I have a big cook coming up – 8 butts worth of pulled pork for a crowd of 120. I plan on doing them 4 at a time on my Big Green Egg. In preparation, I’ve been playing with ways at cutting down my cooking time without affecting the quality of the end product.
A typical boneless pork shoulder roast (Boston butt) runs 8-10 pounds and takes about 2 hours per pound to cook at 225°F. So I’m looking at 2 x 16-20 hour cooks. For this cook I wanted to try cutting the butt in half. This increases my surface area, meaning more bark (the tasty dark outside, a good thing), greater chance of drying out (a bad thing), and only an 8 hour cook (a very good thing).
The Cook
The night before, I cut the butt in half and dusted it heavily with my basic pig rub. I wrapped in in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
The next morning I set up the BGE for an indirect cook of at least 10 hours at 225°F. This meant filling the firebox with lump and using a platesetter and drip pan to diffuse the heat. When the cooker was up to temp I added some chucks of guava wood for smoke.
I put the 2 butt halves (cheeks?) on, making sure to leave some space between them on the grate so they didn’t act like one big piece of meat.
6 hours into the cook I started checking for doneness. Pork butts are done when the collagen and connective tissue has melted into tasty gelatin and the meat literally starts to fall apart. I let these get to 190°F internal in the bigger half, then wrapped them together in a double layer of heavy duty aluminum foil and put them back on the cooker for another hour or so until they reached 210°F internal.
I took them off the cooker and let them rest in the foil for an hour. When they had cooled a little, I pulled the meat apart using a couple of bear paws to separate the fibers. The idea is to remove all the remaining inedible bits, break the meat down into bite-sized pieces, and ensure an even distribution of the chewy bark. I added a little Lexington finishing sauce as I was working with the meat to help keep it moist.
The Verdict
The end result was very tasty, and (aside from more chewy brown bits of bark) not much different from other batches of pulled pork that I’ve made in the past with whole butts. I got both the shorter cooking time and more bark, so win-win ;).
The only downside was that 2 halves took up more room on the grate than 1 whole butt would. That may end up being a problem when it comes to trying to stuff 4 butts into the Egg. But even if that’s the case, this was still a great way to put pulled pork on the dinner table without having to do an all-night cook.
120 definitely qualifies as a crowd. I’m starving right now and that pork looks so good. Great post.
Dave, do you have an adjustable rig?
Chris -I keep trying to talk myself into getting the adjustable rig, but I already have the Woo 2 and the BGE raised grid (the one that folds up).
I have a cook coming up for a large group of people and I am going to do at least 2 butts as well. Two questions. How many will 1 butt feed? How do you deal with the margin of error in the cook. Sometimes mine take 16 hours, sometimes they can go 20+….schedule wise, how do you deal with this? Thanks.
Figure on 4 ounces of finished pulled pork per sandwich. A butt losses about 40% of it’s weight in cooking/trimming. So a 10lb raw butt yields 6lb pulled pork, meaning 24 sandwiches. Then you’ve got to figure how many sandwiches per person. That depends a lot on the crowd, what other food you’re serving, and whether it’s lunch of dinner.
If it’s lunch and you’ve got a couple of sides and the crowd is 50/50 men and women, I’d figure 20 people will eat 30 sandwiches, so I’d do 2 butts.
If it’s just 2 butts, one overnight cook isn’t a big deal. Start the Egg up around 7pm, get it stabilized with the meat on by 8pm, supervise until bedtime, check it once overnight, and you should be done by noontime the next day. If you are pressed for time you could cut the butts in half and be done in 8-10 hours. I’m currently experimenting with doing a hotter/faster cook and then foiling the meat and finishing in the oven. I’ll let you know how if goes.
Tell us how the cook works out for you.