A little while ago I wrote about some of the debates that give bar-b-que people something to talk about. One that I forgot to mention is how you actually spell the word. For this blog I have standardized on “bar-b-que.” But people commonly use “barbeque,” “bar-b-q,” or even the abbreviation “BBQ.”

I picked bar-b-que for no particular reason … but I recently saw a video which might make me rethink that spelling – it can lead to some unexpected issues:

I just finished hosting the 8th annual Carnivore’s Carnival, the annual summer BBQ party that I throw at my house. I’ve been perfecting my BBQ for far longer, but eight years ago my wife and I decided that we should take this love of mine to a new level. It’s one thing to cook great BBQ in manageable portions for you and your family and close friends. It’s another level of undertaking to do it for 50 or 60 people on a tight schedule. As a first step towards competition, I think this endeavor teaches valuable skills. Like timing different types of food which cook at different temperatures, and handling industrial-size quantities of meat, rubs, and sauce.

This year everything turned out better than ever, judging buy the comments from the guests. The timing for just about everything worked out perfectly, except or some uncooperative chicken that took longer than expected. I used every tool in my BBQ arsenal – my Bradley electric smoker, my New Braunfels Black Diamond smoker, and even my grill.

Anyway, after eight years, I have developed some solid rules about BBQ that I will pass on here. I hope they will be of value to anyone just starting out.

1. The timing and the technique matter most. The rub, sauce, and type of wood are secondary flavors. You can put the world’s best rub on a shoulder; if you over cook it, under cook it, or over smoke it, it will still taste horrible. Practice the timing again and again. Worry about the rub later (or try my recipe).
2. Nothing beats a real wood or at least charcoal (hardwood charcoal) fire. I love my Bradley electric smoker, and my gas grill turns out some good BBQ, but the bark and smoke ring formed on a shoulder smoked over wood for 15 to 18 hours cannot be duplicated any other way.
3. For regular, normal, everyday people (particularly northerners) the sauce matters. It may be heresy to those of us who appreciate smoke flavor and the chew of a memphis-stye dry-rubbed rib, but if pleasing your guests is important, give them some good tasting sauce.
4. Buy a thermometer for the pit and one for the meat. Use them. Trust your instruments. Until you get really, really good, they will also help you understand what the bones are telling you about doneness when they start to loosen up.
5. Get some shelter. BBQ requires time. Neither you or your pit will benefit from being stuck out in inclement weather. Moving from sun to shade can change the temp of my New Braunfels pit by 50 degrees. That matters. Consistent shelter will make for consistent BBQ. I use a 10′ x 10′ EZ-Up Express II shelter with walls I can zip closed as needed.
6. You can never have too many real towels to clean and cook with. Forget paper towels – they rip too easily. A stack of heavy duty towels will clean anything and you can use them to grab hot pans too.

There you have it. Six simple rules I’ve learned the hard way so you don’t have to. Good luck.

The first week that I got my Bradley smoker, I made two racks of spare ribs, which turned out really good, if a bit salty. The experience was enough to help me start learning some of the Bradley’s quirks. So this week, I thought I’d attempt some pulled pork.

Things turned out reasonably well, but there were definitely some bumps in the road.

The Plan

Since I was going to be up on New Year’s Eve anyway, I figured I’d throw the shoulder into the smoker around midnight, and let it go for 12 or 14 or 16 hours — whatever it took. That way I could have a later New Year’s lunch of fresh smoked shoulder.

The Meat

Of course, since I wasn’t going to smoke a bunch of shoulder, I wasn’t going to buy the giant pack at my local wholesale club, and I didn’t have time to get to Fairway Beef either. So I had to take what my local supermarket had on New Year’s Eve, which was bone-in picnic ham. I’ve used this cut of meat before, and while it’s not my preference, when smoked slowly, it works very well. So I took what I could get.

