Should I be worried?

Deetwood

Pork Butt's been hung at 147 for the last hour and a half. Does the cooking start to slow? It's a 6 pound butt and its been cooking 8 hours....

The Naked Whiz

Deetwood,
Nope, this is the plateau that meats like pork butts hit when you cook them slow. At this point, all the collagen in the meat is being converted to gelatin. All the heat going into the meat is being used to do this. Once the conversion is done, the heat will go towards raising the temperature of the meat again. Did you ever do the fractional distillation experiment in chemistry where you heat a mixture of liquids? Remember how the temperature of the solution would rise and then hold steady at the boiling point of the first liquid, then rise and hold steady at the boiling point of the second liquid? Same sort of thing.[p]TNW

Deetwood

The Naked Whiz,[p]You da man. Thinks again.

Wardster

Deetwood,
Man, I hope your in California because that plateau can hold for hours, and once it's done, it can still take hours to finish.
Just a guess, but it sounds to me like you have several more hours of cooking... but it's worth it....[p]enjoy