OT: smoking pork shoulder

[Bullldawg78]

Quick opinion question, first temp you target for finish? 195, 180? Second do you foil wrap starting at 165 and finish on smoker to desired temp or just throw in a cooler and rest it wrapped in foil?

 

[DerHntr]

195 to 198. I wrap at 165 and add some honey and extra rub at that point. Wrap tight. I usually finish in the oven at 250 because you can’t get anymore smoke in it once it is wrapped anyway. Toss in cooler in the wrap after you get to 195 for at least 30 minutes to an hour. Make sure it’s a small cooler. If you don’t have one, then put in some old towels to fill the air gap to the lid.

I would not cook to 165, wrap, and throw in cooler. The fat won’t fully render and you’ll likely have a ton of trouble pulling it.

 

[Bullldawg78]

Sorry fat finger down vote meant up vote and thank you for the advice

 

[msudawg12]

No wrap. Gimme the crust!

 

[PapaDawg]

No wrap- gives more bark, pull with an IT of 200. I cook with fat side down.

 

[PapaDawg]

No wrap- gives more bark, pull with an IT of 200. I cook with fat side down. Wrap with foil and place in cooler. It will stay warm at least 4 hours if needed

 

[57stratdawg]

DH’s post looks like good advice, but I cook with a water smoker and I almost always get better product without wrapping. The moisture level is high enough to protect it. Wrap vs unwrapped varies smoker to smoker, IMO.

I like a glaze on pork . About 30 minutes before you’re ready to pull it, cover it a sticky wet sauce. That’ll give it time to set, but not burn. Save some for the pulled product too. The contrast between the set sauce and table side is noticeable.

 

[aTotal360]

Cook at 225. No wrap. Salt and pepper only. Pull it off the grill with internal temp of just over 200 (usually 203). Let it rest for 2 hours or longer in the oven. Long rest makes a huge difference. I mix the pan juices with vinegar bbq sauces and put it over the meat.

 

[DerHntr]

DH’s post looks like good advice, but I cook with a water smoker and I almost always get better product without wrapping. The moisture level is high enough to protect it. Wrap vs unwrapped varies smoker to smoker, IMO.

I like a glaze on pork . About 30 minutes before you’re ready to pull it, cover it a sticky wet sauce. That’ll give it time to set, but not burn. Save some for the pulled product too. The contrast between the set sauce and table side is noticeable.

Agree completely on the smoker. If I go with my Cookshack electric, I don’t wrap. If I go with my offset stick burner, I wrap and move to the oven. My stick burner puts on a hell of a crust by 165 and I won’t have to tend the fire if I wrap and move to the oven.

For someone new to smoking butts, I encourage the fastest way through the stall (wrap) and finish in the oven. A person that hasn’t done this very often likely can’t come close to predicting total cook time of a butt (weight of the butt, consistency of the cooker, leaving it the hell alone and not checking it and hence losing temp, etc.). I know people who tried at first with no wrap and got insanely frustrated because it took hours longer than expected. Plus they had people waiting for dinner to be served. If you finish earlier than expected, let it sit longer in the cooler and drink more beer.

 

[Dawgbite]

Don't wrap. The magic temp is 203 and then wrap and let it rest in a cooler for an hour or two. Google Turbo Method Butts and try it. You'll never cook one low and slow again unless you're just bored.

 

[Jeffreauxdawg]

Agree. I got a new stick burner a few weeks ago and cooked on one for the first time in 5+ years 2 weekends ago. So much more smoke than any other method. I only cooked on an offset for 10 years than gave it away when I moved. I forgot 2 things in those 5 years... How much smoke you get and how loopy my mind gets right before sunrise on a a cook that started the previous evening. I don't use a binder which helps too, but that crust was so firm a cat couldn't scratch it at 170. I was still working on ribs on the smoker so I stuck the butt in a foil pan and wrapped the top with foil and threw it back on the smoker, but the oven would be just fine.** (If your oven is accurate... see below.)

I have probably cooked a dozen or more butts in the last couple of years and they are pretty hard to mess up if you use a remote thermometer . My go to method has been the turbo butt on my Kamado. Somebody on here recommended it a few years ago and I have never looked back. 8-10# butt at 325 degrees no wrap for 6 hours or so and you render the **** out of that fat and get a killer bark. I pull it off at 190, because at 325 the momentum will take it past 200 easily. Unlike ribs or brisket, the old butt can handle that high temp, at least on a kamado style grill that really holds in the moisture. I imagine a WSM with water pan would do well with the turbo method too, not sure about others.


ETA. PSA, please read if you are going to to try to hold meat in an oven.