The Prep

Based on the saltiness of my first ribs, I changed my rub a bit, cutting the salt in the the first part and increasing the brown sugar. Unfortunately, because of the timing, I was unable to let the rub sit for at least the twelve hours I like. It only got about eight hours in the refrigerator — but this was a learning experience about smoke and timing, so I was OK with it.

The Error

Around 11:15 PM on New Year’s Eve I plugged in the smoker and let it heat up to 260° F (it was about 20° F outside so I knew the oven would drop when I opened it again). Just after midnight, I stacked fifteen hickory bisquettes in the snoke generator tube and powered it on. The feeder cycled a couple of times moving bisquettes forward, and then just kept going. After a couple of cycles I was greeted with a loud beeping and an “E” on the smoker generator display. Crap. I unplugged everything, then plugged it all back in again. I restarted the smoke generator and got the same problem. It just kept cycling over and over again. What the hell was I going to do at midnight with a picnic ham ready to go?

I quickly went to the Internet and looked up the error. Thankfully, the Bradley Smoker has a huge and hugely helpful following on several message boards, including the official http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/ Bradley forums. Between the Bradley boards and a site run by one of the active members (with some helpful FAQs) I learned that the “E” error is generated when the bisquette feed motor can’t locate itself at startup. (And is different than the “E1″ error which is caused by a broken temperature sensor or a bad connection on the sensor wire). The FAQ on the E error had a helpful picture, and so I found myself with screwdriver in hand, disassembling the smoke generator and taking my ohm meter to the microswitch which signals the travel limit of the feeder arm. I quickly determined that there were no loose connections and that the switch was working. So, figuring that I must have a fried control board, I blew everything clean with compressed air and put it back together again. I gave it one shot and I guess I got lucky — it worked. So my take away is that cleaning the bisquette dust out of the smoke generator is pretty important, because stray parts can jam the feed mechanism.

Anyway, after a 35 minute detour I had the generator assembled again. But my bigger problem was that the smoker box was already down to 45° F. So I was going to be well behind schedule.

The Cook

But I gave it a shot anyway. I loaded the fifteen bisquettes back into the smoker, put the meat on the lower shelf, added my remote thermometer, and fired it up. I set the smoker for four hours and twenty minutes of smoke and the temperature to 220° F. I waited 30 minutes to make sure that the smoke started, set the top vent 1/2 way open, and then went to sleep.

When I woke up about five hours later, the smoker was holding a 210° F temperature, and  the meat had risen to about 130° F. But anyone who has cooked shoulder before knows that the first few hours are the easy part. Somewhere north of 140° F (often in the 160° F range) the internal temperature “stalls.” After climbing steadily for five or six hours, it just stops for five to six more. It’s really disconcerting the first few times it happens because you’re sure that you’re doing something wrong, and many inexperienced cooks take the meat off too early assuming that it won’t get any warmer. But it will — with pork shoulder, patience is truly rewarded.

I let the temperature climb slowly for the next few hours, and it did indeed stall at 165° F. It hit this plateau around 10:30 AM, and then stayed there until well past noon. Then it slowly started creeping up again. By 3 PM it finally crossed 185° F and I started the oven for my cornbread. At just before 4 PM it finally hit 190° F and I pulled it out and let it rest in foil for 30 minutes.

The Results

I’ll put it this way — the results were good enough that after waiting close to 16 hours I didn’t stop to take pictures. I pulled it with two forks (it was tender enough to fall right off the bone), grabbed my cornbread, and dove right in.

As expected, without a full twelve hours to sit with the rub, the overall seasoning was light. But that wasn’t the fault of the smoker. The smoke flavor though, was also light and this surprised me. Most of the information I read said that people were happy with four hours of smoke — I think it needed much more. The next round I will go for at least six hours.

