Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts

[Loquitur]

I need to cook 3 four pound boneless Boston pork butts and be ready to travel with them wrapped in a cooler by 5:00 PM tomorrow. Wish I could post the picture I took of them with my camera phone but I apparently need some software I don't have to get them from the phone to my computer so I'll try to describe them. They were well trimmed by the farmer's market where I bought them so there isn't much fat on them. I would have preferred bone in butts but my only choice was these or the whole shoulder and that big thick skin on them was making me nervous. I've tied them so they have a round and compact shape kind of like an eye of the round roast you would see in a supermarket. They've been brining for 24 hours and I will be applying mustard and a rub shortly. My plan is to put them on at 5:00 AM and cook them at 225 Stoker which will be about 250 dome. Is 12 hours enough leeway to be confident they will be ready for the cooler at 5:00 PM? It seems like plenty of time to me but I've read about small butts being unpredictable in terms of how much time they need. Any other advice? Being new to charcoal, I have little experience with pork butts and want them to be really good for my extended family.

Susan

[Loquitur]

Here they are

[mguerra]

Little 4 pounders cook faster than a big picnic. If you figure about two hours/ lb. for a big one, twelve hours should be more than enough for the little ones. Make sure there is a little space between them; that they don't touch. If they are not done at the 10 hour point, kick the temp up to 300 plus. Butts are super forgiving. And they will probably be done by 10 hours anyway. A finish temp anywhere between 185 to 200 will be fine. You are going to look like a star at the party, I guarantee! Nothing makes you look like a BBQ master more than a pork butt on a KK, the guests are going to be gushing all over you. And please give us the feedback of how it went!!!

[Loquitur]

Doc - I'm soooo glad to hear from you about this - one of the renowned "butt" experts of this forum. The tip about increasing the temp after ten hours is especially valuable since I wouldn't have a clue as to whether I was in trouble or not otherwise. I will post a lot of details about this cook since I searched the forum thoroughly and read at least 100 posts and didn't find my issues specifically addressed. I completely understand that that every cook is different and there is no way to exactly predict results but your experience is extremely comforting. Thanks sooooo much!!!!!

[mguerra]

little butts

So, you should be about five hours in by now, how's it going?

[Loquitur]

I think the cook is going fine except that my Stoker food probes have totally freaked out - they are reading high temps like pit probes. My Stokerlog has been showing "food ready" for hours!! So I'm monitoring food temps hourly with my Thermapen. Stoker is running the pit temps fine.

I put the butts in at 5:00 AM right out of the frig and, because of the hour, didn't bring the KK up to temp first. It took a little over an hour for the Stoker to get the KK up to temp which was 225 pit 250 dome to start but I really liked this technique because I was able to set the probes without gloves and I didn't have to worry about taking too long setting up to prevent the temps from spiking.

After 5 hours, the butts were at 155 but they have been in a plateau for a couple of hours now at 165 so I just raised the pit temp to 260. At this point, the pit temps and dome temps are the same. If they aren't out of the plateau by 3:00 I will up the temp to 300. If they aren't finished by 5:00 I will wrap them in foil and put them in the oven at my brother's house at 300 deg. We will have plenty of visiting and drinking to do before we eat!!

I obviously have to calibrate my food sensors before I do another cook!!!

Can't tell you how much I appreciate your being there!

[mguerra]

Absolutely no problem to finish them in the KK or the oven at 300. The flavor is there already! They will likely finish on the KK. If you are curious, you could foil one right now just to see how foiling a butt works in the final cooking stage. Or, stick with the proven technique for all four.

[Loquitur]

Great suggestion, Doc. I will do so when I check temps in a few mintues if only to be able to report the results.

[Loquitur]

All 3 butts are still at 165 so I've raised the pit temp to 300 and I've wrapped one of them in foil We'll see how it goes.

[Loquitur]

Do you think I'm impeding this cook by having to open the KK so much to manually monitor the temps? I first opened it after 5 hours, then 7 hours, then 3 times since. It doesn't seem like I'm losing heat because the temps bounce back immediately - even higher from the spike of air. But I'm not used to opening my KK often during a cook like this unless I'm grilling.

[Loquitur]

Wow - what a difference raising the temps made. The foiled one is now 197 and the other two are 184 and 187. I shouldn't have any problem finishing the non foiled ones by 5:00 PM when I will be leaving. Will post final results.

[Loquitur]

Final result - they were fantastic!! I left the two unfoiled butts on until 4:55 when I was preparing to leave and they had just reached 195 and 196. I was surprised at how little drippings there were from 12 lbs of pork and was afraid they might be dry but there weren't at all. They were in the cooler until 7:30 and they pulled easily - still too hot for my hands but no problem whatsoever with two forks. Nobody could believe how easily a hunk of meat that size could come apart that way. My family, being born and bred in the northeast, is not accostomed to pulled pork and they loved it!!

