor party. :thumb:

Also, I plan to use the Chris Lilly style injection....tastes good, natural, and I have all the ingredients in my house at any point in time.

 

[Sevengoals]

Super work!

 

[cfrazier77]

This is really an awesome thing that you are doing for your friend. They will never forget it. Way to represent Brethern character.

May the Smoke be with you!

 

[sudsandswine]

Well it's my brother, and I figure he's put up with my shenanigans this long I probably owe it to him. :-D

Once I started loading the briskets up I realized that they actually take up more grate real estate than I imagined, and it would have been a pretty tight fit to get 12 Boston butts on there in addition to these briskets.

Thinking in might be time to get on the wait list for a 30 x something from Shirley :shock: