1st overnight cook in progress & have a question

deltadawn

The dome temp has been 216-230 all night, the meat remains at 160 for the past 5 hrs. I'm thinking that the temp rise of the meat will be slower. Does the meat usually stay at one temp for quite a while before going up.

We started the 830pm, from 1am to 615a the meat remains at 160. 2-4# Pork roast. Thanks for your help...

Zippylip

Yes, you are right in the plateau stage which does last many hours, sometimes the temp will even drop, don't fret, what you are describing is exactly what should be happening, once your temp starts moving, it will move relatively quickly to your target of around 200 - great job

deltadawn

Thank you very much for your help. It certainly smells very good. The temp has been a little difficult to control tonight since there is a very cool 40's breeze out there (Oshkosh, WI)

Rascal

I usually do butts at a dome temp of 250-275. Same great results and it goes a little faster.

thirdeye

Hopefully the roast you are talking about is a shoulder roast (butt end or picnic) not a loin roast. The shoulder roasts are higher in collagen.

In a nutshell, collagen consists of strands of molecules wound around each other. During long, slow cooking, those strands will unwind and turn to soft, succulent gelatin, providing juiciness and tenderness to the meat. This reaction however takes energy and for a while, it sort of steals the energy normally used for cooking. This results in the internal stall or plateau period.

Now, when cooking a lean piece of meat like a loin, which has much less collagen, the gelatin conversion still takes place to some degree, but the danger is that higher internal temps squeeze the moisture out of the meat fibers, resulting in a dry piece of meat. That is why a loin roast is cooked to a lower internal temperature.

Zippylip

very good observation, I only assumed it was a shoulder