Need Help on Timing for 400lbs.

If you're worried about cutting it close, you have a place to hold them, just start them a little sooner, 2 hours would be fine. Shoot, with that many butts you could finish them off completely before the ribs if you wanted. I filled an ice chest with 16 butts and they were too hot to hold 7 hours later.

It will take a little longer to start up with that much meat, but I've only done a couple of really large cooks. Once it gets to temp, it won't have a problem holding.

Did a full cook in a 750 with 45 briskets. The key on that cook to keeping the time down was putting the briskets in a hot smoker. Seemed to cut down on the start up. Sure I lost heat from the door being open, but it came right back up.

Now when I did 500lb of FROZEN chicken...that took a while.

Hey Randy, We do fundraisers all the time with different types of cookers. The most consistant one we use for large quantities is a Southern Pride that we rent. The key is steady and even heat throughout the whole cook time. After using my FE100 I'm confident a 500 would do as good or better. We start at 6:00pm at 225*
and wrap them in foil at 6:00am. I bump the temp up to 240* and continue from there. Customers start to pick them up at 11:am.

For this one we will be doing butts only.
were going to prep at 6:00 pm, then put them on at 11:00 pm. And then I want to startpulling them no later than 2m. We're doing this at a high school, and we will have electric warming cabinets to hold the meat for serving.

In smaller batches, say 100 lbs, I would do them in teh 11-12 hour range. But witht eh extra meat do you think it will prolong the cook time much??

With the 50 or so butts,we're not going to wrap. I do for comp, but not for this many. I feel with that many the dripping action will be perfect. And we'll be spraying a little something for flavor.

Thanks

RandyE

My bad!! I thought you were selling butts. Sounds like your having a dinner? I don't wrap for that either, but I try to run them up to 185* then let them rest before pulling the meat.
The warmers will be a lot of help, but don't turn them up so hot you dry out the meat. Good Luck!!!

I have cooked 50 butts in the 8-10 lb range using the 2 stage cook and cook as follows;
8 hours @200* then hold at 250 * for about 4-6 hours while checking temp looking for that 190* temp.