There was also no smoke ring, which is the result of the electric heat versus heat generated by the combustion of either gas or wood. Essentially, the combustion creates various nitrogen oxides (abbreviated collectively as NOx) which react with the myoglobin proteins in meat to form a red layer.This layer is akin to meat cured with nitrite salts. (See http://www.karubecue.com/smoke_ring.html# for a good explanation.) So this is something that I think I will need to get used to:  in an electric smoker — without the combustion of fuel, the “cured” layer that forms right under the bark just won’t be the same, so the texture and taste won’t be as intense as it gets in a real smoker.

Otherwise, this cook turned out well … the meat was tender, there was a light smoke flavor, and again, I didn’t have to watch the damn thing for 16 hours. So I’m still happy …  and after I finish off a few more pounds of pulled pork I’ll be experimenting with longer smoke and maybe some different rub treatments to try and improve the bark.

Now that the weather has turned colder and the Christmas lights are hung, my mind is wandering to some real bar-b-que ribs. It’s a royal pain to haul out my Black Diamond smoker for just one rack – and tending the fire is no fun when you can’t sit outside and pay attention to it for five or six hours. So I’m looking for something that will hold it’s own temperature better than the Black Diamond.

I know that in my bar-b-que core dump post I said that grills could work in a pinch to make real bar-b-que, but they wouldn’t work as well as a dedicated smoker. Well, I’m making an exception for my grill because it is able to both hold a low temperature and generate enough smoke to do a passable job as a smoker.

Back in early 2008 I bought a new grill. A Char-Broil RED four-burner grill. One of the things I like about this grill is its ability to hold a wide temperature range. When heated on high the grates will get to almost 800°F and can sear a steak as well as any restaurant. But it can also hold a low temperature, down to 225°F which is right in the range needed for bar-b-que. The grill also has a unique design that allows the addition of wood chips so real smoke can be added to the food and no silly smoker boxes or foil pouches are needed like on other grills.

So, here’s what I do for making ribs on my grill. [NOTE: I originally posted this on my favorite message board for bar-b-que and grilling: the BBQ-source board.]

Lessons Learned:

1. The In-hood Thermometer is pretty accurate — I added my remote grill thermometer on several occasions and they seem to agree. (Note that I cook the ribs on an ELEVATED rack so this is probably not true if you cook at grill level.)
2. Extra thermal mass is a huge help in controlling the temperature. I built my elevated rack using 4 6″x6″ concrete pavers and that reduced temperature fluctuations significantly.
3. Temperature control requires a combination of burners (the two outside burners in my case) and venting of the hood.
4. Raising the ribs is critical to get them into the smoke, but even so, the grill isn’t sealed well, so more smoke may be required than in a dedicated smoker.

Method:
I typically use a variation of the 3-2-1 method where ribs are smoked for 3 hours in the open, followed by 2 hours wrapped in foil to tenderize them, followed by 1 hour in the open again to finish them. All of this is done at 225 degrees. This method results in extremely tender ribs; too tender for many people, including me. So I adjust the timing to a 3-1-.5 method.

I start with a dry rub, roughly 3 parts brown sugar, 2 parts salt, 1 part paprika, and 1 part a mixture of various things including garlic powder, onion powder, and other spices. I usually let this set on the ribs for several hours to overnight. For this smoke I used an 8 lb rack of St. Louis cut ribs that the local supermarket had on sale. I removed the membrane from the back.

I set up the grill by stacking the middle 2 grates on top of the outside grates. On this I set 4 concrete pavers (6″ x 6″), 2 on each side. I placed an old leftover rack from an old grill on top of the two paver stacks. I also added small aluminum drip pans under the grate. See the picture below:

My Grill Setup and the Finished Product

I would have wrapped them in foil, but I was running low and I wanted to leave enough to wrap the ribs. So I put a small square of clean foil between the pavers and the rack (you can’t see it in this pic taken after the whole process was done and I had disturbed everything.)

I let the whole system heat up and found that I could hold 225 degrees by using the 2 outside burners on their lowest setting and propping the hood open about 2 inches.

I followed the 3-2-1 method and the results are delicious. And the best part is that I don’t have to tend the fire every 30 minutes. Here’s a close-up of the finished product.

