How long can I hold the Pork?

Wanabe

I just pulled my Pork Shoulders off the grill at 200 deg and foiled them. They are in the warmed cooler. I have heard they can rest in the cooler for 4-5 hours. I have 20 lbs in the cooler. What would you concidered the maximum time before I have to pull? It's 11:30 now and we want to eat at 6:00 PM.

Rolling Egg

Thats 6.5 hours and while its quite a stretch I believe it would be ok. Do you have a temp probe still in one in the cooler? If not try to make sure you have that anytime your finished early that way you can keep an eye on it while its resting. When I'm finished that early I always go to 205 internal on the egg and then into an 180 degree oven for another couple hours. Doing this will buy you a few hours before going into the cooler. You could probably go to 180 degree oven now for a couple hours if you want and then back to cooler. My 2 cents. Good luck

Morro Bay Rich

To answer your title: "As long as you can hold his legs". :woohoo:

jagweed

i would think you should be ok at 5 hours or so.

difficulty here is that the internal temp of the meat has absolutely nothing to do with food saftety.

the exterior of the meat is the concern, and as long as you are really good about foiling the butts and sealing them, to keep them from touching the cooler (which i'm guessing isn't sterile), you should be ok.

keep track of the internal temp of the pork with a leave-in probe thermometer, but do it for making sure the food is hot. you don't want to eat cold meat. 140 is a good threshold. again,. not for bacteria's sake, but because anything under that it'd be too cool to enjoy maybe.

there's a lot of lore and confusion around the 40-140 temperature guideline.

in this case, you are putting cooked ('safe') butts into an unsterile (unsafe) environment. you want the butts wrapped well in clean aluminum foil. the concern is the exterior of the meat, not the internal temp, and the external temp will drop below 140 much sooner than the internal temp will.

AZRP

Danny pull them out of the cooler around 5:00 and pull them, you'll be fine. Happy labor day! -RP

Wanabe

Thanks, Happy Labor Day.

Wanabe

The shoulders have reached 170 internal so I pulled two and stored and placed the other two in the oven at 170 for later. Hope they are still as moist later.