Pork Shoulder Yeilds

i dont know what tempt you was cooking at but 19 hours seems a long time i can cook a 80lb hog in 18 hours but i have found that butts do better than shoulders,more tender and alot less trouble and to be honest if bbq'n is trouble it aint fun and i dont know about you but i do it for the fun,our motto is for free and for fun.We do compete (back yard)but we dont go to win we go to have fun and if we win which we do at times thats just a bi-product of having fun,have fun and happy cookin to ya'll

Big Orange,
I'm cooking in a CS at 225 degrees and true to the motto here "It ain't done till it's done".
Cooked to 195 and pulled.

I think butts are a lot less work and therefore worth paying the extra for..

I was experimenting on rubs and yeilds so I really was'nt concerned about time of completion.

Looking in the local supermarkets for deals is the way I have been buying my meat, there have been no deals on Butt's recently so I played with the shoulder cut.

if you go to sams you'll find prices on butts alot cheaper aloso go to your local butcher and bribe with bbq that works good here in alabama

Englishman,
If you had a little over 2 lbs of skin and bone that left you with a little under 8.5 lbs of meat before cooking. So if you got 5 lbs of cooked product, I would say you are right in the 40% loss catagory that we all experience with pulled pork.

I know it sucks, but they dont subtract the weight of the bone when figuring the price. The hog farmer had to pay to feed the pig to grow the bone so he's gonna make the slaughter house pay for the total weight of the pig. So as that hog moves on down the line on its way to your grocer's cooler the price per pound keeps going up as the gut pile and bones go to the bottom of the scrap barrel.
That's why boned products are usually more per pound. It took more labor to make them that way, and they are loosing yield through the process of wittling a hunk of flesh down to marketable cuts of meat.

So we cook it and loose 40% of what we paid for through fat rendering. Thats why if you sell cooked produt you have to figure the sell price for finished product from the cost per pound of the precooked meat.

I always found it funny that the end user is paying the most for the least.

Yep,you are about right on picnic yield.

Some folks will just take them a hair over 180� and slice them.

The yield is higher.

We weighed butt net yield, about a year ago when we were cooking volume and ended up about 46% really clean-when cooked to 195� internal.

Hope this helps a little.

Thanks for the replies guys, I think I'll look for a good supplier of butts.
I'm in So. Cal but don't want to use Sysco, does US Foods operate this far west...?

Try going to whatever supermarket is promoting country style ribs for $0.99,etc and ask him to sell you the butts in a 2 cryopac.

He doesn't even have to trim and slice them.

The bones from a picnic are great for beans. Any time I do a big cook I usually try to do at least one picnic just for the bones.

Tom, I did exactly that last week. Country style ribs were $0.99/lb, whilc the butts were $1.29. I convinced the butcher to sell the butts at the $0.99 price. You mentioned that last year, so I've been keeping an eye out. Thanks for the tip.

Michael

Yessir,glad we could help.

I was curious about pork shoulder yields too. I just smoked a 9.15 lb boston butt last night to an internal temp of 210F. At that temp, the butt pulled itself when I tried to remove it from the smoker. It was very easy to separate the clean meat from the remaining fat. I ended up with a 44% yield. Does that sound about right?

If it was actually a whole shoulder,than the picnic usually yields less than the butt.

If you cook to that high an internal,the yield will be a little less.

Something under 50% tends to be sorta regular.