Finished Ribs

I grew up in New Jersey. I now live in Massachusetts. Many readers will stop right there asking themselves, “What can growing up in New Jersey teach someone about real bar-b-que?” Absolutely nothing. New Jersey in the 1970s and 1980 was utterly devoid of anything resembling real, slow-smoked bar-b-que. And modern-day Massachusetts isn’t much better. But this is the internet age and with the help and advice of many small-time pit masters on the web, I’ve managed to turn myself into a pretty decent pit jockey, if I do say so myself. For the last 15 years I’ve been perfecting my own backyard style, showcased each year for the last seven in my annual, end of summer, “Carnivore’s Carnival” where 40 or 50 friends gather in mid August to sample my specialties.

Over the years I’ve worked my way through several pieces of equipment, various recipes, and many changes in technique. This post will serve as my collected wisdom for others trying to work their way through all the issues that beginners encounter.

The Basics

Real American bar-b-que (also BBQ, barbeque) is, at its essence, simply the application of low heat to meat over a long period of time, and in the presence of wood smoke. Flavors are enhanced by applying various spices as dry rubs and wet sauces. All of the components are necessary: with high heat instead of low it’s grilling and without smoke it’s just roasting. As a cooking form native to many parts of the country, there are many regional bar-b-que variations which use different cuts of meat and different spice rubs. The most common and popular of these regional variations include:

There are, of course, hundreds of additional regional sub-variations and probably millions, maybe even tens or hundreds of millions of family recipes. But these are the main themes which run through the American bar-b-que landscape.

If there was an advantage to perfecting my style in New Jersey and Massachusetts, it’s that there are no preconceived notions of what bar-b-que is. So I was able to experiment with many different styles and my friends and neighbors ate it all. Try making a pork shoulder in Texas and calling it bar-b-que or doing a beef brisket over mesquite in North Carolina and having anyone show up. I’ve been able to play with it all and no one complains that “it isn’t real bar-b-que.”

But if I had to choose a style, I’d say that I tend to like the Memphis style the best, and that’s primarily the kind of bar-b-que I’ll be discussing here. I make my ribs and pulled pork with a dry spice rub on the outside and a minimum of “mopping” (basting) while on the grill. And when finished, I use a bare minimum of a tomato-based bar-b-que sauce to finish them.

OK you ask, so how do you get started? Here’s the collected wisdom of what I do, what I did, and what I’d do differently if I started over.

The Equipment

The Meat

I would love to say that good bar-b-que requires good meat, but it doesn’t. And that’s the beauty of bar-b-que and one of the reasons it remains popular. Bar-b-que usually uses the cheapest, toughest cuts of meat available. Pulled pork, for example, uses a pork shoulder (called a “picnic ham” when the lower part is used and a “Boston butt” when the upper part is used) in the form of a Boston butt. That’s one of the cheapest cuts you can buy. Pork spare ribs (though not baby backs) are also an inexpensive cut. So is beef brisket. That’s the good news: you can feed a lot of people cheaply with bar-b-que.

For example, I just finished buying the meat for my 7th annual Carnivore’s Carnival. The bar-b-que consisted of 24.5 lbs. of Boston butt (3 shoulders) and 12 lbs. (4 racks) of spare ribs. That’s 36.5 lbs of meat with little waste or trimming, which could conservatively feed 40 people — maybe 60 if they weren’t pigs — and the total retail bill came to $98.72. Where else can you order meat for 50 people for under $100?

Pulled Pork

American Pork Cuts (adapted from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_Pork_Cuts.svg)

Pulled pork is made from a pork shoulder (the “Blade shoulder” in the diagram here). In pork terminology, the top of the rear leg is called a ham. The top of the front leg is called a shoulder. The top of each of these pieces is the butt or rump portion; the bottom near the leg or foot is the shank portion. The shoulder and ham differ primarily in the amount of connective tissue present — the ham is leaner with much less collagen and other connective bits. The shoulder is much tougher with more fat.

