rib sweat?


 
Originally posted by Bob Haskins:
Personally it does not bother me if someone does not always accurately articulate their techniques and reasoning.
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Bob, I buy bbq books for information and it definitely bothers me if information is incorrect. Believe it or not, in the same recipe, Mill's suggests cooking the ribs for 1.5 hours. Sounded strange to me and in the end, it took closer to six hours.

So Mike made a mistake and no one in editing picked it up. I knew what I was doing, no harm, no foul. What if this was the first bbq book I'd bought and I served the ribs up to guests and family after 1.5 hours? Would we have gotten sick?
 
Originally posted by Bob Haskins:
From what I have heard and read I think most of these guys tend to over simplify the process not over complicate.
There are many great chefs in this world who have no idea what's happening once they turn ont the heat but they get great results nontheless.
Personally it does not bother me if someone does not always accurately articulate their techniques and reasoning.
We're all big boys here, no one needs the Q police to nurse maid us.
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Do you have an opinion on whether rib's sweat or have pores? If so, we'd like to hear it.
 
the problem is that he recommends mopping/basting when the ribs are sweating. I suppose one could interpret it to mean: therefore the flavor will be absorbed directly after sweating, but that's never explained.
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I believe that's what he means. I was looking around on the smokingmeat forums a while back and ran across a few posts by a guy who said he had a conversation with Mike Mills about his entire rib cooking process. He said Mills told him that misting with apple juice and adding magic dust during the "sweat" will allow those flavors to be absorbed back into the meat after the sweat. The guy tried cooking Mills' way and seemed to agree with the techniques. I'm not sure how much of that is true though. I met Mike Mills briefly at the Best in the West rib cookoff this September but didn't talk to him about cooking. The ribs from his booth were pretty good though.
 
Well ribs might "sweat" when the animal is alive but I doubt dead ribs do.
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Well ribs might "sweat" when the animal is alive but I doubt dead ribs do. Big Grin
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curiously, pigs don't sweat (at least not when alive, we still don't know when dead). from answers.com:

In order to regulate internal body temperature, the sweat mechanism allows an animal to quickly dissapate heat. Animals like a horse, cow or human will sweat with exercise or in hot temperatures. Reptiles & insects don't sweat as their body temperature is governed by the environmental temperature. Pigs on the other hand, are mammals and need to have water/humidity applied to the skin inorder to help dissapate heat. This is the reason pigs are associated with wallowing in the mud.
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remember...this thread is all about fact checking and accuracy in reporting.
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I believe that's what he means. I was looking around on the smokingmeat forums a while back and ran across a few posts by a guy who said he had a conversation with Mike Mills about his entire rib cooking process. He said Mills told him that misting with apple juice and adding magic dust during the "sweat" will allow those flavors to be absorbed back into the meat after the sweat. The guy tried cooking Mills' way and seemed to agree with the techniques. I'm not sure how much of that is true though. I met Mike Mills briefly at the Best in the West rib cookoff this September but didn't talk to him about cooking. The ribs from his booth were pretty good though.
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Thanks for the clarification Michael. Its too bad I spent good money on the book and the concept was not explained thoroughly.

I mentioned earlier that I struggle with certain aspects of bbq that I rarely see addressed in books like Peace, Love... One of those is flavor. A rub can be great straight after mixing, but a good deal of the flavor gets lost during 6-7 hours of a rib cook. A late stage dusting is something that I've discovered that works nicely to revive some of those lost flavors. Yes it works, if reviving flavors is your goal. However, are those flavors "absorbed" into the meat? I'd say its doubtful, and probably irrelevant (where does it matter where the flavor ends up, a rib is a one bite piece of meat).

waiting for a "sweat" to rerub, on the off chance that spices are "absorbed" into "pores" seems like it falls into the over complication of a simple technique category.
 
Agreed.

That anything of any substance is absorbed into the meat (ribs or otherwise) during cooking goes against science. The human mouth is simply not capable of discerning flavor differences between the meat surface and interior portion if the cut is thin, like ribs. Science aside, we can tell simply through experience that material absorption does not occur when we cook much thicker cuts that are rubbed and/or basted. There is a substantial difference in flavors between the surfaces and the interior portions of the meat. Were absorption or 'penetration' occurring a level where apparent this would not be so.

Meat increases its ability to retain or absorb moisture when it is cooling, not cooking. (And this is a key reason why we cool braised meats in their braising liquid.) However, though the application via spray or mop of liquid will cool the surface of the meat, it is not to the point where one could then expect retention/absorption.

The 1.5-hour cook time recommendation aside, the recipe might well be fine. But the results have to do with other factors, not flavor absorption.
 
Sorry about this.I think this is a dead thread, but if meat doesn't absorb or is penetrated by flavour during the cooking process how do you explain a smoke ring or smoke flavour penetrating the meat? Fundamentally isn't that what BBQ is all about?

And yes I have cooked ribs in 1.5 -2 hours and had people rave about them. They are pull off the bone not fall off the bone and no ones died yet.
 
Sorry about this.I think this is a dead thread, but if meat doesn't absorb or is penetrated by flavour during the cooking process how do you explain a smoke ring or smoke flavour penetrating the meat? Fundamentally isn't that what BBQ is all about?
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I should learn my lesson by digging up an old and contentious thread, but I'm going to do it again, right now:

quote:
We generally accept that spice flavors can be pulled into meat right?


Um, no we don't. Not if you're talking rubbing ahead of time, or just rubbing in general. What flavors might get 'pulled' into meat are fairly immaterial. Now, flavor-brining, that's a different scenario. But it takes time to be very effective.

What people say about ground meat, etc., I'm not concerned with. People say a lot of things, Jerry's point for this thread in the first place.

