Wiseone?

Deetwood

Where's that tutorial that DRBBQ gave, that you mentioned in an earlier post?

Wise One

Deetwood, I liked it so much I made it part of my collected recipes in Living Cookbook:[p]Dialogue on Cooking Pork
"Meat begins to break down at 160 and begins to seriously lose moisture above 180. The trick is to keep it in this range for as long as possible. When you cook a butt or brisket, the ultimate temp isn't near as important as the time spent in the desired range. Matter of fact you don't ever have to reach 200 if you stay at 180 long enough..."

So what you are saying is that it is not necessarily the final temp that renders the fat, but actually the time spent between 170 and 180? If that is true you should be able to really slow down the fire when the meat reaches about 165, and let it go real slow the rest of the way. I'm thinking of dropping the pit temp from 225 down to maybe 200? I wonder if you could use a higher temp early on in the cook to get things going also?
1 Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. My first introduction to this was a book by Charlie Knote called BBQ and Sausage making SECRETS or something like that. I think it's still pretty available. Matter of fact, Charlie was the guy who started that Culinary Institute of Smoke Cooking that is now a correspondence course. The problem with the corresponence course is that Old Charlie died a few years ago and he ain't corresponding with nobody these days. Not around here anyway. Buy the book, skip the course.
2 So Charlie taught us that meat (butts, shoulders, hogs and briskets)begins to break down and render at 160 and it begins to lose moisture at 180. So if you can keep the meat at 175 for a long time it would render, get nice and broke down tender but with very little moisture loss.
3 This is obviously very hard to do but with a little practice and a lot of patience it works very well. I think this is also what happens when you put a brisket in a warm cooler at 190 and leave it for a few hours. The meat quickly drops to about 180 but then probably stays in that desirable zone for another long stretch on the way down. You also have to remember that the outside of the meat is way above 180 early on but not in the ice chest.
4 As for raising the temp early, I wouldn't. This is a long and slow process and patience is a virtue.
5 I think the 225 and then dropping to 200 for a stretch and then raising back up to finish would be best. Watch the meat temp for guidance. The plateau will take forever but that's what you want. The urge is to wrap the meat or raise the temp but that's a shortcut that hurts the product.


Recipe Source
Author: Ray Lampe (drbbq)
[p]