Help pulling apart butts

I love pork fat.....LOVE IT. I used to scoff at the idea of trimming ANY fat from my butts before they went into the smoker, but things change.


Now I trim my butts of all but about 1/8 inch of fat or less. This lets me incorporate ALL my bark that I worked so hard to get right instead of putting it to the side with the fat during pulling.

This may be something you would want to try.


Also, different butts have fat caps that are different densities. Some are squishy(tech term) and some are much harder. Naturally the hard ones will be much tougher to render.



Now, as far as the meat being tough/chewy in spots goes, I have a question. Did you cook these on time or on temperature. I don't suggest cooking on time with anything. If you did cook by internal temperature what was it?

I have an old FE100, I did a case of butts last weekend and they were perfect. First coated them with mustard and then Bad Byron's Rub. Turned cooker on about 240, about 10:00pm and went to bed. The butts were around 188-190 internal temp by about 11:00am the next morning. Put in Cambro and let sit for a couple of hours and then pulled. They were perfect!!! I use internal temp not time in judging when to pull them.

I have determined that I did not have my temp set high enough and I did not wait long enough. I did not use a probe so I was cooking by external smoker temp and time. I ordered a probe so my next shot at it I will get the internal temp up to 190 or more

They weren't done.

If the meat is still hard to pick apart, and you want it more tender, cook it longer.

I didn't see mention of an internal temp, so get a good thermometer if you don't have one and use it two ways.

1. Go for a temp around 195 and see how that works. Check the temp deep inside

2. Poke it with the probe and feel for resistance. Even if the probe says 195 and it feels tough to push in, then cook it longer.

You can not always do xx pds for xx hours and be guaranteed of success. Time and temp are gauges to get you close, but you have to decide if it's ready to come out.

Is there any way to keep the bark crisp? When they come off the smoker, I have a beautiful bark. It seems that most people will FTC (wrap in foil and a towel and then throw them in a cooler for a couple of hours.) When they come out of the cooler, the bark texture has changed and is a little mushy. The same result if you let rest on the counter, then pull, store and reheat or wrap in foil, cool and reheat them whole and then pull.

I would love to be able to serve them with the bark crisp but timing issues make that impossible. "When it's done, it's done" is wonderful but it is hard to invite someone for dinner and tell them we will eat sometime between 2:00 and 7:00 My crowd could go through a heck of a lot of my beer with that timeframe.

I usually cut the bark off before I pull it. Chop it up a little and mix it back in.

Once you wrap it, it will steam it and there's no way to prevent that, unles you don't wrap.

Cook and serve immediately.

You can try like some have to take a finished butt and put it on a grill to crisp up the outside, but that's not a easy thing.

FOIL is a 4 letter word

quote:

Originally posted by cronyism sucks:
I love pork fat.....LOVE IT. I used to scoff at the idea of trimming ANY fat from my butts before they went into the smoker, but things change.

Now I trim my butts of all but about 1/8 inch of fat or less. This lets me incorporate ALL my bark that I worked so hard to get right instead of putting it to the side with the fat during pulling.

To get more bark and not have to deal with the fat post smoke I trimmed four 10# Butts and one 18# Brisket of ALL possible fat. I then injected and put on a heavy coat of rub and smoked in my FEC 100 @224 for about 19 hours. The butts were 200 and the brisket 197. Everything came out great! I only had a small amount of fat to remove under the point. The butts were the easiest I've ever pulled because I didn't have to remove any fat. I think that the moist FEC environment, the low temp,the injection and the rub all helped.