Chill a butt

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medic53

Knows what a fatty is.
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I have 8 pork butts on the WSM as we speak. They are for my niece's wedding this Saturday. My plan is to vacuum seal them and reheat them in boiling water on Saturday evening. I need to get them off the smoker tonight and let them chill before I seal them. Anything wrong with letting them rest uncovered in the fridge and then chunking them apart to vacuum seal in the morning? Would leaving them uncovered that long hurt them? Any better ideas?
 
I would think it would take a long time to cool them in the fridge not to mention the effect on anything else in there. I would do the in large vented ziplocks in an ice water bath.
 
I have nothing else in this fridge at the moment. I just don't want the pork to suffer taste wise.
 
I normally just pull then cool. vacuum seal next day. I also will mix the juice into the pulled pork.
 
How do you cool them blazinfire?
I can add apple juice on Saturday when I serve them. Tonight's butts will be my backup. I plan on smoking more on Saturday to serve fresh.
 
You gotta pull them when they are hot -
and I prefer to go through and get all the bad fat out, etc.
when I pull them off initially.
 
Good luck and congrats to her.Be careful when reheating,had some brisket that came unsealed due to too hot of water,I double seal now to try to prevent that
 
I've had some bags open up on me when I tried to reheat in boiling water, too. Now I keep a good eye on them and check every few min. But when it comes to cooling them, the best and fastest way is with an ice bath in the cooler. It works in the (empty) fridge no problem, but it takes a lot longer to make it happen. I look at it like this, when I want an ice cold beer, and they're sitting on the shelf at room temp, the fridge method makes them good the next day, while the cooler and ice method makes them good in ten minutes.
 
Thanks everyone. I ended up pulling them and then sealing them after they cooled. Smoking at least 8 more tonight for the wedding tomorrow. I'm sure I will have leftovers.
 
Update on the wedding. I started the 22 WSM at midnight Saturday morning. Meat went on around 1am. Had some trouble getting the temps up. She wanted to run around 200 for the first 6 hours. Finally was able to hit and stay at 235. This is lower than what I usually run the WSM at, but it was happy there so I left it. As the day went on I knew the butts were not going to get done in time unless I wrapped them. I normally don't, but time was slipping away. I wrapped them around noon and finally took them off at 3 and let them rest in a cooler until dinner time around 6. Had about 130 guests. We went through all 8 fresh butts and I had to heat up 2 of the vacuum sealed ones. People stayed in line until the sealed ones came out. Many compliments on the pork.
I want to thank the Brethren for all the help I have gotten from here.
Sorry, no photos as I was too busy serving them. And yes, I have tons of leftovers. But the guys at work don't seem to mind!
 
It takes really long time to chill butts in fridge. Ice water is best unless you have access to commercial & powerful blast chiller, but you need a lot of ice to make it work!

I've tried many things and decided it's practically impossible to chill whole muscles fast enough without mentioned blast chiller. Sure you can do it in ice water in pinch, but that's really not practical if you need to do it more often...
 
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