In my previous brisket life I always wrapped in foil at around 175ish (right after the stall, wrapping in foil before the stall steams the bark from the inside and causes it to slide off when cutting in my experience), pulled it off at probe tender around 200 then rested for 15-20 minutes at ambient temp to stop the cooking and threw it in the cooler for 2-5 hours. In the past 5 years while I have not been cooking brisket, butcher paper and resting in the oven has become very popular. So on my first brisket in a long time, I used this method and 17'd it up.

I read everywhere you could rest the brisket in the oven on warm (170 with most ovens) for 12 hours our so and it holds very well. I read the manual on my oven and warm is 170. It cuts off after 3 hours so I just set a timer and restarted. Easy peasy right?... 17 no. At 6:00 am I put that brisket in the oven and that butcher paper was soaked with fat and the brisket felt like a jello mold. Just under 12 hours after going in, I pulled that sucker out and that butcher paper dried out like a slug in the salt flats. After tearing the butcher paper off the brisket like the wrapper on a Hershey bar sitting on the car dash all day, my beautiful brisket had turned into a piece of driftwood. The flat was dry as hell, the point, meh... I had 30+ people over. They all seemed to enjoy it, because I live in the land of **** BBQ and it was probably the best brisket they have eaten anyway. In fact, they ate all the brisket. The pulled pork, sausage and ribs, were all great in my opinion, but I 17ed the brisket royally.

I originally thought I must have over cooked it, but then I remembered how beautiful it came off the smoker. The ribs and butt also rested in the oven, but wrapped in foil. So I started testing with my remote thermometer. My oven is a gas oven with convection mode. It heated up to 207 in warm mode before the flame cutoff and it gradually fell to 165 before heating back up again. Also, there is a lot more airflow (convection) in this than my previous ovens. So some combination of the breathable butcher paper, extra convection, and much higher heat 17ed my brisket.

Moral of the story is if you are going to rest something in the oven, test it first with a thermometer independent of the oven. I'm going back to the old cooler method that I know well.

 

[harrybollocks]

Pork butt is forgiving. My old Weber Kettle produced good pulled pork. Lots of ways to make it taste good. I just wrap after 3-4 hours of smoking between 225-250 and take it off the egg, or out of the oven (don't diss that), when it reaches 198-200 and let stand at least 30 minutes. If you have time do some of the things mentioned about. You don't need to inject but it's worth doing once in a while especially if you're worried about overcooking it even a little. Big Bob Gibson has a good pork butt injection recipe available online.

 

[hdogg]

This is my experience. I've done some very good pork shoulders. Yesterday I could not get out of the stall at 145 using my offset smoker. I wrapped and moved to green egg, temp started rising pretty qucik. But probably spent 1.5 hours longer in the stall and it got late so I had to pull off when I knew it wasn't perfect. Still tasted fine but not as tender in some spots.
Aaron franklin says it's ok to wrap. Just fyi.

 

[Crazy Cotton]

I started wrapping butts in butcher paper. Gets you past the stall in a hurry and doesn’t ruin your crust. Best of both worlds

 

[Uncle Ruckus]

Listen man. Wrap it. But only wrap when you have the bark you want. Not at a certain temp. Get your bark. Wrap. Maintain all that moisture and juice. Pull at 203. Let it rest. If you got a while to eat, wrap in towels and put in cooler. If you’re ready to eat, let it rest until it gets cool enough to pull.
But seriously. Cook to the bark you want. Wrap. Then cook to temp. Win win win.

 

[RiverCityDawg]

Listen man. Wrap it. But only wrap when too have the bark you want. Not at a certain temp. Get your bark. Wrap. Maintain all that moisture and juice. Pull at 203. Let it rest. If you got a while to eat, wrap in towels and put in cooler. If you’re ready to eat, let it rest until it gets cool enough to pull.
But seriously. Cook to the bark you want. Wrap. Then cook to temp. Win win win.

This is exactly how I do it. Sometimes I inject, or sometimes I might just add a little juice to the wrap for flavor, but it's not needed for moisture if you wrap.

My cooking temp pre-wrap is 225-250. After I wrap I go up to 325 if I'm in a hurry, if not I just let it ride at the 225-250. Comes out about the same either way. Takes me about 6-7 hours.

I do like unwrapped too for the harder bark, but prefer the juiciness (and shorter cook time) with wrapping it.

