The long short guide to barbecue (meats)

            

Part 0: The bare minimum


Go with coal. Briquettes burn much more evenly and is easier to control (even on electronic setups). Place wood on coal after the fire is setup..

To start a long burning fire, place unlit coal in fire chamber section, then put a small section of lit coal on top. The coal burns downwards for a (more or less) even burn. Wait for the cooker to reach desired temperature (maybe a bit hotter than target temperature) before putting the food in.


Part 1: Water

There's a massive misconception that exists in cooking.

The misconception is that you're cooking meat.

This is incorrect. You're mostly cooking water.

Water mostly interacts with barbecue in 2 ways. The first is that it limits temperature changes.

Water has a boiling point of 100C (or 212F). Once water reaches this boiling point, it boils into steam.

This is considered a phase change and takes a massive amount of energy (heat). as such it effectively applies a buffer/"shock absorber" effect wherein fluctuating fire temperatures are brought to a target temperature between 212F~250F.

The next is that water absorbs smoke.

As such, you want to maintain a low enough temperature in the cooking space such that the meat doesn't lose surface moisture too quickly (the science is less important than the actual number - between 212~250F).

Now comes the tricky part.

You don't actually want water to stay in the meat. You want to siphon/evaporate/steam off as much water as possible.

This is due to the fact that water dilutes flavour - the same spoon of salt, when diluted with a cup of water, versus a gallon of water, results in different concentrations of flavour. The same applies to a lot of foods.

As such, water evaporation becomes key to making good barbecue.

Jerky is one demonstration of this example - yet there's more to barbecue than just jerky.

Jerky is a demonstration of barbecue at a near total loss of water. It's not representative of barbecue as a whole - mostly because the other branch of barbecue is to dissolve collagen.

Collagen requires 3 factors to dissolve, and this is what leads to the signature barbecue texture of "off the bones: water to dissolve the collagen into, a correct temperature (around 170~190F), and time (depends on the type and cut of meat)


To summarize the "water conditions" for non-jerky smoked meats:

The meat surface should stay wet to absorb smoke

The meat should lose a large amount of moisture to ensure the flavour isn't diluted

The meat can't lose too much moisture - it should maintain enough moisture to melt collagen at 170~190 internal temperature after holding the temperature for hours.


This brings us to the first recipe: the generic brisket (can be modified for ribs/pork)

1 - trim the brisket
    - There's two ways to learn how to do this:
    - Watch Aaron Franklin's excellent series of video, specifically the one focusing on trimming, make
    extensive notes and follow the instructions word by word
    - Cook one untrimmed brisket
2 - season, with seasoning of choice
3 - bring smoker to 225 to 250 (temperature control will be listed in fire section below)
4 - use electric temperature probe, smoke meat until brisket just begins coming out of the hump
    - The "hump" is a phenomenon where the evaporation/steaming of water from the meat causes the temperature change rate to slow down dramatically - the first four hours will look like a linear graph that goes up, whereas the "hump" may look more like a flat line. When coming out of the "hump", the meat has lost most of its excess moisture, and what's left over is needed to melt the collagen. Most electronic temperature probes with remote function are good enough now to present a graph to identify when the meat comes out of the hump.
5 - wrap the meat (butcher paper & tinfoil are both acceptable)
6 - wait until meat hits desired temperature
    - 195F: the versatile use - just barely good enough to be eaten by itself, but this is the brisket that you want to save for later - stir fried (in a rice), in noodles, kept in freezer
    - 200~205F: the original - serve as-is after resting, doesn't keep as well in the freezer/fridge
    - 210F and above: the senile special - there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, the best brisket should have a good texture and not fall apart on its own. This is when the brisket falls apart.
7 - rest, in an empty room temperature cooler OR in an unheated room temperature oven for appx. 4 hours

The adjustable variables in this recipe is mostly at step 5 - when to wrap the meat. Wrapping it too late means that you won't have enough moisture to melt the collage. Wrapping it too early means diluted flavour. Just coming out of the hump is my personal preference.

To adapt to ribs, change the timing from "coming out of hump" (difficult to measure on ribs because probes are hard to insert into bones) to anywhere between 3 hours to 5 hours (minimum amount of time required to absorb smoke). Double wrapping may also be a good idea as bones tend to poke through a layer of butcher paper/foil, causing unintentional evaporation.


Part 2: Fire

The popular nomenclature for heat sources files them into two categories - direct and indirect.

Direct is an exposure to radiation. It works just about the same way as those heat dishes found at Costco - it involves no moving medium (no aether, if you will) - energy merely travels from the heat source giving off radiation, then deposits itself on the surface of the exposed matter (in our case, meat).

