Smoking Boston Butt Need Help. Bad 1st attempt.

[kevinstan]

I am fairly new to smoking and decided to recently get into it. I bought an electric brinkman from home depot and wanted to start with a Boston Butt. I picked up a really nice looking one hoping to create what I have seen online with making some awesome pulled BBQ from it. The Boston butt was 6.25 lbs and I started it at 8 am. From my calculations it should have been done around 6 pm. Checking the meat only a couple of times and then finally checking the finished temp at 6 pm my thermometer was only reading 145 degrees f. How could this be? I used another thermometer just to be sure, and even checked it in other places on the meat just to be sure. It all read the same. 150 degrees f was the highest reading I got. I figured it needed to cook more so I kept letting it go longer and longer and checking the temp about every hour and a half. All still read the same. At midnight I took the meat off and it was still nowhere near done. I am not sure what I did wrong on this one other than the meat was only about 95% thawed when I put it on the smoker, and I also used aluminum foil on the bottom of the meat on the top rack of my smoker. I have cooked chicken twice on my new smoker with no problem. Someone please help me out and tell me where I went wrong. I was going for a temp of around 200 and it just didn't get there. 

 

[fpnmf]

Your brinkman was probably running a little cooler than the indicated temp.

The supplied therm with most smokers are off a good bit..

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[SmokinAl]

   Glad to have you with us!

Get yourself a good thermometer to monitor the smoker temp with. It sounds like the smoker was not hot enough.

 

[chef jimmyj]

Smoker temp may be too low and...even 95% thawed is very cold will take a long time to come up...JJ

 

[callmetut]

Hi Kevinstan... you might want to read my post:

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/107514/butt-from-hell

Some pretty good feedback there...

Like the others stated it sounds like the smoker wasn't up to temp, my Masterbuilt reads a good 25 degrees lower than it should be, a couple of things to do with your themo's is to check them with boiling water and see how they read and use one just for checking the internal temp of the smoker. Also the partly frozen thingy makes me see a big problem with both getting the meat out of the danger zone for bringing meat up to temp and also attempting to basically thaw the meat in the smoker.

I've done a dozen or so BB smokes after that first one and while not a pro, getting pretty good at it, I have one on as I type now (along with some ribs) and have been informed that I'll be doing another BB for Christmas for my wife and her friends.

Tutor

 

[rygolf25]

Hi Kevinstan,

As all of the others have said, probably a combination of bad thermometer and too low of a cook temp...one of the first things that I'd recommend whether smoking or grilling is using a qood quality digital thermometer in your grill or smoker simply to tell you the cooking temperature at cooking level.  Beyond that, you could use a 2nd or instant therm for the meat itself.  With most meats, cooking temp is as important as anything since there is such a variant in the weight and quality of meat! 

Happy Smoking!

Ryan