Sous Vide and Modernist Cooking Blog: Why is the Sous Vide Pulled Pork Temperature Different Than Smoking?

I'm new to sous vide and a little confused. I have smoked a ton of boston butts over the last 15 years and and my magic number is 203 for internal temp usually running 250-275 for 8 to 10 hours (no crutch). I used to cook lower and slower but the above mentioned seems to give me the best results on my smoker (nice bark, tender and juicy).

Back to sous vide. My question is why shouldn't I set my sous vide machine to 203 and run the same number of hours? Everything I have read including the article above has much lower temps. This doesn't make any sense to me since it seems you would still want to get to the same internal temp to get similar results.

If a shoulder is normally supposed to be cooked to an internal temp between 190-205 (see any meat chart) why would that be any different when cooking sous vide?

- Mick

Thanks for the great question Mick! There's a lot that goes into this and I'll try to clear it up below. Most of it comes down to what you are trying to accomplish texture-wise.

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