low and slow pork butt

Unknown

I ran into a problem yesterday with a low and slow pork butt, and I'm looking for a little advice.
I put a 4 pounder (no bone) on at 630 a.m. and got it burning nice and steady at about 225 degrees, planning to take it off about 13 hours later and use it for pulled pork sandwiches. It was my first time doing anything that would burn more than 4 hours.
I built the fire according to Elder Ward's instructions, big pieces of fresh lump at the bottom, smaller toward the top, ashes all cleaned out and the great checked to make sure that air circulation would be good.
When I left for work at 930 a.m. things were cooking along just fine. Internal temp on the pork butt had climbed to 120 degrees from 55 starting point, and dome temperature was peg-steady at 225. The daisy wheel and bottom vent were each open about 3/8 of an inch. All seemed well.
Then when my wife came home from work at 5 p.m., the fire was out and the dome was largely cool, indicating it was out for some time. The meat was down to 100 degrees.
She relit the egg, we cranked to 425 and had pulled pork all ready by 8.30 p.m. The guests never knew the difference. There was great bark (now I see what all the fuss is about) and while the fat wasn't totally rendered and the meat wasn't totally falling apart, it shredded easy and was pretty damn good.
But I'm wondering where I went wrong and why the fire would have gone out.
Thoughts from the veterans out there?

fishlessman

the egg holds 250 dome better for long cooks unsupervised. i usually check on things every 3 to 4 hours anyways. if your going to be leaving all day it might be worth getting a guru (first time ive ever recommended one) because the pork you served could have been unsafe to eat. i would have eaten it, but would look closely at the health and ages of my guests with that cook. pork butt is just as good cooked at 250

Mike in Abita

Did you take a look at the lump today? Does it look like it burned in the center? Were you out of lump at the end? How much did you add in the beginning? What type of lump?


Personally I would never leave an unattended cook for that amount of time unless I had some type of temp control device. Is there anyway to tell if the temp spiked during the day?

Grandpas Grub

Fast cooking will at times cause the fat not to render properly.

How many placed did you light the lump? Did your wife notice if the lump burned vertically?

When doing a low & slow I will light my large in 3 maybe 4 places. 3, 6 & 9 o'clock.

I am not sure what I would do if the lump went out and the meat was under 140° for some time.

GG

Grandpas Grub

Fast cooking will at times cause the fat not to render properly.

How many placed did you light the lump? Did your wife notice if the lump burned vertically?

When doing a low & slow I will light my large in 3 maybe 4 places. 3, 6 & 9 o'clock.

I am not sure what I would do if the lump went out and the meat was under 140° for some time.

GG

EmandM'sDad

A couple things I might suggest:

Try 250 instead of 225. On my large , I find if I try to get much lower than 250, I can choke the fire out. Also 225 dome is probably only at 200 grate level. A little higher won't hurt.

Be sure you light your fire in a 2-3 places. That way if your fire burns a tunnel down to the grate in one spot, you have another spot that is still burning. The airflow will still keep the temps under control, but you'll be heating with 2-3 little fires instead of one big one.

i've never had a fire go out, but I bought a Guru anyway. It's a good accessory if you are going to do alot of low and slow cooks

Unknown

thanks folks. we got the meat up nice and high before we served it, so I'm not too worried about the safety issue. And everybody that chowed down was young, hale and healthy, and all of us are alive the next day, so that's a good sign.
I think the problem might have been that I only lit it in one place.
I had hoped to make it home from work at noon to check it, which would have probably avoided the problem and meant that it wouldn't have been unsupervised all day. But, sometimes work just won't oblige.

Fidel

Just as an advisory measure, the high temps will kill any bacteria, but will not destroy or mitigate the risk of the toxins those bad boys left behind while there.

Bacteria thrive and multiply at temps up to 140*. The longer your meat is between 40* and 140* the longer they have to multiply and create those toxins. So even though you have certainly killed them, you cannot destroy or remove their toxins left behind.

The good news is that by having the pork in a smoky environment, and likely covered in a salt-containing rub and the external temps reached higher than 140*, you likely destroyed or limited the bacteria population. This is even more true with a bone-in butt where there is a greater chance that any bacteria are effectively limited to the exterior of the product.

No, I am not a food scientist or microbiologist, but I play one on the internet.

Weekend Warrior

I agree with everything the others said and also wonder why you were planning on a 13 hour cook? That is far beyond the normal 1 1/2 - 2 hours per pound for a pork butt, especially one so small. You may be lucky the egg did not maintain that temperature for the 11 hours that elapsed before your wife got home or you may have had shoe leather butt. And also, it doesn't matter how high you cranked up the meat to finished it, if it became tainted during the day when the meat was between 40 and 140 degrees, I think you could have still gotten sick. Mark

fishlessman

like i said, i would have eaten it, but you should know that once the stuff that causes food poison is present, you cant even burn it off, it can still get you. kids, elderly, and the sick get it easiest

DynaGreaseball

...and he stayed in a Holiday Inn...

stike

funny. i used to say literally the exact same thing, and got grief for it. maybe you'll have better luck than me.

fishlessman

how bought someone cutting and pasting fidels reply so i can see it, his reply is a broken link for me, cant be opened. what i see in the origional post is no fire for probably 5 hours in the egg to get the drop in meat temp that he did, maybe even a little longer. all he has is salted meat sitting in an unsafe no smoke environment.

DynaGreaseball

Why'd you catch grief for that?

Fidel

I actually use it at work a lot but substitute lawyer for food scientist.

AZRP

Don't sweat it, we have all made mistakes. Just for future reference, when I do a low and slow I fill the lump to halfway up the fire ring, light it in 3-4 places, and start shutting the vents down as the temp reaches 250 The final settings when the Egg is stable, is the bottom vent open about the thickness of a quarter. I don't think your fire ever got fully lit because with the settings of 3/8" open it should have been 350-450 degrees. Try lighting your fire an hour before you put your meat on. -RP

stike

actually, i don't think fidel'scomments apply in this case, but in general he is correct. (re: smoke, 250 degrees, low oxygen, salt/rub, etc.)


of course, botulism LOVES low-ox environments. i'm sure people could find a reason to worry about that now.