20 Pork Butts - Lessons Learned

QDude

I had to cook 20 butts this last weekend on my XL for a company picnic.  I found that I could only do about 5 per cook using the CGS adjustable rig.  This was the first time that I had cooked that much pork in one go around.  I used a Pitmaster IQ110 temp controller and my Maverick 732 for monitoring meat temps.  It took about 60 hours to do the four different batches starting last Friday morning.  Many of you may say "I already know these things", but this list may help newbies.  Lessons learned were:

1.  Each butt is different.  Don't take all of them off just because one is ready to pull off.  Each one should come off only when it is ready.

2.  When are they ready?  The temp is only an indicator that the butt may be ready to pull.  The probe test (fork goes in like butter) was pretty accurate but the best indicator was when the bone was pulling away from the meat - not just a little bit but a lot!

3.  Things go wrong at 3 am in the morning.  When I was done with the second batch of butts, I noticed that the drip pan was almost overflowing. (Should have changed out the foil and emptied the fat in between each batch).  I ended up dumping a lot of oil on the patio during the transition.  3 am is not a good time to be trying to clean up a grease spill!

4.  Injecting the butts with apple juice and spices makes a difference in my opinion.  Use the Chris Lilly injection recipe but I recommend cutting back on the amount of salt by 50%.

5.  Peach wood is great for flavor.

6.  Cook times can very greatly between butts.  Some of the 8 pounders were ready in 8 hours and some took almost 13 hours.

7.  If you under-cook the butts, pulling the meat is really difficult.  It is still tasty but takes a lot more time to pull.

8.  Be patient - I am always worried about overcooking meat which causes me to pull it off before it is really ready to go.  When the bone is loose, it is time to pull it off of the egg.

9.  The metal injector is great.  I got it from Amazon and it has the "Butterball" name on it.  I had a plastic one before that lasted less than one year.

10.  Injecting butts is less messy if you don't remove the plastic wrapper.

I hope this helps someone else who may get roped into doing a big cook like this.

jhl192

That was quite a task and it seems you were up to it. Thanks for the lessons learned. 

tarheelmatt

Would have thought you could fit more than five on an XL, but dang that's a lot of meat! Congrats on this cook! 

QDude

tarheelmatt said:

Would have thought you could fit more than five on an XL, but dang that's a lot of meat! Congrats on this cook! 

I could have gotten more on but the meat would have hung out over the drip pan and made a big mess as the fat rendered.  I know that others have done more butts than five, but I just wasn't up to the task!

tulocay

Thanks for sharing

Legume

Nicely done.

Ladeback69

Nicely done and that's a lot of pork to pull by hand. I've only done 2 at one time. I am thinking of doing to 2 large briskets on my XL, 2 pork butts, 6 slabs of ribs and baked beans on my Weber Smokey Mountain. In October for a birthday party for my brother.

johnkitchens

Thanks for the post and the tips. Mission accomplished! 

lousubcap

Great write-up (a little refresher never hurts) and even greater undertaking.  I'm sure the pork was a big hit!

QDude

One more lesson - you lose 50% of the weight after the fat cooks out. So an 8 pound butt yields 4 pounds of meat.

Canugghead

Great lessons/reminders, this should be a sticky!

YEMTrey

Good write up.  Thanks for sharing.

Very good info for someone attempting their first marathon bulk cook.

Foghorn

Awesome contribution.  Thanks for sharing.

MeTed

@QDude

1. Great post

2. Excellent cook 

3. Maybe most people knew all of but I did not,so thank  you!

4. Party On !

                                                                 

^:)^

boochsr71

Thanks for the info

wpendlegg

You're probably a pro at pork butts now!

fusionhq

Looks fun!! And Tasty!

SGH

@QDude‌
Excellent post my friend. You made a lot of great points above. Glad you was able to pull the cook off. I want to add one point to yours above. Massive cooks like you just did is why I bought this. I highly recommend one if that sort of cook is going to be a regular thing in the future. It makes that sort of cook simple. You could have did all 20 at once with room to spare for several briskets. Just thought I would share. Again great post.

Chelnerul

Excellent post, many thanks for sharing.

AUCE

^:)^

Botch

I'll never cook that many anything at one time, but I picked up a few useful pointers from your post; thanks!