Butt Question

I use an AQ. Your meat on the lower racks will finish at least an hour sooner if not more. Use multiple temp probes.

Welcome to the Forum!

Thanks for the advice, I will do just that!

Be careful of too much meat. If you block the heat from flowing evenly over all the butts, they'll cook unevenly.

1/2 way through the cook rotate the racks in a way to put those in the middle on the bottom. That way they'll come out more closed to the same time.

Thanks, I have done that in the past with my old cooker, I appreciate the suggestions.

How did it turn out? Looking to do 4 butts in an SM025. I usually have a pan on the bottom rack when doing one.

quote:

Originally posted by shackin':
How did it turn out? Looking to do 4 butts in an SM025. I usually have a pan on the bottom rack when doing one.

Guess most upright type cookers suffer from the bottom cooking hotter than the top syndrome. Know all mine do. The po folks who cant afford all them fancy heat gauges just plays musical chairs with it. The bottom hunk goes to the top and the top goes down. Very similar to the offset issue of its normally hotter closer to the firebox. So I would vote for a butt shuffle about once and hour.

Ditto to Smokin Okie's advice to rotate your meat halfway through. That is advice from a Master of the product, and we should always take advice from someone older or wiser. There is a significant difference from top to bottom when you fully load a Cookshack. In fact, there is a measurable difference on which shelf you use if you only have a single piece of meat in the cooker.

Disagree with the once an hour shuffle. My old rule of thumb was that I had to add a half hour to the cook time every time I opened the door. My belief is that the less times you disturb the meat the better your product will be; and the meat will be done much quicker.

The beauty of a Cookshack - you do not have to constantly attend to your meat. IMHO, if you open the door more than twice before you remove the meat (except poultry), you just need to adjust your cooking plan. Just learn the cooker and reap the praises...

Good point. Stay flexible on the shuffling schedule.

I'm no expert,but it sounds like folks are saying what the old cooks tried to teach me.

Be flexible and learn your cooker.
Now some of us that have had smaller electric CS agree about recovery time can be quite awhile with a small single heat element.

Also,while we can learn quick that a butt setting directly on the bottom heat element can burn quick in the wrong spot,if we mapped our cooker- we found that heat rises to the highest/farthest point in the room and that butt can cook faster than we thought.

But,to confuse things even more,a little larger commercial electric CS ,like my CS160 loaded up with a case,or case and a half, of butts has a pretty big heat sink and you can leave it open while you swap butts to the hot spots,pull out those that have finished,or just open the door a little more often while you figure out what is happening in there.
Yep,it might add a little time to the cook.

Then,my older FEC 100s that will cook over 475º with straight pellet ramps will recover right quick at a comp,while my newer "restaurant certified" FECs are not as hot and recover a little more slowly.

Then there is my Fast Eddy Pellet grill that can set up to dump pellets almost continuously and it recovers like a steakhouse grill.

I guess what I'm saying is Smokin'Okie preaches to us not only to make small changes ,but write down what we did.
Even cooking a lot,we tend to forget those things that worked-or not.

Now I'll get off,before I'm accused of making a Smokin'Okie post.

Bunch of good points there. I cant never seem to find a paper and pencil when I am busy cooking..lol. Think I have learned my big pit better than I ever knew it since its now a dedicated jerky maker. I know the bottom rack of the upright cooks/dehydrates hottest fastest and the top rack is the coolest slowest. I might better send this info off to a physics major huh? Hot air do rise or at least till it bumps into a fixed object..such as a rack full of jerky or a few butts...briskets etc. hmmm.

quote:

Originally posted by shackin':
How did it turn out? Looking to do 4 butts in an SM025. I usually have a pan on the bottom rack when doing one.

courious if you ended up cooking all four at the same time? specs on SM025 is max 25 pounds. Id imagine you'd have a hard time keeping a good temp.

unless they are smaller in weight, i would split them up. ive done 2 10 lbs boneless butts took about 18 some hours but the little smoker did it!

Once again on getting to know our cookers and the meat we are cooking.Back when Smokin' and I started with Smokettes[008/9] they were rated for a max of 22 lbs.

Naturally,I'd try to push the envelope,rather than do two cooks.
Like Smokin' always says"don't block your airflow".
You can look at the sizes and shapes of the butts.A touch of trimming,a few slashes-to help speed the cook and get more rub in ,pressure to mash down a shape and then "eyeball" the overall placement.

Of course,there is no "law" about cooker temp,so 250º-the max is a good temp.30 to 32 lbs can be carefully loaded.If you choose,you could wrap in HD plastic wrap and foil at about 165º plus internal-to speed it up even more.

Once you get the temp of the overall mass/heat sink up it tends to cook even more regular and doesn't lose as much heat/time if the door is opened.It cooks so moist that you need to open the door every couple hrs to dump moisture.

Do I plan this for every cook,of course not.I do try to make my cooker work for me,rather than the other way around-if I need it to.

Just a couple thoughts.