To confuse the issue (and certainly the consumer and their wallet), butchers began marketing the lower part of bone-in shoulders (near the “elbow” — marked as the orange “Arm shoulder” in the picture to the right) as “picnic hams,” an inexpensive cut with the “ham” name. But make no mistake: picnic ham is not a substitute for real ham. Most bar-b-que uses the “Boston Butt” or upper part of the shoulder, though a whole shoulder or even a picnic ham can be used. Whether bone-in or boneless is up to you; some people believe that the bone-in cuts have more flavor. And I find the bone a useful way to gauge doneness — when it begins to move freely or even slides out you’re done!

Spare Ribs

Spare ribs are shown in blue in the diagram above. From that big rib portion, there are actually three cuts — the Baby Back Ribs, the Spare Ribs, and the rib tips. Baby Backs come from closer to the loin (spine) of the pig. As such, they are more tender with less fat and connective tissue. They’re also more expensive. The spare ribs come from closer to the belly of the pig. The bones are larger and they are tougher with more connective tissue. On a full rack of ribs, there is a flap of meat that comes from near the belly (the rib tips), where cartilage joins the rib bones near the sternum. Cut this flap off leaving just the rib bones, and you have a St. Louis style rib (see this YouTube video for a good demo:

Ribs have one extra optional step: removing the membrane. On the back of every slab of spare ribs is a tough membrane which, although it doesn’t affect the taste, is tough to chew. Removing it prior to smoking makes your ribs that much more tender. Here’s another YouTube video of someone taking the membrane off of a slab of baby back ribs.

You can find shoulder and ribs in most large supermarkets these days, but since you’ll rarely be cooking one rack of ribs or one shoulder at a time, you’ll probably need to look at local warehouse clubs (Sam’s BJ’s, Costco, etc.) or local meat markets, if you can find one.

Fairway Beef, Worcester, MA

Large primal cuts like these are typically shipped from the processor to the market in cryo-vac (plastic) packs, with two shoulders and three ribs per pack. When I shop, I get most of my meat from an old meat market in Worcester, MA called Fairway Beef. At a place like this you can actually talk to a butcher who knows what he or she is doing. And if you need something special, they are happy to cut it for you. Need 3 shoulders when they come 2 to a pack? No problem. They’ll open a pack and wrap one separate for you. As a backup, I sometimes shop at my local BJ’s Wholesale club. But I consider myself fortunate to have Fairway Beef so close.

If you buy spare ribs in the large packs, you will have to cut them St. Louis style yourself. The video above is a pretty good guide.

The Rub

So you have your meat … now what? Well, between 12 and 24 hours prior to hitting the heat you want to flavor it with your rub.

There is so much argument about what and how to rub the meat that a lifetime of bar-b-que experimentation could be spent just varying the your rub recipe. I’m not going to discuss all the possibilities, but give just a few recommendations.

One thing you will discover in the bar-b-que world is that many people have competitive aspirations, and competitive bar-b-quers will never divulge their rub recipe. I’m not that competitive, so I will.

Here’s my first major tip:

In the beginning, concentrate on the heat and smoking technique. Use a simple rub.

And there is no simpler rub than one you buy. Honestly – for the first few times you smoke, when you’ll be worried about monitoring the temperature of the pit and the meat and all the other factors, you don’t need to worry about whether the rub will enhance or detract from the flavor. So by all means, buy one from your favorite bar-b-que website, or even use McCormick Barbeque seasoning in the giant wholesale club size. Nearly any mix of sugar, salt, and other spices will taste good after smoking for a few hours.

But, if you really want to make your own, Alton Brown’s 8-3-1+1 ratio system works well. Use whatever measure you want: tablespoons, cups, soda cans — doesn’t matter. This is a very good starting point.

Lately, I have been using a two part system.

