My first Pork Butt

Don't worry about the length of time. I have the CS 50 and my butts turn out perfect everytime. I cook to between 195 & 200 then let rest for about an hour. Never ever had a dry one. That's by 2 cents worth.

Did my first one a couple of weeks ago on a 55. Took it to an internal temp of 195(which I found out after testing the probe was really 200) and it was falling apart and not dry at all.

My lesson was to put it in with the probe(after testing it), put the smoker probe on the grate, set the temp and wait for it to be done. Very happy with the results and look forward to using my notes to improve to my liking.

Another thought is to contact the salesman and ask how he does it...

Temp is only a starting point. If you want to know if it's ready, grab the bone (it will be hot) if it doesn't come out easy, it's not ready.

Welcome to the forum. There are 100's of posts (actually 1,000's) on PB, it's our most popular topic so a little reading/research will answer a lot of questions, yours is actually a pretty common one. Oh, and read PB101

Hi Dougie,

You had the same issue you might have had with a brisket. The point of temp you reached at around the 165 mark was where the fat inside the pork was rendering down. It almost stalemates the temp inside the butt. A little faith and some more time you would have seen the other side of that plateau. Like everyone else has mentioned closer to the 195 mark is better, as the fat inside the butt actually self bastes the meat inside and remoistens it and loosens it up to where it will just fall apart. Like Smokin says if the bone wiggles easy you are in business if not well, sip another toddy and give it some more time. I have had some butts that were around 6lbs that took more like 2 hours per lb. As the gospel around these parts reads...."It's done when it's done!" Give yourself a little practice and it will get better each time

Gilly

What the old pros are saying is true. I have only been using the Smokette for a couple of weeks and have learned a lot. I am cooking, in several batches for a large party tomorrow. I did 4 butt roasts (boneless), cooking two at a time. All reasonably close to the same size and all from the same source (Costco). One batch was ready in 12 hours. The next batch took almost 17 hours.

Like Gilly said, at 165-170, the collagen is still intact, along with a lot of the fat. That has to finally melt to moisten up the meat. Otherwise, it is like eating most pork loins - dry!

Good luck..the learning curve is pretty fast. Prep it right, put it in the smoker and don't mess with it too much.

Thanks to everyone who responded! I have learned a lot in a short period of time. I did contact the cookshack salesman, as uncsmoker suggested. He couldn't have been more helpful. His advise was basically the same as what has been posted here. I'll pass it along to you all:

Buy 8 to 9 lb butts instead of smaller butts. Always try to buy "bone-in" butts. Leave the fat slab on and put the butt in the smoker fat side up. (I cut the fat slab off my first try.) Apply your rub all over the butt including the fat slab. Cook with 3 chunks of wood for this size butt (he likes all hickory). Cook at 225 until you reach an internal temperature of at least 190 degrees, however long it takes. He goes ahead and pulls as soon as the butt has cooled down just a little bit after removing from the smoker. He does not wrap in foil to rest because he feels the butt will continue to cook in the foil. Like I said in my first post, the butts he cooked for our demonstration were the best pork I've every tasted! We're doing ribs this weekend, but I've definitely got the confidence back to try another butt soon. Thanks again for your responses!

Way to go find that info Dougie !

The salesman has it down pretty good.

I cook big bonein butts and shoulders all the way up in my Smokette and take them all the way to 200* most of the time. I then remove from the smoker, wrap in double HD foil, then wrap in towels and put in as small cooler as possible for at least an hour, sometimes up to 6 hours. They are always still very hot when I take them out and pull, shred, chop. I like to cut the tougher bark pieces up real small with meat scissors. The only fat I ever remove is when a whole shoulder has that huge thick layer of skin/fat, but only right before pulling. I like to be sure and get all the lean, fat, and bark all mixed together thoroughly.

Good luck y'all !

In my experience the boneless butts cook a bit faster than the ones with bones. And that is all the local Costco carries. So I wouldn't shy away from the boneless butts.

That said, I do like the bone as I think it adds some flavor and it is nice to use in a pot of beans later.

Duffey, you are the exception to the rule on the boneless butts. They have always been reported as taking quite a bit longer to get done than bone-in butts. The bone acts as a heat sink and also a heat conductor carrying the heat to the center of the butt helping get it done faster.

For what it's worth.

I hate to start an argument. But....

In my experience, boneless butts tend to cook faster. I attribute this to several things:

1. When you remove the bone, there is less mass to heat up, hence it takes less time.

2. When you remove the bone, the resulting butt is smaller, hence it takes less time for the center of the butt to get to temperature and the butt to be done.

3. During the cooking process, the bone probably serves more like a thermal insulator than a conductor or heat sink. Measurements of room temperature thermal conductivity of meat are fairly consistent, those of bone are not, and vary from half that of the meat to 50% more. Split the difference and say they are the same. One thing is clear, meat becomes a better conductor as it is heated and the fat melts. Bone becomes a poorer conductor as it dries out when heated.

I am talking about butts with the same meat mass, one with a bone and one without. Of two butts that weigh the same, one with a bone and one without, the one with the bone has less meat to cook and will probably get done sooner. But the difference is the mass of the meat to be cooked, not the presence of the bone.

Or at least that is the way this physicist sees it. A little thermodynamics is a dangerous thing.

I just want to say that I really learned a lot reading all this

Are your boneless butts tied? If not then I can see why they would cook faster.



Also, if the bone is dry then it doesn't matter because you just ruined whatever you were cooking.

All are pretty good points,and it would be nice if we could get the hawgs around here to eat a couple physics books.

There are reasons to use,or not use boned butts.

Labor cost,availability,bone as a doneness testing method,cooking to lower internal temp for slicing and higher yields and shorter time in the pit.

As we know the time/weight/external temp/internal temp line is not linear.

That said,when you talk to experienced pitmasters,they tend to agree that as a rule of thumb,usually,bonein butts will" finish,pullable"more quickly/easier than boneless,rolled,tied.

Some have explanations,some just state the "fact".

Yes, Tom knows butts! Go ahead Tom, take some freedom and expound if you'd like.

Laws of physics are not always correct. Enter Mr. Bumblebee!

If it works for you, great! If not, experiment until it does!!!

Well, thermodynamics applies whether or not the pigs eat the physics books or not. :^)=

The bumblebee problem is one of scaling, not physics. :^)=

The boneless butts I cook are not tied. I get them from Costco. Like everybody else, I thought I was buying a large butt when I first bought them, but it is really two boneless ones in a single cryopac. Be disappointed, then cook one, freeze one. Or cook both.

My experience, backed by time-temperature records, is that these boneless butts cook faster than bone in butts with roughly the same meat mass.

The next time the local meat emporium has bone in butts for sale, I shall procure two of approximately the same mass, remove the bone from one, record the mass of both, cook both, recording internal temperatures and times, and see which gets done first. I will post the results here. I realize that there are still several variables unaccounted for in this proposed experiment, but this will at least give a rough indication as to whether one cooks quicker than the other or not. We can refine the experiment from there.

I encourage others to do the same and post the results. Any takers?

I prefer the bone-in butts, not for quickness in cooking, but for flavor and reuse later in beans or soups. Bones are good. Slow, but good.

See the thang is, alot of us already know our results, and we aren't going to argue when we already know, and we figger what your result will be because you have already posted it, so we figger this thread will just fade away like so many others before it.

Cheers.

SmokingDuffey, I noticed you're from NM. Some pretty strange things happen there that tend to run counter to the normal laws of nature. That must explain your results.