Cook 64 - Big Ass Pork Shoulder
15th January, 2016 08:17 AM by BBQ Phil
Enough with the small cooks, time to get serious with a Big Ass piece of Pork Shoulder. $41 AUD for 3.5kg. This is one of the biggest pieces of meats I've ever cooked, so I want to treat it gently with some Apple chunks for it's smoke source.

At 10:30am, the chimney was fired up and about 30 minutes later the meat went on. It had an initial internal temperature of 6C internal and rangehood was 160F and rising.

At 11:30am, the smoker was smoking nicely but the rangehood temperature was sitting at 163F. I thought, should I remove the water pan ?!? Is it diffusing too much heat ?!? After mulling it over, I decided to leave it for now and come back at 12pm. When I came back the BBQduino was saying 217F and the ProQ rangehood was saying 175F. Internal temperature of the meat was 15C.

At 12:30pm, it was 22C internal with the BBQduino on 265F / Pro Q rangehood said just over 200F. 20 minutes later, I added some more Apple chunks.

At 1:30pm, it was 37C internal / 262F BBQduino. It was at this point, I decided not to rely on the ProQ rangehood as it's generally about 50F out.

At 2:30pm, it was 52C internal / 255F BBQduino. About 10 minutes later, I added more water to the pan.

At 4:30pm, I removed the water pan out of the smoker as the internal temperature had stalled at 66C with the BBQduino on 230F. After removing the pan, the temperature began to sore. It was 350F and rising on the BBQduino, whilst the internal temperature pretty much stayed the same.

At 5:30pm, finally the internal temperature started to creep up slowly at 70C internal. I then added some extra heat beads to help speed up the process as we were going to be eating in the next hour or so.

At 6:10pm, I was starting to worry as the internal temperature had only hit 73C.

At 6:30pm, it was at 77C and it was time to take it off to rest for about 10 minutes or so, before eating dinner.

Cook64-20160115