Sure, it's due to surface area. Smoke flavor is made up of hundreds of different chemical combinations and particulates. Volatilization of smoke along with tiny particulates carry the smoke hither and yon and it sticks to various things (including inside your nose, which is why many Qers talk about the differences between smoking then eating the meat immediately vs. eating it the next day, when smoke has been more removed from the body, clothing, etc.). The aroma (or odor, as the case may be) is so permeating that concentration and source are virtually indistinguishable to the human nose. And smoke concentrated on a surface of food makes in impossible to tell that it's only on the food's surface. Smoke aroma/odor continues to volatilize for some time.

That the smoke seems to be right in the meat/cheese/whatever doesn't mean it is. Again, given enough time - plenty of time - and given the necessary porosity, and given the needed more closed environment, it's possible that some elements of smoke penetrate meat. But we generally do not smoke very long (even butts) and the environmental conditions do not support claims of 'penetration'. It's possible that traces of this and that in smoke might get pulled into the meat during the post-cook resting/cooling phase, but this would be fairly negligible and in no way near the elements on the surface and those that volatilize in the air.


Kevin
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here's the original thread, be warned, its a bit heated, and was closed by Chris.

barbecue myths

oh, and as far as I know, barbecue is fundamentally a really inefficient way of cooking meat that may or may not have something to do with a group of native Americans and or eastern Eurpean immigrants
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I'll defend mopping/spritzing ribs because I really think you'll end up with a tastier piece of meat if done tastefully, redundancy intended.

However, as to ribs sweating, everybody knows pigs don't sweat.
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Nahh, seriously, there's no need in defending a multiple MIM champion, and you could claim the Memphis contest is political, but Mills is from the North!
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(Just pickin', YA'LL!
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Moving on, I think that the bark is what benefits from a marinade or rub, but can someone explain to me why a flavor brine will get into the meat, but a marinade won't?
 
Just re-read my last post, and I hope nobody takes offense.
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I guess I woke up kind of cranky and maybe even a little full of myself.
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I know this forum appreciates a little more dignified tone, so I beg ya'll"s pardon.
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J thanks for the link. It was a very interesting thread,if I'd been a member then I probably would have stirred the pot a little myself. Seems some people are very opinionated on the subject of bbq. HH or low and slow are just 2 methods to achieve the same result- good food, good friends and good times.

Think I'll fire up the Q,throw on some meat, grab a beer, pull up my barber chair, lie back, listen to some music and watch those little wisps of MAGIC gently float from the vent on my lid.
 
Originally posted by Bob Sample:
....HH or low and slow are just 2 methods to achieve the same result- good food, good friends and good times.

Think I'll fire up the Q,throw on some meat, grab a beer, pull up my barber chair, lie back, listen to some music and watch those little wisps of MAGIC gently float from the vent on my lid.
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Well said, Bob, and great idea.
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BTW, I guess Mike Mills had it backwards. Harry Soo says on his website to put the ribs in the fridge for 1 hour to "let the rub sweat into the meat."
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I know what Soo means though, and lots of folks like the rub to get good and wet before putting the meat on the pit.
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but can someone explain to me why a flavor brine will get into the meat, but a marinade won't?
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I don't recall anyone saying that a marinade won't.

there are a couple factors that can come into play when comparing brine to marinade.

1) acidity. Phosphates are often added to brines to increase the pH (move it away from acid towards base), and I have read that acidic brines are not as effective as neutral or basic ones. My guess is that you want the pH of the brine to match that of your meat. Marinades usually have an acidic component. In addition to that, highly acidic marinades can actually slow or stop flavor absorption. Acid will change proteins, effecting the outside ones first, and kind of turning them into a mushy, gray, flavor-barrier.

2) time. brines can go for days, marinades are usually done for hours.

3) concentration. flavors are in higher concentration in a marinade. I usually don't bother flavoring brines since the amount needed to flavor a couple of liters of brine will be excessive.

I can't seem to find it, but somewhere Kevin gets deep into the question of smoke and flavor absorption. The basics of the argument are that a eater takes a bite that includes inside and outside and that it would be impossible for the eater to figure out if the flavors were absorbed into the meat or just laying on top. It really is a moot point whether smoke makes a surface layer or gets into the meat (which we know doesn't). And like your flavored mop, you create a nice layer on the outside that you like, so don't worry that it never gets absorbed when ribs are sweating or not.
 
I was under the impression that once a dry rub made the meat sweat it was then marinading w/ the meat. Some folks even use acidic components in their rub, right? Well, Kevin K. made the point that any spice flavors that made it into meat from rubs were "pretty immaterial", but that flavor brines were a different story, so I was just wondering what made a brine so special.

He mentions time being important, but that can't be the main difference between the two. I know folks in Oklahoma that rub briskets days in advance of smoking, so the time component of a brine can't be what makes it penetrate vs. a rub, right?
 
So if we all want our rubs to become moist on the ribs before cooking why not just make a paste out of the rub by adding a bit of oil or beer or water or whiskey and then rubbing it on the meat?
 
Bob, a lot of folks do just that. Some mix the rub and apply, but most slather first (usually a mustard base w/ beer, pickle juice, etc.) and then apply the rub.

I simply prefer a dry rub and to let the meat sweat to moisten it. If you apply kosher first before a rub (use saltless) this sweating happens rather quickly, and the rub will stick rather easily, even to brisket flats.
 
I was under the impression that once a dry rub made the meat sweat it was then marinading w/ the meat. Some folks even use acidic components in their rub, right? Well, Kevin K. made the point that any spice flavors that made it into meat from rubs were "pretty immaterial", but that flavor brines were a different story, so I was just wondering what made a brine so special.
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applying rub is like a HIGHLY concentrated brine, not a marinade. Marinades by their definition are usually acidic.

the key with flavored brines is time.
 
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