As I mentioned elsewhere on the forum, my wife volunteered my services to do pulled pork for some friends' race day party on Sunday. They were going to be coming home hot and tired and didn't want to have to grill at that point. And while the finished product was among my best efforts - tender and juicy - getting there was kind of unusual.
The plan was to cook on Saturday, and deliver the shredded goods in a crockpot Sunday evening. I used an 8-pounder that I had in the freezer, and I took it out to thaw in the fridge one full week before the cook. I figured that would be plenty of time, but I'm thinking now that was wrong. Running at 225, that butt took just over 20 hours to come to temp/tenderness. While I haven't checked it in a while, in the past my pit's display temp has always been within about 5 degrees of the actual, so I don't think the lengthy cook was the result of low pit temperatures. That, and the fact that I found a little spot or two of surface ice on the butt as I prepped it for dry brining the night before the cook, makes me think the fridge was cold enough that the core of the beast was still at least partially frozen.
I also had a minor freak-out in the middle of the cook. About 6 hours in I just happened to check on it and found the pit was over 300 degrees, and lots of billowing, acrid-smelling smoke was coming out of it, accompanied by the distinct sound of sizzling. Apparently enough drippings had accumulated without draining that a grease fire was moments from starting. So I shut it down and moved the meat indoors to the oven, thinking I'd finish it there. While it was inside, I let the pit cool off, then cleaned it up and restarted it to see if it was going to behave. It all looked stable, so I brought the butt back outside and put it in.
After that, everything went normally except that the IT of the meat was rising incredibly slowly, even accounting for the stall. I started this thing at 6:20 AM and it wasn't ready to come off until 2:30 AM. I had no patience to let it rest at that point - I wanted to get to bed - so I went ahead and pulled it, put it in a covered container and into the fridge until the next day, when I got it out, put it in the crockpot on low, with some butter and a little water, and it suffered no ill effects.
From the viewpoint of the finished results, it was a success. The couple of little samples I tried were great - tender and juicy with great bark. But I have to say there were more than a few moments during that cook when I was wondering where I'd be able to go out and buy 6 pounds of pulled pork the next day.
So like I said, a success, even with the extended cooking time. I believe the timing problem was a not-yet-thawed butt. But I have no idea what caused the almost-grease-fire mid-cook. This was my first time without putting foil on the drip tray. After hearing about how easy it is to scrape it clean, I thought I'd go that route, just to avoid this very thing happening because of foil wrinkles and such. Go figure.
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Topic: Unusually long pork butt cook (Read 916 times)