AmazingRibs.com

Authority

Specialist publication

Territories

US

Primacy

primary

Commercial interest

affiliate funded

Retrieved

2026-08-13

State

Read and citable

Original document

Reports experiments by Greg Blonder — physicist, engineer, and formerly Chief Technical Advisor at Bell Labs — in a thermostat-controlled smoker at 230 °F. Findings recorded: the stall begins after two to three hours when the meat reaches about 150 °F, may begin anywhere between 150 and 170 °F depending on the piece, and lasts about six hours. The cause is evaporative cooling, established by a control: a lump of pure beef fat did not stall at all, while a water-soaked cellulose sponge with no protein, fat or collagen did, and even dropped in temperature. In the pork test, wrapping took the meat to 180 °F in about half the time. Note what is absent: no time-per-pound rule is offered anywhere, which is the most useful thing about it.

Technical, Culinary practice

• Explicitly not safety: A specialist publication is below the safety floor. Nothing here may establish a food-safety endpoint, however well measured.
• Explicitly not commercial: Affiliate-funded, and therefore not a neutral source on which equipment anybody should buy.

• “The stall may begin at an internal temp that's anywhere between 150 and 170°F, depending on the particular piece of meat.”

  In tests run in a thermostat-controlled smoker at 230 °F, the stall begins after two to three hours when the internal temperature reaches about 150 °F, may begin anywhere between 150 and 170 °F depending on the piece of meat, and lasts about six hours before the temperature begins rising again.

  Cooker:

  A thermostat-controlled smoker held at 230 °F. Not a figure for any other pit temperature.

  What it covers:

  A phenomenon of large cuts cooked low and slow, not of a particular cut. Reported for brisket-type cooks and demonstrated on pork as well.

  Form:

  A stage milestone — a temperature the cook passes through — not an endpoint of any kind.

• The stall is evaporative cooling. A lump of pure beef fat with a probe inserted did not stall at all, while a water-soaked cellulose sponge placed beside it in the same smoker stalled and even fell in temperature.

  Method:

  A control experiment: the sponge contains no protein, no fat and no collagen, so a stall in the sponge rules out every chemical explanation involving those.

  Explains why the stall is not a fixed duration — it depends on surface moisture, airflow and humidity rather than on the weight of the meat.

• In the pork test, meat wrapped in foil climbed to 180 °F in about half the time the unwrapped piece took — roughly six hours.

  Reported for PORK. BBQHQ holds no equivalent measured figure for brisket and does not transfer this one to it.

  Why it happens:

  Follows from the evaporative explanation: a wrap stops evaporation from the surface, so the cooling that causes the stall stops with it.

  The source discusses wrapping's effect on time. BBQHQ records no claim about its effect on bark.

• The article explains the mechanism of the stall and offers no time-per-pound rule for any cut.

  Form:

  An ABSENCE, recorded deliberately. A source declining to state something is evidence about the state of knowledge, not a gap in the record of that source.

  Weight:

  A publication with a commercial incentive to publish a cooking time publishes a mechanism instead. That makes it corroboration of the position rather than merely another silence.