Well, it's done. Event has concluded, all were well fed and I got a lot of comments on the chuck roll. Quite a few went back for "thirds" so I think that is a good testament to the how well it turned out.
Here is the rest of the story on how we got from peeking at the meat last night to a finished product at the event and the leftovers. After reloading the charcoal ring and topping off the water pan, the meat hit 178* around 11:30pm. I was originally going to pull and foil at 170*, but I let it go until I wanted to call it a night to give it a little more time in the smoke before foiling. Roast was too big for even a doubled foil from the wide roll at Sam's Club. Ended up triple wrapping it to make sure it was sealed up. Bark looked good to me.
So, just how do you pick up a 22lb hunk of meat? With one big ass BBQ tool or course! The wife bought me this a few years back as a joke (she thought it was not a real tool). This is one of the best things in the world for dealing with pork butts and now chuck rolls in a smoker. Picked it up with no problems to move it over to the foil. No, that image is not distorted by a camera angle or a photoshop trick. That is one big ass BBQ spatula!
Original plan was to just continue the cook in the WSM. But I changed my mind and figured I would continue to cook the foiled chuck roll in our GE oven set at 225*. I had not tried to finish meat in this oven at 225*, but had done so in our prior oven. Of course this is a better model with convection oven, etc.... (not using convection for this though). So I had preheated the oven to 225* and set up the Maverick 733 to keep track of the temps. Moved the roast to large pan with raised sides as I had doubts about the doubled foil holding the juices in.
First concern. Oven way overshot 225* to 260*, however it was at the end of the initial warm up phase so I did not panic. So for the next 2 hours I sat monitoring the Maverick to make sure I'm going to be in a satisfactory temp band in the oven. Once it settled down, the temp cycle ran from 218* when the element click on to 234* when it peaked after the element shut off. It would take about 1/2 hour to drop back to 218* and start the process all over again. Very acceptable, so off to bed at 2:20am with the Maverick receiver on the night stand. Alarm set for 205* food temp and oven range of 210* low to 260* high.
Not that I was sleeping well anyhow, as this was the first time I've run this particular oven like this. So basically every half hour or so, I roll over to peek at the Maverick display. All is well.... Then at about 5AM... BEEP.... BEEP...BEEP.... Bingo, we have 205* internal and the meat is done!!!!! Sorry I did not get a photo of the foiled meat and did not open the foil. Transferred it straight into a medium sized Coleman cooler that I've had for decades and use for holding meat for cooks like this. Now some of you may be cringing about now. 5AM!!! and it will not be served until around 11:30AM. That's a long time. Trust me, I've done this with 3 or 4 pork butts dozens of times and the meat is still smoking and too hot to pull by hand up to 7 hours later (and probably longer, but 7 hours is the longest I've gone).
So to the event..... Pulled and moved about half the meat to a portable steam tray stand to keep it hot for the event. Still steaming hot and like I said too hot to pull with hands even 6 hours later. Meat was a hit with the group. I liked the pulled chuck roll better than pork shoulder. I also brought some Redneck Bar Firecrackers and some of my own BBQ sauce which I cooked up the night before while the chuck roll smoked.
Nice smoke ring on the chuck roll!!!! I cut into thick slices before pulling as some of the portions of the roll can be long and sort of stringy. Cut to 1 1/2" to 2" thick slabs before pulling made uniform portions for sandwiches and plating. Nice and moist and pulled with the lightest touch! Very tender and flavorful meat.
All said, this was a successful smoke. I really liked the flavor. Now for me, I would kick up the rub a little, but his particular chuck roll was for a varied group and a lot of them don't really care for spicy bark. Bark was soft from foiling, but still came out great. I would do this again (and probably will over the upcoming holidays as we have a large family gathering to cook for).
From a 22 lb. chuck roll, I had 7 pounds of meat left over at the end of the day. I figure there was 3 or 4 pounds lost to the cooking process and the ravenous hoard consumed the rest at the event. So I've got some for sammiches this weekend and two vacuum packed bags of 2 and 2.5 pounds for the freezer and later.
Now I've got to clean the guns from the range event..... Cleaning smoker, cleaning kitchen, cleaning, cleaning.... Seem's like there is always something that needs cleaing.