I made the Lexington vinegar sauce and mixed a little in just after I pulled it and served it with extra sauce on the side, a thinned out Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce and rolls. I loved the vinegar sauce but my family liked the concocted SBR BBQ sauce. They really went to town on it. I've already been informed that there is a standing order that I bring pulled pork to all family gatherings!

Next time, I will do them at 250 grate and coat them with the SBR BBQ sauce when they are close to done so they will have a nice glaze on the outside. A horrible overexposed camera phone pic is attached.

Thanks, Doc, for taking the stress out of what was a big cook for me.

Susan

[mguerra]

as I promised you

Oh yeah, the standing order thing! I'm so familiar with that one. They put you up on a pedestal, didn't they? Anybody with low self-esteem just needs a KK, a pork butt, and some friends and family. That will fix it.

[Loquitur]

Re: Multiple Small Boston Butts

I'm doing my second pork butt cook tomorrow for a family gathering and this time have three small pork butts with the bone in - 2 are 4.5 lbs and one is 5.5 lbs. These were labeled Boston Butt Bone In but they also had larger cuts, 7 lbs and up, which were labeled Pork Shoulder BI and these had a thick skin on them. If I were to buy one of those larger cuts, would I cook it with the skin on? Would I have to score it or anything like that? Am I correct to assume the BI label means the picnic part is included?

As far as using the bones to tell when the butts are done, should I try to take them out while the roasts are still on the KK or should I wait until the roasts have rested and I'm ready to pull them?

I'm planning on doing these at a higher temp this time, closer to 300 deg Stoker so I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn. I'll post some pix as the cook goes.

Susan

[mguerra]

Re: Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts

Cook them bone in and just pull them apart at the end. Cook with the skin on, skin side down. They will be ok cooked at 300, but a little better cooked lower. You don't have to get up at the crack of dawn! Get your fire stable at 200 to 225 and put them on at 11:30 and go to bed. Get up by 6:30 and check them, they should be ok. Pull them off at 185 to 200 internal. Wrap in foil and towels, place in a cooler, and hold til party time. No problem.

Now, here is the real kicker. You have to do this when no one is watching. Pull the roasts apart and scrape out all the fat, connective tissue and skin. Put that in a frying pan and fry it/render it down. Shred your meat, then pour all, or some of, the liquid fat from the frying pan on the meat and mix it in. To the diners, the mouth feel will be of just lean, moist meat. But the flavor will be over the top. This is no different than how BBQ joints prep their chopped beef and pulled pork sandwiches, you just are not aware of it!

[Loquitur]

Re: Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts

Hey Doc!! The crack of dawn won out over midnight and they're on at 275 deg. lInteresting info about the skin. The ones I purchased are already trimmed but next time, I definitely want to try one of the bigger ones with the skin on. I was afraid I would have to trim it off and that looked like a pain.

If anybody knows, how much, roughly, of a 5 lb butt is bone? In looking at these roasts, it seems like my 4 lb boneless butts from last year would have yielded quite a bit more meat than theses 4.5 and 5.5 lb bone in roasts. I was hoping I could keep one of these for myself but I think I will have to take all 3 over to my brother's house.

Susan

[mguerra]

Re: Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts

4:30 AM! You are hard core. Report later...

[Loquitur]

Re: Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts Because I was loading KK with cold meat, I set my Stoker at 250 for the 275 cook with the intention of raising it to 275 once the grill was heat soaked. But the meat temps seemed to be rising nicely so I only increased it to 260. The two smaller butts were at 195 deg in 7 hours. The larger one was more stubborn, even though it was cooking on the upper grill where the temps, presumably, were higher. It was still 188 after 8 hours and I needed to get it done so, following Doc's advice from last year, I wrapped it in foil and raised the temp to 325 deg and it finished in short order. I only have one pic early on in the cook since my husband went fishing and took the camera with him.

I don't think his fishing went well - only found one new pic on the camera.

I was going to open a new bag of charcoal for this cook but decided to use the balance of my current bag rather than wait for my husband to pull a new one out of the basement for me. Consequently, the basket was loaded with a lot of small pieces and dust. I was actually worried I wouldn't have enough air flow to light it but I got it going without any problem. But, at the very end of the cook, I noticed my temps were inexplicably dropping and sure enough, I was out of fuel. That's a first for me. The bone didn't seem to be much of a factor in terms of how much meat I had to serve from the roasts compared to the boneless roasts I made last year. I tied the boneless roasts so they had a more uniform shape than the ones with the bone, which were much thicker at one end than the other. I was concerned about the small ends of the roasts being dried out but they were fine. I used the formula for making a rub from Porkchop's topic on our forum Dry Rubs 101 and was extremely happy with the result. In all respects, the cook was a huge success!! Susan

[primeats]

Re: Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts

Susan, just got to this post, the bone in a Boston Butt is only gonna weigh around 8 oz.,give or take, pretty inconsequential. Sounds like you nailed another one !

[mguerra]

Re: Multiple Small Boneless Boston Butts

Just took an 11 pounder off from an overnighter. Taking it down to my Mom's place. I'll try to sneak in the rendered fat...