Just hit roughly my 18 month mark with my SM045 and it never ceases to amaze me. To make things even better, I finally ordered the stand, which I received and installed yesterday. No more bending over to load/unload or foil the bottom!
OK - on to the Pork part of my post.
Cooked two full briskets from Friday night to Saturday morning - pulled at 190 and FTC'd them to take to a family gathering in the afternoon.
I then loaded up 34 lbs of pork butts (4 pieces of almost equal size) for a get together on the next day, Sunday. My dilemma was not knowing what time I would be getting home later in the day and if I would have enough time to get them started for a Sunday noon get together. So I opted to load them at 11am Saturday and set the cook temp at 200.
I arrived home at 8pm, and both temp probes were reading 170. So I opened the door and applied a liberal mopping using Okie's mop from the 101.
I bumped the cook temp to 225. I am sitting here now at 12:30am and the probes are reading 172. The beauty is, I don't have to stay up and monitor the progress, no fiddling with vents to keep the temp in range. I have my wireless Redi-Check monitor set to go off when the internal temp hits 195. I will then foil and mop the meat...if it is EARLY morning, I will dump the heat a bit, reset to 140, and put back in to hold for 2-3 hours. Then FTC until time to take to the part and pull.
I had a 'sampler' piece in the cooker...so I quickly opened the door one more time and grabbed it for a late night snack. Man, for just doing a ad-hoc rub of mustard, brown sugar, sea salt, and light dusting of all spice....it was tasting pretty good!
Am I an expert - not at all. I owe everything to a excellent product (Cookshack), a great forum where good people share many tips and experiences, and some practice. Whenever I have question or concerns about a particular cook, I just search the forums and almost always find something on the exact topic I am wrestling with.
Thanks to all forum members for continuing to contribute and thanks to Cookshack for making the most reliable product I have ever purchased.
Ro
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