My Rub

First, pat the meat dry and then cover with a rub made of:

• 2 parts salt
• 1 part (combined) garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper

Wrap in plastic wrap and allow to rest in refrigerator for at least couple of hours, maybe even over night, until the rub begins to moisten and dissolve on the surface. Then apply the final rub of:

• 6 parts brown sugar
• 1 part salt

Re-wrap and allow to sit for 12 hours (shoulder) or at least 4 (ribs).

If you want to try wet rubs, you can — many people use yellow mustard as a base on shoulder. Here in New England, maple syrup or molasses is a regional flavor that works well.

The Sauce

This is another area with as many variations as there are people who bar-b-que. And once again, I recommend that beginners start with something simple before taking on the challenge of making their own sauce from scratch. In fact, because I tend towards a Memphis style where the dry rub is the major flavor component, I usually put out a bottled sauce (Sweet Baby Ray’s) and let those who really want it use it. If I use a mop sauce at all (basting while smoking) I use cider vinegar or Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce diluted 1:1 with cider vinegar.

The Pit

This is where the magic happens. And unfortunately, there is usually no cheap way to get an effective pit unless you have both an abundance of metalworking tools and talent AND access to a source of scrap metal suitable for pit construction. If you do have metal talent and materials, then there are dozens of plans on the internet for barrel smokers and other styles. If not, then you’re going to need to buy your pit. There are several styles and options.

The secret to good bar-b-que is low, indirect, heat with the right amount of smoke. A good pit enables you to reach and hold the correct (200 – 250 °F) temperature without a lot of fuss. It also helps generate smoke and expose the meat to sufficient smoke to generate flavor.

Grills

In a pinch, a grill, either charcoal or gas, can serve as a bar-b-que pit. But I’ve found that they are often more trouble than they’re worth, though some new generation gas grills are able to hold the required low temperature. (See my post on the BBQ-Source message boards about making ribs on my CharBroil RED gas grill.) But I’ve found that grills suffer from rapid temperature changes of it’s even the slightest bit breezy outside (which is why I added 4 concrete patio pavers to my grill to support the racks — increased thermal mass equals more steady temperature). And most charcoal grills don’t hold enough coals to keep the fire burning very long so you need to keep disturbing the food all the time.

If you absolutely need to use a grill, you’ll need to search the web for instructions; I’m not going to cover them here.

Electric Smoker

Image taken from http://www.masterbuilt.com/prod_smokers.html

Electric smokers, especially ones from Masterbuilt (abbreviated MES – Masterbuilt Electric Smoker on many bar-b-que message boards) are very popular. If you need to make small batches of bar-b-que for fun and for a few people, a simple smoker like this may be the ticket. Especially if you intend to actually interact with your guests during the cooking. Although not quite “set it and forget it” in the Ronco rotisserie oven sense, an electric smoker requires little tending, certainly in comparison to a wood-fired pit where the fire needs to be tended hourly or even more often.

One area where these smokers excel is in being able to hold a really low temperature (down to 100°F), just on the high end but still good enough for cold smoking other meats like bacon or salmon. If you intend to experiment with smoking other foods, this may be the pit for you.

Bullet Smoker

The bullet smoker form was made popular by the inexpensive Weber Smoky Mountain series of smokers. I’ve owned two of these myself (still have a 10 year-old one) and I can say that a Smoky Mountain was my first wood-fired bar-b-que pit. Probably the best source of information about these smokers can be found at the Virtual Weber Bullet site. Again, for small batches, these are very well proven, reliable pits with mountains of information and support on the web.

Dedicated Pit

This is where the fun starts. A dedicated smoker usually has an offset fire box of some sort (off to the side or behind the smoking surface, as opposed to a grill where the fire is below the cooking surface). There is a path created for the smoke and a series of dampers to control the size of the fire and the amount of smoke in the pit.

Dedicated pits range in price from $200 to $20,000 or more. Even the cheaper ones will gove you better bar-b-que than a grill or even a dedicated electric smoker, but when buying on the cheap end you will really need to make some modifications to make the pits really work well.

