Smoke In My Eyes

[Dean Torges]

Almost everyone with some experience has a smokewood preference, an opinion of how much to use, and a catalogue of undesirable woods. I don't have much preference, use as much as I can, and haven't found an objectionable hardwood or fruitwood yet.

Terms sometimes get confusing, and even the term "smoking" is capable of leading us astray. There are three distinct kinds of "smoking": cold smoking (roughly temps of 70º F to 100º), hot smoking (120º to 170º), and bbq. We could simplify these to two distinct kinds: smoking, which happens at temperatures below those which melt fat, and barbecuing, which happens at temps which slowly melt fat. Here, I will use the term "smoking" only for the former, and "barbecuing" or its abbreviations only for the latter.

This division is important because of the separate and different effects smoke has on both the smoking and the barbecuing process. Smoke is an integral part of the smoking process and smokewood choice plays an important part of the equation. It affects taste, whether you are going for hickory smoked bacon, peanut-shell smoked hams, alder smoked salmon or sugar-cane smoked andouille sausage. The reason for this is that smoke actually attaches to the meat and flavors it. However, it is never introduced into the smokehouse until after the sausage casings are dried off or the fish or hams or bacon have formed a pellicle. Smoke is kept from the smokehouse until several hours into the process, after the vents have been left fully open at low temps to dry off the outside of the smoked product. Either that or the meat is kept outside the smokehouse at cool room temperature for four or five hours, sometimes in a breeze or before a fan, until it forms a pellicle. The reason is that if you introduce the smudge when the meat or casing is still wet, creosote will stick to it and turn the product bitter.

This carries implications into bbq. Bbq is always wet and sweating due to the fat-melting temps of the cook. This makes it a constant potential magnet for creosote. If you are making wood smoke during bbq, if wet smoke attaches to your wet meat, you are flavoring it with creosote and the product will be bitter. I suspect that many of the prejudices for certain woods in bbq result from wood that was either too wet or that otherwise smoked excessively during the cook. My palate isn't the most sensitive in the culinary world, but it tells me that I'd be hard-pressed to distinguish a butt cooked with Kingsford and hickory or Kingsford and oak or Kingsford and ash or Kingsford and apple or lump charcoal and no smokewood at all. Once hardwood is used for cooking past the stage where it smokes, the species is difficult to distinguish on the final product, and other factors, such as the quality of the meat, rub choices, spice quality, and temperature schedule or maintenance mean more to the final result.

In short, I'd suggest that smoking gets its flavor from dampered (oxygen deprived) burning wood or dampened (wet) sawdust; bbq gets its flavor from dry burning wood. The process matters more than the interchangeable components of the process..

I don't have competition experience, and my backyard bbq experience pales in comparison to that of some of the gurus who frequent this board, so take these observations for what they are worth to you in light of your experience. I've come to regard the use of Kingsford briquets much as I do an electric coil in my smoker—there for the purpose of maintaining temperatures, but not significant for adding flavor.

So, I don't treat the amount or kind of smokewood in my bbq as though it were an ingredient in a cake recipe. I introduce as much smokewood into the WSM as I can maneuver between the briquets, with easiest and fastest results occurring using the Minion method when I include it all in the starter chimney to begin with. It gets a head-start burn and is pretty well moisture free and smoked off by the time the WSM comes up to temp.

Sorry for the length. I welcome disagreements that sharpen my own understanding.

 

[Art R]

Many good points. When you refer to wood that burns wet, does that mean unseasoned wood? I try to bbq with smokewood that is seasoned.

Interestingly, I watched a show on cable the other night that was all about bbq places nationwide. One place in TEXAS only uses salt and pepper - no sauces at all. The family running the joint says the flavor comes from the wood and the meat. I think the place was called Kreus's.

AR

 

[K Kruger]

Well, Dean, I've been thinking about your post all morning. Thanks for taking the time. I've enjoyed pondering the points you make.

Using your definitions: As you've stated, the drying of water soluble proteins on the surface of the meat (pellicle formation) is critical in smoking. Inadequate pellicle formation prior to smoking will result in smudging, poor color, and, frankly, lousy taste. A good pellicle will absorb smoke much better and does not take long to form. The lower temps of smoking allow smoke to penetrate the meat. If you wet-cure (brine) two slabs of bacon in the same solution but smoke one with maple and one with oak the difference in taste is obvious.

Though I am not a food scientist and my mind's jury is still in discussion, I believe I would argue that in good bbg a similar process occurs. I think that with the higher temps and increased air flow (due to the higher temps) of bbq a pellicle of a sort does form in the beginning of the cook. I think this is furthered by proper meat prep and and by not using wet wood for bbq. Though moisture on the meat has the potential to be problematic in regards to creosote build-up I think if the moisture is minimized evaporation of moisture associated with the higher heat ameliorates , or, perhaps, mitigates the potential.

I disagree that "[o]nce hardwood is used for cooking past the stage where it smokes, the species is difficult to distinguish on the final product." It has smoked and the meat has absorbed the smoke already. While distinguishing characteristics of smokewood might be lost on a heavily rubbed butt I think there is a definite difference on say, two salt-and-peppered-only racks of ribs, one smoked with apple, the other with hickory, much like the difference with bacon slabs noted previously.

