Yet another pulled pork, and one reason why temps might creep up during a low and slow

[wilburpan]

I did a pork butt cook over the weekend. I started with a rub that was mainly black pepper and salt, with a little bit of paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, ancho chile powder, and dry mustard. I pulled this idea from this video by Aaron Franklin. The thing that makes this rub a bit different from typical pork butt rubs is that it has no sugar, and relatively little paprika.



Here’s the pork butt before the rub.


And after.



Into Smaug, who had settled in at 240ºF. This was early Saturday morning. My last pork butt cooked in about 10 hours, so I thought this would be ready for dinner. As you’ll see, that didn’t exactly happen the way I had planned.



The finished product, after a little more than 12 hours of cooking. It was really good. We had friends over, and more than a few of them mentioned how it didn’t need any BBQ sauce.





Here are a couple of things that I learned about this cook.
 
First, I really understand the concept of probe tenderness now. The cook was taking longer than I had expected, and even though I had set a target IT of 200ºF, I stopped the cook at 192ºF. Our friends were waiting to eat, and with anticipated rest time, we were over 1-1/2 hours past when I wanted to serve the pork. But I felt good about stopping the cook at that point because the pork really was probe tender. No matter where I stuck the thermometer, it went through like a hot knife through butter.
 
The second thing I noticed was that over the last hour of cooking, the temp started to creep up from 240ºF to 280ºF. I didn’t really mind, since I wanted the cook to go faster anyway, and thought that this was Smaug looking out for me. When I took the pork out, I took the deflector off to add some more charcoal to grill some shrimp skewers over direct heat, and saw that the charcoal had burned in such a way that the center of the charcoal pile had a hole clear down to the bottom of the charcoal basket. My theory is that when that part of the bottom layer of charcoal burned through, airflow through the grill increased even without touching the vents, since there now was a clear path through the charcoal when there wasn’t one at the beginning of the cook. This led to the increase in temperature that I saw.
 
Anyway, it was great. My friends ate so much of it that we only had one meal’s worth of leftover pulled pork for Sunday. I can’t wait to make my next pulled pork. Only next time, I’m starting it overnight.

[MacKenzie]

Wilbur, that pork butt looks absolutely delicious. I can see why the leftovers were few and far between    

[tinyfish]

Wilburpan you out did yourself this time the pork looks excellent.

[DaveyR]

Great cook there Wilburpan. Next time when you plan for overnight it will cook in 8 hours and be done by 8am<br />

[egmiii]

Newbie question here. Did you foil this butt at any point? Most photos I've seen of 12 hour cooks result in an almost completely black bark, yet yours is a beautiful smoke ring red. I'm wondering if that's the magic of the Komodo Kamado and it's high humidity, or the lack of sugar in your rub. 

[SmallBBQr]

Newbie question here. Did you foil this butt at any point? Most photos I've seen of 12 hour cooks result in an almost completely black bark, yet yours is a beautiful smoke ring red. I'm wondering if that's the magic of the Komodo Kamado and it's high humidity, or the lack of sugar in your rub. 

 

The bark is mostly rendered fat and/or caramelized sugar on most cooks.

 

Here's a good read on smoke rings.

 

http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/mythbusting_the_smoke_ring.html

[tony b]

Nice looking cook Wilbur.

 

Yes, timing dinners can be crap shoot on long, lo & slo cooks! Better to start way early and hold it in the cooler than having guests standing around drinking up all your booze waiting to eat!!

 

My theory is the lack of sugar in the rub contributed to the lighter color on the bark, emgiii. 

[wilburpan]

Newbie question here. Did you foil this butt at any point? Most photos I've seen of 12 hour cooks result in an almost completely black bark, yet yours is a beautiful smoke ring red. I'm wondering if that's the magic of the Komodo Kamado and it's high humidity, or the lack of sugar in your rub.

 

I didn’t foil this butt. For that matter, I don't foil anything that other folks might wrap when doing a low and slow cook: brisket, ribs, pork butt. I’ve made all of these, all without foiling.

 

My best guess is that the bark didn’t turn black because I maintained a low temperature. Here’s a photo of some ribs that I made recently, and there was sugar in the rub for this one:

 

I’ve previously made a pork butt with a rub that contained sugar, and the bark wound up being very dark, but not black, and it wasn’t burned either. On that cook I remember that the temp got up to over 300ºF without me knowing about it.

 

As far as the red goes, that may just be the paprika. In the video that I based this rub on, Aaron Franklin mentions that he adds paprika mainly for color, not for flavor.

 

[bryan]

I do not agree with the crap shoot theory.

During my seven plus years of cooking on the Komodo Kamado I have done lot of low and slow cooks and have not had the crap shoot problem.

MY Komodo Kamado "Can Do - If I Will Do"

Notes:

I allow time for the stall.

(foiling will skip the stall)

A cooler keeps the product cooking.

[egmiii]

Man those ribs look good! I think you might be onto something with the combination of sugar and temperature. If you keep the grill under the temperature where the sugar will caramelize, then it won't turn dark. In the end the color of the bark is personal preference, but in my opinion, your cooks look awesome. 

[ckreef]

Very nice.

On my Akorn the temp always rose towards the end of a Low-n-slow. On the KK not so much. A little rise in temp never hurt anything as long as you don't stress over it.

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