Nearly 21 hour cook time for an 8 lb. pork butt ... Is this common with a Traeger?

[jeremy.telford]

This seems like a really long time for my first ever butt cook. I am located in North Louisiana and the temps haven't been too cold + I also have the insulated cover that goes over my Traeger. The butt stalled out between 150 and 165 and it took forever for it to break past. I was expecting a cook time of 12 hours - 13 hours but certainly not 21 hours. Seasoned with Holy Gospel from Meat Church Seasonings.

 

[TheGrumpyGriller]

What temp? Did you wrap after the stall? How big was the butt?

 

[jeremy.telford]

What temp? Did you wrap after the stall? How big was the butt?

225 degrees as recommended by the Traeger "Everyday Cookbook," I did not wrap at the stall because I didn't want to risk messing up the bark, and the butt was +/- 8 pounds or so.

 

[TheGrumpyGriller]

OK - that does seem like a long time. Were you monitoring the Traeger temp with an InkBird, Fireboard or similar? The Traeger probes are notoriously inaccurate, so even if it was set at 225, you could have been lower. That being said, unless the temp fluctuated quite a bit, that is indeed longer than I'd expect. I think the last pb I did was about 11 hours or so.

If you temps were truly at 225 and weren't swinging wildly, perhaps you just got an outlier piece of meat

 

[Murphy's Law]

I would try and get a good third party thermometer to check against your Traeger pit probe. As noted above, Traeger temp probes are pretty weak. They make a great grill but accurate temp reading just isn’t their strength!

Fire Board is very popular but $$ and the Ink Bird BBQ WiFi version is a great option at a far lower price point.

I also tend to bump my temp to 275 or more once I hit that stall. By then I have good smoke flavor and bark so I’m just going for the finish line at that point.

 

[Slimpicker]

12 hours max, you can cook the whole way at 250°, do not wrap a butt, that comes at the 3 hour "rest" wrapped and in a cooler... if you knew exactly what your "pit" ambient temp was it should have not taken 21 hrs.
Higher temps will NOT ruin a pork butt, it will only make the bark thicker and darker, the real chemistry comes when you do a proper "REST" of a butt and that will resurrect any way you got to 200°+or- IT

Set at 225, your grill could have been cooking at 195 the whole time

 

[Timmy]

^^^^^^^What he said.