To pan or not to pan

[patrickd26]

I'm cooking up to 20 pork butts for a graduation. I have plenty of hands, so that's going to help.

I posted earlier about how to cool/reheat and I received some great answers. Now, I'm curious whether or not I should put these in an aluminum pan. I'll be maintaining 5 cookers (all but one behave like set and forget) and I really don't want the mess of all the meat inside my cookers. I've thought about putting them in pans, but I don't want to ruin the texture of the meat that's sitting in the juice. I know that I will lose some penetration, but I'm willing to sacrifice that in the name of not messing up the inside of the cookers.

Thoughts?

Thank you!

 

[Smoking Piney]

I went to Myron's class last year. He pans after some time naked in the smoke with racks on the bottom of the pans to keep the meat from swimming in the juice. No loss of texture or taste doing that.

 

[Joshw]

I don't care for pans, because I feel they affect penetration. But in your situation, it would make cleanup much easier. I would either put racks over the pans, and elevate them above the pans. If you don't have that many racks. You can make tin foil balls, and set them on the tinfoil, to elevate them out of the juice.

 

[patrickd26]

Good idea on the foil balls. Thanks, guys.