Saturday, I bought a beef chuck roast. It was 3.03 pounds. I trimmed all the hard fat off and put on “Texas BBQ” rub. I tied it with string in about 3 places and 1 string around the edge. At noon the roast went on the 025 CS smoker set at 225 with two chunks of hickory. I set my temp gauge goal at 202 degrees internal temp.
Man-O-Man this took about 19 hours total to reach that temp. After about 7 hours it plateaued about 157 and stayed there for about 3-4 hours. I went to bed and put the remote probe by my bed and checked it through the night. Then it went to 187 and stayed there forever. At 6:00am I got up and the temp was still about 187. I finally upped the smoker to 275 to try and get it finished and about an hour later at 7am it went to 202. I thought I had killed that piece of meat. I thought it would probably be as dry as a shoe, but to my surprise is came out really good. It was tender but slightly dry, so I added some beef broth and FTC for 2 hours. It pulled apart very easily by hand. I added some boiled potatoes and made some nice burritos.
What would cause that to take so long? I opened the door only once before going to bed. I did place a 7 inch? disposable pie pan on the shelf below it to catch some of the juices. Could that make such a difference. If I tied the roast very tightly could that make a difference. My longest smoke before this was probably a pork butt about 6-7 pounds and 14 hours. I was happy with the result but I would have never figured it would take so long.
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