Smoke Notes - 9lb Pork Shoulder Pellet Smoke

    It's hard to beat the rewards you get out of a long overnight smoke. When you shred the bad boy and it just falls apart, and everyone at the gathering is congratulating you for a job well done, it makes the late night start and time spent well worth it. We had a similar result over the weekend with a 9lb pork shoulder to share with family for our daughter's birthday party. Let's run over the smoke notes.

 Trial and Error

    Full disclosure, this is the 3rd pork shoulder I have done this year. I am mainly making these notes to share with others, but also for me to reference back on in future smoke sessions. I think if eating at normal hours, the preferred play here is to definitely smoke overnight and hold in a cooler (up to 4ish hours) before serving. Of the three pork shoulders I smoked, the one that turned out the worst was starting in the morning, and felt rushed the whole time to make a 5pm serving time. Don't make the same mistakes that I did.

Smoke Notes

Meat: 9lb Kroger Frozen Pork Shoulder (pick these up when on sale and throw in freezer)

Grill: PitBoss 700FB1

Pellets: Traeger Signature Blend

Binder: Yellow Mustard

Rub: Weber Savory Barbecue Rub

    So this was a fun smoke. My brother was in town and we had scored some Wilco tickets for that night, but we also had a family get together the next day at 1pm for my daughter's birthday party. I had the perfect plan. Let's hit up the concert, and then roll the smoker and put the shoulder on overnight when we got back, to check up on in the morning. With my experience with my other pork shoulders if you start at a temp of 225F overnight, you can kind of "set it and forget it" overnight, and check temperatures and increase in the AM if needed. While always dependent on the shoulder size, this usually works well with a serving time of after noon. If you need to take it longer, like 3 or 5pm, you can just keep the temp at 225 in the morning when you wake and keep and eye and monitor. We did turn this one up a bit in the morning to pull and rest before our party.

7/17 - 7/18

23:30 - After arriving home from the concert, ears still ringing, we got straight to work. Grabbed two Miller Lites (for hydration) and rolled out and set up the smoker. We have a new dog so my brother was on dog duty while we set up. Set the smoker to "smoke" to get started, and after lit closed the lid and set our temp to 225.

00:15 - While the smoker was getting up to temp we headed back inside and prepped our shoulder. Threw it in a foil pan, patted it dry, covered and rubbed with yellow mustard, and shook on a liberal amount of the Weber Savory Barbecue Rub. Grabbed this stuff on sale at Meijer earlier in the season and it is a very solid go to. Right amount of sweet with the right amount of savory. Time to get things smoking. Our smoker was at 220F but steadily rising to 225F so I went ahead and got the shoulder on the smoke. After one more smoker temp check after hitting 225F, off to bed for some much needed sleep.

07:45 - After some good sleep I woke up wondering about our shoulder. Time to take a look and see how things were going. Was very pleased with our first peek. We threw in our Ninja meat thermometer and were getting a temp reading of 171F. My co-pilot wasn't quite awake (and I wasn't really either at this point) and moving yet so I decided to up the temp to 250F here. Once things settle and we got moving this morning I plan to wrap this shoulder in a pan to keep it moist and finish the smoke out. This is how things were looking at this point, very happy so far: 

08:30 - Turned our PitBoss up to 300F here. Probably didn't have to but wanted to get things to the finish line in the next 2-3 hours. The probe on our reader was showing 173F here. No need to panic. The good thing about the overnight at 225F is that at that temp a lot of your rendering and cooking has been completed. In my experience, you're really just fine tuning for time at this point, always aiming to get to probe tender or approx 203F at least 1 hour before serving (but preferably 2-4 hours).

09:00 - Here our probe was showing 177F, making some progress. Now that my co-pilot was awake and moving I thought it would be a good time to wrap things in a foil tin to push us through this stall and get us to the finish line. Usually here I will throw a dab of butter on the top of the shoulder or a splash of apple juice in the pan. I did neither here and things still turned out great. Things were looking VERY GOOD!

10:14 - It was time. Probe was reading 203F and took another insta-read and it was probing like butter. This was kind of the perfect pulling time for a 1pm eat time as well. Here are some pics of the product:

 This baby was looking perfect. Our next steps here were to transfer the shoulder over to some aluminum foil sheets and wrap things up to rest in the cooler. We did just that by transferring things over to the foil (things were falling apart), wrapping in that foil, then wrapped it in a towel, and threw it in our cooler (with 2 more towels) to let the juices settle and the shoulder stay up to temp until we ate in about 3 hours.

13:00 - Pulled the shoulder out of the cooler and started shredding into a new tin. This sucker was still piping hot, burnt my fingers a bit pulling the bone out which slid right out. Shredded so easy, and was an absolute hit.

 Closing Thoughts

    Huge fan of throwing pork shoulders on overnight, starting at around 11pm or midnight. Keeping the smoker at 225F overnight while you sleep if able is a really versatile spot. Most of our gatherings are between 1-5pm that I have made these for. I don't know how things would go if you were wanting a later serve like 7pm, but will try post some notes in the future when/if I do one of those. Hope this helps and happy smoking!