Cooking the Night Before

[jeffreywp1]

If i smoke some butts the night before and wrap in foil and store hot in a cooler, how long will they stay hot? Will they contenue to cook in the cooler?

[seattlepitboss]

They will only stay hot a few hours in a cooler. To a small extent they will cook a bit more, but mostly the juices will redistribute themselves inside the roasts.

What I suggest is to smoke the butts the day before, then let them cool completely in pans and then foil the pans and refrigerate. The next day, warm them in a 300F oven for an hour and they will be piping hot and ready to pull and eat. I've done this several times for large cooks, where I needed the smoker one day to smoke the chuck roasts and pork butts and the next to do the ribs.

seattlepitboss

[Demosthenes9]

Originally Posted by jeffreywp1

If i smoke some butts the night before and wrap in foil and store hot in a cooler, how long will they stay hot? Will they contenue to cook in the cooler?

Depends on the cooler and how many butts you have in there. More butts = more thermal mass = prolonged heat retention. WRT the cooler itself, it's actual insulation value comes into play (how long it will hold heat or keep things cold) as does the capacity (you don't want a lot of empty air space.)

Presume you have 2 coolers with the same insulation values. One is really big, the other is smaller. If you have 1 butt, it will keep better in the smaller cooler. 2 or 3 butts in that same cooler would stay hotter for a longer period of time.

All that said, with a decent cooler, butts should be fine for upwards of 6 hours (though many here have held butts for much longer).

[Smokinitup]

Originally Posted by seattlepitboss

They will only stay hot a few hours in a cooler. To a small extent they will cook a bit more, but mostly the juices will redistribute themselves inside the roasts.

What I suggest is to smoke the butts the day before, then let them cool completely in pans and then foil the pans and refrigerate. The next day, warm them in a 300F oven for an hour and they will be piping hot and ready to pull and eat. I've done this several times for large cooks, where I needed the smoker one day to smoke the chuck roasts and pork butts and the next to do the ribs.

This is the way to do it. Also an option is to have the meat pulled before cooling then reheat when ready. The only disadvantage this way would be the possibility of drying out unless you added liquid like water or a carolina vinegar sauce.

[IamMadMan]

I've held pork in the cooler for 6 hours and it was still too hat to handle.....