CharBroil Silver Smoker (formerly New Braunfels Black Diamond)

The first dedicated charcoal pit I bought 10 years ago, and the one I still use today, was the legendary Black Diamond smoker by New Braunfels (the NBBD – New Braunfels Black Diamond – as abbreviated on the web). I paid $199 for one at Home Depot. New Braunfels was sold a few years ago to CharBroil, but the Black Diamond lives on, essentially unchanged, as the CharBroil Silver Smoker.

The NBBD is reasonably competent out of the box, but has a noticeable temperature difference between the end near the firebox and the end near the chimney. Most owners install a baffle plate between the firebox opening and the cooking chamber (see this for just one example). In addition, the stock chimney sits near the top of the cooking chamber, allowing some very hot air to fill the chamber, making it hard to keep the temperature low. The fastest way to fix that is just to extend the tube downwards (I used a rolled up piece of aluminum flashing to do this originally), but the best way is to enhance the chimney by cutting an opening low on the bottom of the cooking chamber to enhance the smoke flow. Here’s a picture of my smoker with the new chimney attached.

Modified NBBD Smoker

All it took was a few dollars in hardware store chimney pipe and an hour with my MIG welder and I have a really good pit with even, stable temperatures. Nice.

The Wood

Just like every other aspect of bar-b-que, people argue over what kind of wood yields the best flavor. There is some regionality to wood selection with hickory the predominant wood over much of the south, while mesquite is popular in Texas, and some other woods like pecan in parts of Georgia. Fruitwoods (apple, cherry, etc.) also have their followers. Frankly, I think choice of wood makes little difference (I know that’s going to generate all kinds of controversy) with the exception of mesquite, which has such a strong and unique flavor, you can tell anything which has been smoked in it and it’s usually reserved for beef only.

First, if you are smoking with a small pit or a grill, you’ll be using charcoal as your main heat source. And therefore, you probably won’t burn enough wood to make a difference in flavor. Second, the relatively short smoking time for ribs (4 to 6 hours) probably isn’t enough time for flavor differences to come out either. Finally, if you over-smoke your meat, it tastes like bitter smoke no matter what wood you use.

Since most of us working in smaller pits are going to use charcoal as the main fuel source, the choice if wood isn’t really as important as some people would make it out to be. I typically use hardwood charcoal (usually Cowboy charcoal) as a base with hickory chunks or split maple (a local New England wood) as the smoke. I don’t soak my wood first – it seems like a waste of time to me.

The Technique

This is where the skill and experience of the pitmaster comes into play. The recipe for shoulder or ribs is pretty simple. But the art is in the execution.

For good bar-b-que, stoke your pit with charcoal and get it to about 225 °F. Add the meat and some hardwood chunks or logs to the fire.

3 Beautiful Shoulders

For shoulder, smoke it for around 1.5 hours per pound. An 8 pound shoulder will take around 12 hours. You should get yourself a remote thermometer and work to keep the pit as close to 225 °F for the duration. This is the art … to keep the temperature, you’ll need to balance the air intake and outlet and the size of the fire to keep the pit at the right temperature. Smoke the shoulder until the internal temperature reaches 190 °F. Then pull it off, wrap it in foil, and let it finish cooking for an hour. The result should look like this.

Ribs can be done a couple of ways. The safest way to start is to use a method called 3-2-1. For fall-off-the-bone tender ribs, they are placed in the smoker (at the same 225 °F) for 3 hours, then wrapped in foil with a little wet mop for 2 hours, then placed back in the smoke for the final hour. Ribs are done when the bones can be twisted and start to move around in the ribs. As you gain experience, you can vary this recipe and work on your own style, but the 3-2-1 method is nearly foolproof if you can keep the pit at the right temperature.

Conclusion

This was my bar-b-que core dump. I’m sure I will refine it over the coming weeks. I hope it helps someone just starting out and contributes something useful to the body of bar-b-que knowledge on the web.