I also mix in as much smokewood as I can with the briquets for the same reason you do. I also think that Kingsford exists to maintain temps and I treat it that way.

While I agree that "the process matters more than the interchangeable components of the process" especially when bbq'ing very spiced meats, I do not think that this applies completely when working with un- or lightly-spiced foods. I think smokewood choice enters in to the process.

 

[Dean Torges]

Art, I'd distinguish between seasoned wood and dry wood. I think of dry wood as something approaching a moisture content of 8 percent. In Illinois, where you are from, air-dried seasoned wood left outside and under roof, such as in a barn, will never contain a m/c much below 17 percent.

I don't think this distinction matters much if you are using offset smokers because by the time the firebox is in shape for bbq'ing meat, the question of m/c is moot. Wood from the woodpile works in offset. I think it does matter with a small unit like the WSM where the wood is dumped on top of the coals and allowed to smoke. In that circumstance I use only wood that I've kept under roof, inside, usually in my furniture studio, which has a dehumidifier running and some semblance of a moisture-controlled environment.

Kevin, I'm no food scientist either. That's why I can have opinions and not be fearful of consequences beyond those to my own digestive system.

Common sense and experience, trial and error and questions. Thassit.

I don't see a significant difference of opinion between us, even one of degree, except perhaps in the second paragraph. And there I'm not sure, except to say that bbq works at temps that melt fat, but, more relevantly, past temps that boil water. The moisture loss throughout the duration of the cook that causes shrinkage during bbq is largely conserved in the smoking process. So I'd suspect the crust formed in bbq functions differently from the true pellicle formed in smoking. I made the mistake early on in my WSM ownership of adding smokewood to the charcoal ring midway through a cook. Won't do that again. The result was bitter. This addition would not have affected the smoking process except to provide a richer smoke flavor.

Incidentally, our personal house preferences run to plain salt and pepper over rubs, so our bbq flavor and quality comes from the wood, the meat choices and the schedule. I'm not saying that there is no difference among the main hardwoods used for bbq'ig, I'm just saying there's very little difference, and that other factors matter more.

Kevin, I just dissolved the ingredients in a heated brine for two squared pork bellies and four ham hocks and will be smoking by SUnday. Gonna use hickory.

 

[Dean Torges]

How can you consider what someone sez when they can't count past two? I meant your 3rd graph Kevin, not the second.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you are smoking while barbecuing, chances are you are making inferior barbecue. Avoiding smoke is more consequential than choice of smokewood or smokewood amounts. I've seen posts obsess over choices and amounts and even size of smokewood, and I simply haven't found these considerations terribly important.

 

[Guest]

Gentlemen, this is an interesting dicussion.

If "smoking" during barbequeing is producing an inferior result...how do you explain the wide and successful use of the Minion Method with its early smoke???

 

[Doug Lax]

I do agere that better results happpen when smokewood is added early on.
I really think I can tell a difference in fruit wood and hickory ( but I could be fooling myself.) Guess the only way to settle this is to do a double blind BBQ taste off.

 

[Dean Torges]

Some woods are more hygroscopic than others, and some woods contain more btu's than others. Hickory, for example, is very hygroscopic and also high on the btu list. Oak is not as hygroscopic, but rates well for btu's. Fruitwoods such as cherry and peach are pretty low on the btu list and about average in their response to moisture.

Smoke won't stick to anything that's wet. Creosote condenses out of smoke at low burning temps, or when the smoke is cooled off dramatically.

I'd speculate based upon these facts and observations that fruitwoods yield milder flavors primarily because they burn up faster than oak or hickory. They don't linger long to influence flavor, especially as small smokewood pieces mixed into charcoal. Also, though hickory absorbs moisture readily, it also loses it quickly, so it's an ideal wood with its btu content for smoking and bbq. So is oak. (I wonder how much peach or cherry an offset smoker would require to stay up with one using oak.)

It seems also that in the early-smoke start-up stages of WSM bbq, creosote precipitates out onto the cool dry walls of the unit (much like it does with stovepipe) rather than attaching to the wet meat, but that once the unit heats up, the risk is to the meat if smoke is still occurring.

I learned from this bb to place my starter chimney over my fish fryer. Filling it first with charcoal on top of large pcs of smokewood gets the bbq off to a good start.

Doug, are you gonna be at Nelsonville this year? If so, let me know. I'd like to come down.

 

[Doug Lax]

Dean,
I won't be able to make it. I have to go to Louisville this month for business.
A group of us may get together on the boarder of michigan and Ohio in the not to far off future.

 

[K Kruger]

I, too, don't see much of a difference between our points of view. I agree that obsessing over amounts, types, and sizes of smokewood in regards to barbecue is essentially fruitless. While I think that there are subtle differences in taste (which, I think, are somewhat less subtle when barbecuing un- or lightly rubbed meats, especially fish or fowl), more important is your point that "[a]voiding smoke is more consequential than choice of smokewood or smokewood amounts."

One must have adequate sustenance when one ponders weighty issues such as these. I have collards (loads of vitamin C, K, calicium) and all I am lacking is freshly home-smoked hocks and maybe a hunk of bacon...