Too Little Smoke Flavor in Your Meals?	Too little flavor is one of the most popular complaints we receive from our readers. All types of units are being used: gas, electric, smokers, pits, grills, etc. With each type of unit, the cooking techniques must be modified. For example, there is no need to use a cast iron smoker box in a wood burning barbecue pit. Likewise, you would not use coals burned down from logs in gas grills and electric smokers. So, what to do? CLICK: Smoker Boxes Wanting to get that sought-after smoke flavor into the meat is something we hear more from our gas grill and electric smoker friends. To enhance the smoky flavor of your meals, we recommend using either a cast iron or stainless steel smoker box to place wood chips in while cooking. We soak the wood chips for about 30 minutes in apple juice or other flavorful liquids to help flavor the meats. If you want mild smoke, use the fruitwood chips such as apple, cherry, alder and maple. For a medium smoke flavor, use oak. For stronger flavors, use mesquite, hickory or pecan. Another more modern method of inducing flavor to the meal is the use of smoker pellets. Smoker pellets can be on a localized basis or it can be the entire cooking/heating source. The Traeger Wood Pellet Grill has an auger that automatically feeds hardwood pellets into the firepot. Air is added via a draft fan, which helps the pellets combust. The hot wood fire vapors surround the food and cook it. A method of introducing smoke flavor, besides using wood chips and a smoker box, is by using BBQ'rs Delight smoking pellets is the use of "aluminum foil pouches of pellets" placed directly over the heat source". Just one small hole in the aluminum foil pouch works great to provide smoke in most outdoor cookers. One final thought on adding flavor to meals. We always enjoy using crushed garlic, rough chopped onions, bell peppers, etc., soaked in cooking oil and wrapped loosely in heavy duty foil and placed near the heat so that the oil begins to cook the items inside the foil, adding additional flavors. The flavor and aroma being added from the packet is fantastic. You may want to have have several of these flavor pouches available depending upon the length of time you are cooking. * SEE ADDITIONAL NOTES BELOW
Too Much Smoke Flavor in Your Meals?	CLICK: Foil Cooking Many people complain that their meat is "way too smoky", "much too bitter" or "awfully strong". All of these symptoms are the direct result of applying too much smoke during the cooking process. The use of logs in the firepit assaults the meat with tars, resins and charred materials. You can tell when you have too much smoke in the cooking chamber when it resembles the smoke stack of a steam locomotive rather than a properly finely tuned barbecue pit. "A faint wisp of white smoke is the signal of a competent cook." C. Clark Hale (pg 312, The Great American Barbecue Manual). CLICK: Burning Logs How have people tried to overcome the strong flavors invoked by burning logs in their smoker? Aluminum Foil. Foil creates a barrier to smoke. It can't get through, period. So, rather than cooking it properly, foil is used to inhibit smoke from reaching the meat. Another issue around the use of aluminum foil is the inherent fact that confining the meat in foil is akin to cooking it in a pot. It completely changes the texture of the meat from that cooked in a dry heat to one cooked in liquid. Call it pot roast, stew or even chicken a la king. But don't call it barbecue! Others use paper bags to limit smoke contact. Why put too much smoke on the pit and then try to limit it? The right way, and the most intensive way, to produce perfectly flavored barbecue is to have a a separate "burn pit" where the wood is burned to hot coals. Then use a shovel to move the coals to the barbecue pit. This burn pit (Photo #1, Photo #2) will remove the "undesirable elements" from the wood before it is made subject to the meat. Another method to produce desired smoke flavors is to use natural or lump charcoal. This charcoal has already had the impurities that are contained in logs, burned out. This charcoal is different from charcoal briquettes and burns hotter, faster and cleaner. Additionally, charcoal briquettes have some undesirable impurities. Since natural or lump charcoal does burn hotter, you will not use as much as you might imagine. If you are using gas or electric units, you will not have as much of this problem. Should you use too much of the wood chips for too long a period of time, you too might experience too much smoke. Simply use fewer wood chips. *The desirable smoke flavor is deposited by invisible droplets, not the heavy, noxious smoke of burning wood. This deposition and the accompanying "smoke" ring are best accomplished when the temperature differential between the heat and the meat is greater. The good flavor is also deposited best upon a moist surface, so keeping the surface moist by basting or prolonging by low temperature will produce more flavor. [*Smoky Hale] These are the reasons why "good" smoke flavor is deposited in the first 2-3 hours only. The bottom line is not to fight the system, but to learn what works and does not work in your smoker and to go with the process that works best. * SEE ADDITIONAL NOTES BELOW
Too Little Seasoning Flavor	CLICK: Flavorful meals! This too is one of our largest complaints when outdoor cooking. Marinades: Once, most people used a marinade to flavor the meat that they were going to grill or barbecue. Marinades result from using oils, vinegars and spices in a liquid mixture and letting the meat marinate or soak over several hours. While marinating is still a favorite method of cooking outdoors, most serious contest cooks have abandoned the practice in favor of using dry rubs directly on the meats and basting occasionally. Dry Rubs: This method of flavoring the meat has become more mainstream because it adds seasonings directly to the meat. The seasonings are stronger than the marinades, but during the cooking process, they will "mellow" and become great flavor enhancers to the meat being cooked. On many of our meats, we will coat the meat lightly with yellow mustard which has several beneficial features. First, it holds the spices on the meat, secondly, it helps keep the meat moist while cooking and third, as it cooks and melds with the spices, it sets up a nice surface (often called "skin" or "bark"). Basting: This is a very popular method of helping to keep the meat moist when cooking over longer periods of time. You can use a basting mop to gently baste flavorful liquids on the surface of the meat every 30 to 45 minutes. We have found a basting brush to be excellent for grilling, though a little rough on the meat during longer cooking processes. Finishing Sauce: A finishing sauce is great for adding that final touch of flavor and appearance to your finished product. Once the meat is 90% cooked or has about 20 minutes left of cooking and the temperatures are beginning to lower, then the finishing sauce can be added. The reason for waiting until the end is that most finishing sauces contain tomatoes and/or sugars which have a tendency to burn. If you want to present a "wet look" to your product, then add the finishing sauce after you have removed the meat from the pit. * SEE ADDITIONAL NOTES BELOW See a bunch of Smoky's favorite sauces * ADDITIONAL NOTES: There are a couple of universal notes that would apply to the above categories and should be mentioned here. First, there is a significant difference between cooking over longer periods of time (i.e. 1+ hours to 24 hours at lower temperatures as in barbecuing shoulders, ribs, brisket, etc.) and shorter periods of time (i.e. less than 1 hour at higher temperatures as in broiling fish, burgers, dogs, steaks, Fajitas, etc.) The difference is the time the meat is being exposed to the smoky environment and the temperatures. For example, to get smoke (wood) flavor in a broiled burger or steak you can be intense with the green wood/smoke because the meat is not being exposed to the smoke for that long of a period of time. See Grilling With Smoke Example Then, for those longer cooking times (roasting, barbecuing, smoking) very little smoke can be way too much. Secondly, your grill or pit design will affect the amount of smoke with which your meat actually comes in contact. For example, if your pit has the side firebox and an exhaust at the top, then most of your smoke is going to go directly up (heat rises) and across the top of the cooking chamber and out the exhaust thus by-passing the meat. See Example If your fire is below the meat and your exhaust is at the same level as the meat being cooked, the smoke is trapped in the cooking chamber and the meat is being exposed to more smoke. See Example
Starting With Tender Meat	This will be covered in our next issue. Stay tuned!
Making It More Tender	This will be covered in our next issue. Stay tuned!
How long is this going to take?	This will be covered in our next issue. Stay tuned!