Reheating a Pork Butt - help please!

arizonawildcat · April 2012

Hey everyone. I am in charge of a Monday night group dinner at a lake house this summer. There will be around 20 people, so I figure what better thing to make for my guests than a nice smoked pork butt (or two) on the my BGE. I have made this several times before using the recipe found on the site and it always turns out well. Here is the problem...

There is no BGE at the house - only a Weber gas grill...gasp! I am driving to the house and therefore cannot take my BGE with me so I plan to cook the food before time and just heat it up on Monday for dinner. I will be driving to the lake house on Sunday mid-day. Here is my plan of attack...any advice or instructions if I am doing something wrong?

Friday night, put the pork butts on for a low and slow cook like I always so. We are having friends over that Saturday too so if I make three butts we can eat one and wrap two of them for the trip.

Saturday mid-day take the butts off the egg and wrap them very tightly in several layers of heavy duty aluminum foil. Allow to rest for several hours while monitoring temp does not fall below 145. Eat one of the three butts that night for dinner. Put the other two wrapped butts in the refrigerator overnight.

Sunday 1pm I will drive to the lake house and arrive at 6pm. I will keep the tightly wrapped butts in a cooler on ice during the trip. Once at the house, I will transfer the two wrapped butts into the refrigerator there.

On Monday, I will put the two butts (still wrapped in the foil) in the conventional oven turned on as low as it goes...maybe 175 or so? I will plan on letting them reheat very slowly and unwrap them and pull the meat right before serving dinner around 6pm that evening.

OK...so generally a solid plan...or is there something else I should consider? I can only assume that I don't want to physically pull the meat until just ready to eat dinner that Monday versus Saturday sometime as it might dry out too much that way? Any advice is greatly appreciated for those of you with way more experience in doing this than me. Thanks in advance!!

stike · April 2012

cook all three and eat the one you want to eat right away. you don't need to rest them like a roast. shred the others and keep them in a foil pan or two (with foil cover), and just reheat when you get to wherever you are going. and if you reheat whole, it will take longer than reheating already shredded. and the more time reheating, the more chance to lose what moisture is left

lousubcap · April 2012

+1 with the above-if you have access to a crock pot you can reheat the pulled pork that way as well.

arizonawildcat · April 2012

wow...glad I asked as I was fully intending on keeping them whole and not pulling until reheated two days later. What you said now makes sense.

Do you all have a trick to keep the meat moist when reheating already pulled pork? i just want to make sure it is not too dry when it gets served on Monday night.

The Cen-Tex Smoker · April 2012

Agreed with all above. It should stay moist if you don't leave it warming all day or something. PP is very forgiving (perhaps the most forgiving of all the delicious bbq meats). If you do Stike's deal you can just warm the covered pans in a 250 degree oven for an hour or so before you eat. I really like to warm my Brisket and butts in warm water when I can. It's the most efficient and most gentle. That would be zip lock or food saver bags in 120-130 degree water. Not always easy and for your purposes, the oven sounds like a good bet. That being said, I've warmed them for hours in chafing dishes, ovens, and whatever else I could find and nobody sent any back so I assume it was OK. If it dries out, throw in a little sauce (not much) and mix it in. A little sauce has bailed many a BBQ chef out in situations just like this.

Good luck. Should be fine and I bet it's a huge hit.

Smoker_Guru · April 2012

I often cook PP in advance of serving it. I put it in a slow cooker with a little beef broth to help keep it moist. putting it in a low oven would be the same effect. If your note using any sauce on your PP I would add a little stock to the pan.

Billy Grill Eggster · April 2012

A trick to get a re-heated pulled pork moist and tasty is to put Coca-Cola in the crock pot. Don't use diet or 7-Up or anything else.

jlsm · April 2012

Are you going to sauce it? Do that when you pull it. Reheated, you loose the crisp bark, but the sauce permeates the meat. I reheated two butts that filled a disposable aluminum pan covered for an hour and the meat turned out great.

arizonawildcat · April 2012

Thanks for the replies. This is exactly why I went to the experts...I would have caused a mess for sure by trying to reheat an unpulled butt!

For clarification, I most likely won't be able to do the crockpot/slow cooker reheat due to the fact that I will be warming up almost 14lbs of meat at once. I will do this with the disposable aluminum pan and will try to add a little bit of sauce when the meat gets physically pulled on Saturday. Assume that when I reheat it needs to be covered in the oven to lock in the moisture?

xraypat23 · April 2012

cook them all, shred them. Put them in ziploc freezer bags with whatever sauce you'd like. When it's time to eat, put the bags in boiling water. Honestly the best way to reheat pulled pork, every other way just makes for a dried out product.

The Cen-Tex Smoker · April 2012

I'm down with X-ray as the best way to do this. I have a sous vide so this is the only way I warm stuff at home. Boiling may be a little high (zip locks are rated to 170 degrees) but I warm all my BBQ at home in food saver bags in my sous vide at around 125 degrees. I do cook for others all the time and sous vide cookers aren't just lying around out there. When that's the case, I do 250 degrees covered in the oven. It works fine but I prefer the warm water bath when available.

tjv · April 2012

I think you can tell by the responses, pulled pork is very forgiving when reheating. All you really need to remember is pulled pork is better than a whole butt, keep it moist ( little bbq sauce, regular D. Pepper or a cola) and reheat on low temps.

Now I'm wondering what teriyaki or sweet & sour pulled pork would taste like......Wonder if I would have to smoke with an Asian wood.........LOL

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Reheating a Pork Butt - help please!

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