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What Is the Stall Temperature for Pork Shoulder?

By: Author William Thomas

William Thomas

Editor-in-Chief & Pitmaster

I have been smoking and grilling meat from an early age and enjoy sharing my knowledge and expertise through the hundreds of articles I have written about BBQ. I hope to make everyone’s BBQ journey that little bit easier.
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What Is the Stall Temperature for Pork Shoulder?

Cooking meat requires you to keep a lot of things in mind, such as the temperature of the meat. The reason for this is that if you end up eating undercooked or raw meat, it can lead to you getting sick.

You can avoid this by cooking the meat to the recommended temperature. However, you should be aware that not everything goes according to plan.

There are times when the temperature will stall during the cooking process, requiring us to intervene. One food this can happen with is pork shoulder.

In this article, we are going to touch on this subject, and by the end, you will know exactly what it is and how to fix it.

Definition of Pork Shoulder

You first need to know what pork shoulder is before we can jump into the definition of stall temperature.

Pork shoulder, as the name implies, comes from the shoulder of the pig, and it’s a great cut to get because it is very inexpensive compared to some of the other pork cuts out there.

The pork shoulder is a very tough cut of meat because it has a lot of muscle in that area. If you were just to go by your own neck and shoulder area, you’d feel a lot of muscle there.

So, the muscle area is going to be very chewy. You will need to cook it for a while so you can make it more tender. However, the result is meat that you don’t have to spend a lot of time chewing.

So now that you know what a pork shoulder is, we will touch on what exactly stall temperature means and why it happens when you are cooking food.

Definition of Stall Temperature

Stall temperature is what happens when the temperature of the meat plateaus. When something plateaus, it means it is reaching a point where it is stuck, hence the term stalling.

Normally, plateauing is something that you see when someone is losing weight. They will have worked super hard to lose all of the weight, only to end up getting to a point where they can’t lose anymore.

Pork tends to stall around 150 degrees and 170 degrees Fahrenheit. At this point, you will be frustrated because your pork won’t be heating up any longer.

However, there are things you can do to get past the stall temperature, which we are going to cover in the next section.

How Do You Get Past the Stall Temperature?

Luckily, there are things you can do to get past the stall temperature. It does not matter if you stop it from happening in general or just make the stall time shorter.

As long as you can get past it, then you be able to get on cooking your pork shoulder.

You can do this with the following methods:

  • Sometimes the design of your cooking device can play a part in your meat stalling. You’ll want a grill or smoker that has a great amount of airflow and can help encourage your pork shoulder to evaporate easily.
  • Employing the use of a wet mop to help brush or spritz the meat with some type of liquid. The reason you want to do this is that it helps put moisture onto the meat. Moisture is essential in helping lower the stalling temperature or making it non-existent.
  • One method that you may not have thought of before is just keeping the size of the meat you are cooking. So, if your pork shoulder is on the longer side, then try cooking it on a larger surface compared to a smaller surface.
  • Finally, this option is a simple one you may not have thought of but consider getting a meat thermometer. This is one of the best ways to keep an eye on the temperature.

What you could end up doing is just waiting it out, which is the easiest method by far.

The temperature stall will eventually end, and the temperature of your pork butt will begin to rise. You just have to be patient and wait for this to occur naturally.

Not best for people who aren’t on the patient side, which is why we mentioned the other methods on this list if you don’t want to go this route.

The Ideal Temperature for Pork Shoulder

There is an ideal temperature for all meats. However, before you can figure it out, you need to know what type of meat it is.

Commonly, there are two types of meat which either fall into the red meat or white meat category.

White meat comes from poultry or animals that are birds, while red meat comes from four-legged animals that are red in their raw form.

Now pork is usually cooked to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, but when you are grilling, it’s recommended that you should cook it between 195 degrees and 205 degrees Fahrenheit.

The reason why they suggest cooking it to a higher temperature is that it does a great job of breaking down the connective tissue.

Remember, muscle is very chewy, and pork shoulder comes from an area with a lot of muscles.

So, if you don’t cook it either long or hot enough, it’s going to be very tough when you are biting into it. Cooking it at a high temper will help the meat be more tender and moister.

Final Thoughts

And here you go, all you pork shoulder lovers out there! Pork shoulder is an unbelievably delicious food to cook on your grill, and sometimes the temperature can stall despite your best efforts to prevent it from happening.

It can seem annoying when stall temperature happens to the pork shoulder you are cooking, but try not to freak out. All you have to do is employ one of the methods we talked about, and you are good to go.

So, when you have the time, go out and purchase some pork shoulder before grilling it up.

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