First cook using Stoker

platypusrex

Did an 8.5 lb pork butt Fri-Sat on my LBGE using my Stoker wifi. Overall a successful cook, the pork was tender and tasty. I used a bit of mustard to hold on the half turbinado/half Dizzy Dust rub. We had the kids coming over for dinner at 6PM Saturday, so I got the egg warmed up to 225 and put the pork butt on at 6:39 PM Friday, assuming that would be plenty of time. It actually went for 23 hours and 18 minutes before I took it off at 191 internal temp... wow. 

One mistake I made was not to let the butt come up to room temp, it was 44 degrees internal temp when I started, only had it out of the fridge for ~2.5 hours before I put it on. I thought about taking it out of the fridge before I left for work Fri morning, would that have been OK? I am kinda cautious when it comes to pork but clearly it was too cold when I started. That said, it came up to ~65 degrees internal temp after less than 2 hours, so it still would have been a 21+ hour cook. At 2 hours/lb I was expecting around 17 hours. I knew to allow for extra time, if it came off earlier I would have wrapped it and put it in an ice chest, so it was no deal in the end.

I grabbed the StokerX client for my Mac, it was fun to use. Around midnight there were some 20+ degree fluctuations for about 3 hours, then it settled down again. Smaller fluctuations started around 10AM again, for about an hour. I did not touch anything, and am guessing various pockets of hardwood burned differently to cause the variations. Anybody else have a similar experience with their Stoker? I dumped in fresh hardwood charcoal (Ozark Oak from BBQ Outfitters here in Austin) on top of some leftover I had from a pizza cook last Tuesday. I'm not real interested in being all anal retentive about manually placing in every piece of lump in the egg, so if these slight fluctuations are a consequence of that decision I can live with it. 

Overall the Stoker was SO nice to have in place. I watched it pretty closely using the StokerX while home and my @HerringBigEgg Twitter account while away from the house, cuz it was fun to watch, but I certainly did not worry at all sleeping during the night. That was cool. The StokerX software allows me to tweet, I could not use supertweet.net because Twitter shut them down. Rock's BBQ should update their site about that.  

At around 3:30 I reset the target pit temp to 240, then up to 260 at about 5:35. Pulled it off a bit after 6PM, let it rest for ~15 minutes, and shredded it onto the plate. The family raved about it, it's been a while since I did a pork butt so I guess they had forgotten what a great job the egg does with these.

NPHuskerFL

You could put the butt in frozen. No need to bring to "room temp". Just account for it in overall cook time--- your still shooting for the same IT so the only change is length of cook. Did you download an App for the Stoker yet. I really like the The Pit Pal BBQ App Pro Edition (in the Google Play Store).

platypusrex

I got StokeMaster for my iPhone, it seems OK. Fun toys!

platypusrex

Just checked, there is an iOS version of Pit Pal, it has more features than the StokeMaster app. I downloaded it and will try it next time, thanks!

DMW

As mentioned, bringing a large chunk of meat to "room temp" serves no purpose. To actually get the center of a butt to 70* room temp would take close to 10 hours. The outer layers would start to get really icky by then.

Here's some reading on the subject:

http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/mythbusting_letting_meat_come_to_room_temp.html

platypusrex

DMW, thanks for that link! That logic is in line with the data I had, that the time it took my internal temp to get to 65 degrees or so was really only about 1.5 hours. I won't be setting out my food very long at all after reading that mythbusting link...

NPHuskerFL

Beef is about the only thing I'll do that with (steaks only...don't see a huge benefit doing it with a large cut like brisket or a roast). Pork and Poultry go straight from refrigerator, prep and egg.