1st butt

[ronbeaux]

I've cooked hundreds of boston butts, but never in a Bradley. I'm figuring it is all about time and temperature so I cranked it to max heat and will shoot for 250 and see what happens. It may be a looonnngggg day!

Here is the sea salt. Not as brown as I would have liked but it's not white! And it has a good smoky hint to it.



The butt at the beginning


I sure am liking this new toyool!

[Tenpoint5]

Ron you need to throw a couple of ABT's in there with that Butt for a couple of hours. Salt looks like it turned out pretty good!!

[Hopefull Romantic]

That is one big BUTT.

[ronbeaux]

1st problems encountered. Running the slide all the way to high resulted in the heating element tripping out after two hours. I had the vents almost closed thinking it would get hotter that way. Don't know if that is correct or not????????

Un-plugged and re-plugged and it's back up and running. I adjusted the top vent to 1/4" open and set the slide to medium high. Waiting to see where it lines out.

10.5, fresh out of fatties but a couple cans of Spam sure do sound tempting!!

[Hopefull Romantic]

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

YOu should always keep your vent open at least 1/4 closing it would not help raise the temp. Actually I have read some where that it would work against it. Another thing you should keep it open for is fear of smoke codensation that would hurt and spoil you food.

HR

[ronbeaux]

Thank you for that help so fast!! The vents are open 3/8" and the temp climbed back to 225 with the slide at 3/4 way across.

[Quarlow]

What happens is that in the moisture rich air it is so wet that it won't allow the temp to climb, it just keeps suck the heat out of the air. So the rule of thumb around here is " keep the vent open, keep the vent open, keep the vent open" at least half way and wide open for chicken. If you don't open it enough the smoke will start to back up and come out by the smoke generator. This is smoke and water ladened and will screw up your SG. Plus you will soak down the heating element and that will cook the goo onto it and screw that up to. For making jerky you don't even put water in the puck dish so that the moisture will not build.

[ronbeaux]

Thanks! I'm holding 240 now with no problems. The butt is steadily climbing toward the plateau and looking good.

Vents open, vents open, vents open.

[Quarlow]

Good on you Ron I just hope you got the hide message of "VENT OPEN VENT OPEN VENT OPEN" you would have to read between the lines to pick up on that, but you're a pretty sharp guy so I think you might have got it. LOL

[KevinG]

Someone smack Q upside the head, his record is stuck too. I think you guys need to switch to Cd's (less scratches that make the record skip). ;D

[Quarlow]

LOL

[ronbeaux]

Vents open.......

Since how the butt won't get done until tonight, lunch had to come from another cooker.

Chicken breasts with field peas and tator casarole.



Butt at 158. Just before plateau and so far right on schedule +-1hr.

[Tenpoint5]

Looks good as always Ron!!

By the way you probably have figured it out already reading around the forum but you should only need a max of 3-4 hours of smoke on the butt then you can shut the smoke off. You don't need to run smoke the whole cook. Unless your throwing a couple cans of spam in there all rubbed down. They do sound good, I have a couple of cans of bacon flavor in the pantry I keep forgetting about.

[ronbeaux]

Yep. I figured about 15 minutes per puck so I put in 3 hours worth. They are about to run out.

[Quarlow]

That should be 20 mins per puck. Chicken and casserole look very tasty.