Skilled Pulled-Pork Butts

 

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In order to add economically worthwhile value to retail pork butts one has to adapt to how this fresh pork product is most often being sold now a days.  So-called Natural butts are legally pumped with a saltwater containing solution.  Water adds weight at meat prices and low levels of salt increases finished product moisture retention.  So it’s important that more salt , added for further processing, is adjusted down from what’s indicated in true starting raw meat recipes.  I recommend cutting recipe salt amounts in half as a starting point when using “natural” fresh pork.  Since I’m not a business operator I have to pay retail for meat.  I do pay $45 a year to be able to shop at Sam’s Club, but GFS actually had Natural butts 20 cents a pound cheaper, and I wasn’t even required to buy an entire wholesale case at GFS in order to receive the lower price.  However, I don’t believe the trim on the GFS butts was quite as close as the brand Sam’s sells because the GFS butts still contained lymph nodes and the fat and bone loss percentage was slightly higher.  Side note:  Regardless of which mainstream pork packing plant you buy from, modern pork is uniform to the point where there is no economic reason for packers to separate market hog carcasses into official USDA Quality and/or Yield grades.

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Boning & fatting-down raw butts removes materials that are not normally eaten, helps increase the edible product cooking capacity of smoke-cookers and increases uniform heat transfer throughout cooking meat.  Trimming & chunking butts barehanded helps one locate and discard bone-fragments from neck bone tips, rapid meat plant sawing of the blade bone and chips that sometimes get embedded in exterior butt fat while on meat plant cut fabrication lines.  Depending on your needs, it may be worthwhile to keep fat trimmings for sausage production and/or boil blade bones in salted water for soup stock.  I have also saved strips of external trim fat to later be placed on top of butt chunks during the final oven cooking phase; where 8 hour smoked meat is brought up to 190F internal in an even temperatured and higher humidity (increases heat transfer into product at a given cooking temp) environment.  I have found it to not be worthwhile attempting to removing too much fat because rendering fat adds good flavor to the cooking pork, rendered fat coats lean so it won’t quickly dehydrate and a small amount of fat gives pulled-pork a good “mouth-feel.”  Further, some thick fat and light connective tissue will always need to be picked out during pulling.  Grossly over trimming raw butts is a waste of time.

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The chunking of butts allows for more uniform marinate absorption into exposed lean surfaces, facilitates the cooking of uniform size meats (in large fibrous casings), eliminates the incidence of excessively long meat shreds in the finished product and makes cooked butt meat easier to pull.

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Use a marinate that contains the proper amount, per raw meat weight, of sodium phosphate for roast.  Food-grade sodium phosphate increases finished meat product moisture retention and inhibits the development of warmed-over-flavor (WOF) that can rapidly develop due to fat oxidation.  I prefer to add my own homemade fresh Polish sausage seasoning and beer to the butt chunk marinate.  Marinating semi-lean chunks quickly gets seasonings and other ingredients in contact with all meat, thereby enhancing uniform finished product flavor and texture profiles.  Let butt chunks absorb marinate, under refrigeration, for a day or two.  I rotate soaking pork chunks once during marinating, using a long handled wooden spoon.

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The first thing to do on cooking day is to soak large fibrous casings (10 pound bologna chub size) in warm vinegar water for about 1/2 hour before starting to hand-stuff  them with marinated butt chunks.  I turn casings inside out just prior to the start of soaking; then shortly thereafter turn them back and tie one end of each casing with cotton  butchers twine.  Vinegar coagulates extracted salt-soluble muscle proteins to help form a protein-skin during cooking that aids in both casing peel-ability and produces some desirable chewy – smoky exterior surface meat. The above pic show a small amount of the 62.5 pounds of raw butt chunks which would not fit in 6 large fibrous casings.  I cooked the pictured casserole dish of pork covered and in the oven at 225F until fall apart tender.  We ate some of it for lunch on cooking day, then later mixed the remainder in with the finished smoke-cooked product.

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There are several posts covering the fabrication, cooking mechanisms and operation of the Wolfer Smoke-Cooker.  Those posts can be found under the Artisan Meat Processing topic on this blog site.  Chubs were smoke cooked for 8 hours at a temperature averaging 220F then meat went into foil covered oven roasting pans to be brought up to an internal temp of approximately 190F.  To learn more about the Case for Casings (click here).

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Rinse soot off semi-permeable casings prior to cutting them open.  I’m speculating that casings might also help filter out hydrocarbons found in hardwood smoke.

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With casings in the sink, cut slits in the downward facing section to release any unbound liquid.  Depending upon chub position within the cooker, some of the meat will be ready to easily shred as soon as casings are opened.  Set the 190F+ meat off to the side then place the remaining chub sections into 2 roasting pans.  Cover pans with aluminum foil then place one over the other on racks in a 225F oven.  Put the chubs that were on the top rack of the smoke-cooker on the bottom oven rack.  Now, shred the meat that was falling apart upon being taken from the smoke-cooker.  Check internal temps of meat in the oven after about an hour.  Pour off most of the accumulated cooking purge any time temps are checked.  The pork on the bottom oven rack will reach 190F internal first.  Move the roasting pan from the top oven rack to the bottom and let it continue cooking while you pull apart the first pan of butt chunks.

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Cover pulled-pork and let it chill overnight in refrigeration.

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Pack out in 1 pound bags for freezer storage.  An easy double wrap can be accomplished by placing 4 sandwich size bags in each gallon size bag.  Squeeze out as much air as possible while zip-locking bags.  The above pic is of less than half of what the wholesale carton of raw butts yielded.

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Use up or sell the pulled-pork before about 5 months so that a high eating quality level is maintained.

 

Bottom Line:

Starting butts were $93.78

10.4 pounds of fat, bone and bag purge loss brought butt chunk price to $1.50 per pound.  [72.7 – 10.4 = 62.3      $93.78 divided by 62.3 pounds = $1.50]

Seasoning, casings charcoal, freezer bags and utilities were approximately $15.  $15 + $93.78 = $108.79 for a new raw cost per pond of $1.75.

Partially due to meat plant added water weight, cooking shrink was 23.3 pounds (37%).  $108.79 divided by 39 pounds of finished product = $2.79 a pound.

I figured roughly 10 hours labor was involved in this process.  I did not count all the cooking time because I was doing other projects around the house during the majority of the cook time.

At $10 per pound the batch would gross $390.  $390 – $108.79 = $281.21 for labor, or $28.12 per man hour.

In an actual business, starting meat price would be less, but overhead costs much higher.  The ability to increase sales volume via a competitively low product markup is what makes meat enterprises profitable.  The low cost of fabricating, and comparatively high product capacity of, the Wolfer Smoke-Cooker should be desirable to smaller caterers, restaurants and meat shop delis.  If running two shifts per day, one cooker can smoke 120 pounds.  Further, the above listed types of business owners would be most likely to have decent knife skills and have other things to work on during lengthy – low labor input cooks.

 

End note:

I used mahogany colored large fibrous casings this time instead of the red ones that I have gotten in the past.  I don’t know if there is any connection to casing color and strength, but this was the first time that I had a casing break upon removing product from the smoke-cooker.  Not to worry though because enough salt-soluble protein is extracted to lightly bind cooked meat chunks together.  All I had to do was remove the chub in two pieces.  My more extensive experience with red (commonly used for 10 pound bologna chubs) fibrous casings is that they are very strong; even in places where they get burnt from direct contact  with the smoke-cooker’s flue/fuel pipe or barrel sides.