Indirect is the transfer of temperature from contact - in smokers, this is the hot air (filled with smoke) that the coal/wood gives off.

This is obviously confusing - what's commonly referred to as "direct" heat actually requires no direct contact at all, where as indirect heat requires the direct contact between the food being cooked and the heating medium (smoke/air).

As such, going forward I will refer to "direct heat" as "radiative heat", and "indirect heat" as "smoke heat".

The biggest difference between radiative heat and smoke heat is that radiative heat really has no upper limit on how hot it makes the surface of the item being cooked. Physics 101 in universities teaches this much better, but in summary light only has an amount of energy associated, it does not require a medium. This is why lasers can be used to heat metals to temperatures that vaporizes the metal, yet the head of the laser only has minimum resistance to heat - it just needs to direct the light without absorbing it. In a smoker, this heat transfer requires a direct line of sight between the coal/wood/fire and the food (leading to the "direct heat" name from above)

Smoke heat does have a limit - the surface of the meat will never get any hotter than the smoke itself (often it won't even reach the surface of the smoke itself). The rate of change in the temperature in this type of heating is also related to the difference between the heat source (the smoke itself) and the food being heated. The greater the difference, the faster it changes, and as the food and the smoke get closer in temperature, the rate of change slows down.

For the brisket recipe above, radiative heat is to be avoided - you want the entire cooking process to proceed with smoke heat, for multiple reasons:
    - when radiative heat is applied to the surface, due to there not being an upper limit on the surface temperature, the surface can easily dry out to prematurely stop the absorption of smoke
    - radiative heat requires extremely elaborate setups to apply evenly to a brisket - brisket is a meat that benefits from even cooking across the entire cut
    - while it's theoretically appealing to apply radiative heat to the surface to brown the surface,the same reaction can be reached using any number of post-cooking methods (broiling in an oven, stir fry, etc)
    -A good amount of air circulation from smoke heat is also necessary to evaporate the necessary amount of moisture/water, per previously explained in part 1

Radiative heat does have its place in another kind of cooking - grilling.

As grilling is much more varied, some points on handling radiative heat:

    - Radiative heat is related to a visible flame (visible flames do give out radiative heat), however the confusing "direct heat" name does not mean the flame should ever touch the meat - the heat is from the radiation, not contact. When the flame directly contacts the meat, it's actually applying smoke heat with a much higher temperature (anywhere between 1000F~2000F)
    - As line of sight is directly related to radiative heat, the geometry of the setup becomes immediately key to the outcome. Some rules of thumb:
        - the food shouldn't go directly over the fire (flames go up, which causes direct contact)
        - the food should ideally be facing the fire
        - try to make it easy to turn the food

With everything in mind, fire then becomes an engineering problem - below I'll outline an "established solution" - the Weber Smokey Mountain:

    -Equipment:
        -Weber Smokey Mountain (18.5" or 22")
        -Electronic temperature control unit (fireboard 2 starter kit w/ intake fan)
        -Coal starter chimney
        -Geometry modifying attachments (recommended: meat hanger attachment, vortex, jet burner)

Alternatively, when looking for a new cooker, below are some of the requirements:

    -Can expose food to radiative heat (ideally without placing meat directly on top of heat source)
    -Can block off radiative heat from line of sight contact with food, to go full smoke heat
    -Presents at least a bare minimum amount of air circulation

As well as a recipe for crispy pork belly:

    1 - Pierce skin with thin knife/scissors/thick needles thoroughly (don't worry about going too deep). Salt well.
    2 - Place coal in one half of the smoker, opposite of the air intake
    3 - bring smoker to appx. 325~350F near the top
    4 - hang meat on meat hanger attachment, place on top of half with air intake, away from coals
    5 - cook until skin is bubbling (leaving it anywhere from 4~6 hours is fairly safe)
    6 - finish with broiler in oven
    7 - rest in oven until skin doesn't fall away from the fat when cut (appx. 30mins)


Part 3: Cheating

"Cheating the process" isn't just necessary (wrapping brisket in paper/foil), it's the only way to begin understanding how to fix things.

This section will be built by experience.

Some worthwhile inclusions to start:
    - When wrapping a brisket, various inclusions can be done:
        - The Aaron Franklin inclusion is tallow
        - My inclusion is garlic and onion powder for a potroasty taste
        - Other inclusions can be added as you experiment

    - Moisture can be manipulated prior to cooking
        - Hanging the meat out to dry (with good, dry air circulation - an electric fan can be used) is key to a good steak

    - Surface area can be manipulated for ground meats (burgers specifically)
        - Simply use a regular, classic, cheap grate, then push the ground meat halfway through it to improve surface area in contact with smoke

There is no conclusion - the journey will be endless as you're exposed to different approaches to barbecue.