 

[Dawgbite]

Next time you guys cook a butt try it hot and fast. Trim all the fat you can, all that fat does is cause you to lose bark. The juicyness isn’t rendered fat, it’s the connective tissue in the muscle breaking down and that happens around 200-205 internal temp. The universal temp for this is 203. Cook at 350- 375, you will not experience a stall and a full size butt will cook in about 5 hours. Wrap it at 203 and let it rest an hour or two in a cooler before pulling. No more setting the alarm to get up early enough so that it will be ready for dinner. No more all night cooks. I was skeptical for years but it’s the only way I cook them now. The only drawback from cooking hot and fast is that you’ve got a short window to pull it at 200-205. It will shoot past your target and hit 210-215 in a matter of 15-30 minutes and start to dry out. You’ve got to have an alarm or keep a close watch on the meat when it gets close to the target temp.

 

[Seinfeld]

First and foremost, completely agree about trimming the fat cap and any large exterior pieces. I remember being terrified that I was going to end up with a dried out hunk of pork the first time I did it, but it made absolutely zero difference in terms of tenderness or moisture content, and like you said... the more fat you leave on, the less bark you'll end up with. I've read tons of claims that leaving the cap on also limits smoke absorption which makes sense, but I can't say I've noticed a huge difference either way in that department.

I've never tried the hot & fast method, but how is it when it comes to smoke flavor? I know the usual rule of thumb with low & slow is that you're only getting smoke for the first ~ 3 hrs or so, and I was just curious if that gets cut down even more when you cook them hot.

 

[mcdawg22]

Cook at 225. No wrap. Salt and pepper only. Pull it off the grill with internal temp of just over 200 (usually 203). Let it rest for 2 hours or longer in the oven. Long rest makes a huge difference. I mix the pan juices with vinegar bbq sauces and put it over the meat.

I kept waiting for the punchline. You are getting soft in your old age*

 

[Jeffreauxdawg]

I've never tried the hot & fast method, but how is it when it comes to smoke flavor? I know the usual rule of thumb with low & slow is that you're only getting smoke for the first ~ 3 hrs or so, and I was just curious if that gets cut down even more when you cook them hot.

The first 3 hours of a cook handling the smoke absorption is really an old wives tale. You can add smoke flavor at anytime smoke hits meat. Now, once a hard bark is formed, it will obviously not be able to penetrate nearly as well as it did earlier in the cook.

The 3 hours myth is likely talking about the smoke ring. The smoke ring is the biggest head fake in BBQ. This article explains it well. But effectively the smoke ring is created by Nitric Oxide penetrating the myoglobin (myoglobin is the red/pink juice in steak) before +/-140°F. The NO keeps the myoglobin from browning, aka keeps it pinkish red. The easy way to create a massive smoke ring would be to put a super gold brisket on with a really low cook temp and use a high NO fuel to penetrate the meat for as long as possible until it hits 140.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/bbq/the-science-of-the-smoke-ring/

Anyhow NO and it's effect on myoglobin has no real effect on the flavor of meat, it's just coincidental. Smoke and it's resulting flavor is dependent on the lignin profile if a specific wood, it's moisture content, and the available oxygen in the fire.


As for the turbo butt having more or less smoke. Not really on a Kamado or Egg. We are burning lump charcoal and wood chunks that produce lots of smoke, even at high temps. I'm not experienced with pellet grills, but I do know wood chemistry fairly well and pellets are super efficient (aka low moisture content) and if you burn those little boogers at a high temperature, it will be virtually smokeless.

So just guessing turbo butt would be great on kamado grills, Weber smokey mountain/barrel grills, Weber kettle.

I don't think you can even get an electric smoker over 300 from what I have seen. And I imagine running a pellet smoker at 350 would almost be akin to cooking it in the oven because the pellets would burn almost smokeless.

The offset stick burner would be a challenge unless you have baffles or a reverse flow. Smoke would probably be okay, but you would be torching the side closest to the fire at high temps.


Pics from my last turbo butt. Time stamps on the pictures show it going on @7:30am and coming off @1:30pm. Since me and dawgbite are the only ones promoting the method, I want to give him credit as the one who must have turned me on to it. It's truly a game changer if you have the right equipment to pull it off.


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[Hugh's Burner Phone]

I take mine off at 205. Smoking a huge one for the 4th. I'll coat mine in ribbon cane molasses and then make a rub of brown sugar, garlic, dry mustard, smoked paprika, cumin, creole seasoning, and lemon pepper. Cook on offset heat on my grill until I get a good bark and hopefully an internal temp of around 160-170. Then I'll spritz with apple juice and some butter and wrap and finish to 205. This final push I'll usually add a lot more charcoal to raise the cooking temp from around 250 to 325-350.

But get a temp probe with blue tooth so you can sit in the AC and keep tabs on the temp.