How far ahead?

Like you're doing you have to figure timing.

When are you serving them, when will you reheat them and when will you have time to pull?

Smoke them ahead is probably safest if you haven't done it. I would do them two nights before so they're only in the fridge the previous day.

35#, could be 4 good sized butts or 6 smaller ones and you could do all of those if you squeeze them in (they'll shrink) a little.

Quantity: 35 lbs will be about 17.5 after cooking (average) or 280 oz. Divided by 50 is 5.6 oz per serving. A good sized sandwich.

If you're worried, just do a them up the day or two before. Take them out, wrap in plastic wrap and then foil -- don't pull them yet.

When you reheat, you want them to get to pulling/serving temp but you don't want to cook them more so just reheat. 200 for 2 hours is more than enough. If you use good quality plastic wrap it won't be harmed in the reheating. If you don't it will disintegrate. If you're worried, just take the plastic wrap off before reheating.

Pull after reheating and add sauce and don't forget to add a little more rub when you pull.

You can also reheat them but don't pull them all (hey if you want to impress them, let them see you pull them, sauce them, rub them). Just reheat all of them and put them in an ice chest for holding as needed.

Russ

Thought was to cook them and pull, then put in the electric roaster set at 190 or so to heat for the show. Lunch is 11:30 to 1:00

If you say to cook them and then reheat them whole before i pull then that is what I will do.

I did 8 butts for a graduation party last spring. I did them over the course of 24 hours in two batches. I took them to about 185-190 removed from the smoker, double wrapped,and cooled them off. The day I wanted to serve them I placed them in the oven at about 225 and brought them up to 195. This takes about 4 hours. Once they were hot I put them in a super insulated chest. They stayed hot for hours. We pulled them as needed. Added a cup or two of Smokin's sauce to each batch. Do a search and you should find more info. I forget exaclty which one of the group came up with this method. But I can tell you that it works well.

shtrdave,

The question would be how are you going to serve them. If you're going to smother them in sauce, then you can pull and sauce before hand and just reheat.

The idea for keeping them whole is to keep the moisture in and like RStrand did, pull as needed.

Probably a question of timing, will you have time to pull and do on site as needed or have to do all the work ahead of time.

Both will work.

Pulling as needed won't work for me as I will have to interact with customers as well as normal duties while this is going on.

I am planning to make a pot of red bbq sauce for with it, as well as some other items, plus the company I work for will have the ever popular hot dogs.

Another option is to fully cook your butts in advance and put the pulled pork into FoodSaver bags. When ready to serve, put the FoodSave bags into boiling water for a few minutes. Texture and flavor remains the same and the pork will be nice and warm.

Russ, i have never used rub when i pulled a butt,does it add that much flavor when you do. sounds good i will have to try the next time i do a butt. hope sonners get by tex. this wk.

Pork, it's the other white meat.

Actually for me the rub adds a LOT of flavor. But that's the fun with Q, so many options. Inject the butt, don't. Put a rub on with mustard, don't. Baste or don't.

You have three options basically with a finished butt.

Take it out of the smoker and serve as is.

Take out of the smoker and add sauce.

Take out of the smoker and add rub.

Me, I like to mix the inside with the outside bark. I'll add rub only and serve it that way. Serve sauce on the side.

Other times, just the SO Finishing sauce and no rub. Variety, it's a good thing.

If you're going to sauce it, probably doesn't need to have rub added. Sauce will hide the rub flavor.

And I look at how "fine" the rub is. I want to sprinkle it on and flavor it like I would with salt and if the rub is too chunky it doesn't work. So I just throw it in the grinder and get the rub finer if needed.

Russ

shtrdave; When I make pulled pork for the local Sportsman club it takes two cooks in my 008. When the first batch is done I pull it and it goes in the crock pot. I'll use 80% sauce 20% apple juice and a shot of rub. Mix it all up and pop it the fridge. Next morning turn on the crock pot, take out the second load, pull it, only this time put it in the electric roaster as you mentioned. Same 80/20+rub in the roaster. Mix it all together in the roaster before the event and your ready to eat. Seems the applejuice keeps all that good stuff good in a roaster. Good Luck !!!