Barbecue 103: The Real Thing
by John Raven
When you are ready to do some real barbecuing, the first
thing you need to do is find yourself a pit. A pit is the thing you cook
barbecue in or on. Not many folks go to the trouble of digging an actual
pit in the ground to prepare their barbecue. Most likely you will find
barbecue being prepared on a factory-made pit.
Factory-made barbecue pits come in all shapes, sizes and price ranges. You
will just have to decide which is best for you. It will take some research.
There are showrooms in many major cities, particularly in the South and
Southwest. You can find manufacturer's addresses in most yellow pages or on
the Internet.
Don't buy a pit that is too large for you. It will just eat up your good
wood heating up the atmosphere. A pit with a grill surface about two feet
by four feet will cook nearly anything you can afford. If you are going
into the barbecue business, that's a whole other story that we won't go
into right now.
Make sure your pit is made of sturdy material. The best ones will be
constructed of metal near a quarter inch thick. Two basic styles are made:
those with a firebox and those without. A firebox is a container for your
fire that is attached to the smoke chamber. Without a firebox, you will
have your fire directly under your food in most cases.
Choosing a pit with a firebox has its advantages. First of all, you can
build your fire from scratch in the firebox and not have to shovel hot
coals around for cooking. The firebox should have a way to regulate the
draft, that is, the amount of air entering the firebox. A damper between
the firebox and the smoke chamber allows you to regulate the heat and even
cut off the smoke and heat when tending to things on the grill. A smokestack
or chimney will be located on the end of the smoke chamber farthest from
the firebox. In the pits without a firebox, you will locate your coals on
the end of the pit away from the smokestack. This allows the smoke and heat
to fill the whole chamber.
You will use real wood in your real barbecue pit. The type of wood you use
is very important. You will want a hardwood that contains lots of BTU's
per pound. The most popular barbecue woods are hickory, oak, mesquite and
fruit woods such as apple, pear, pecan and in the Northwest, alder.
Hickory, oak and mesquite woods are quite potent. They put a lot of smoke
flavor into your barbecue. The fruit woods are milder.
In all cases, you will not use oily woods such as pine or cedar and
definitely not old packing crates or bed slats. All these will coat your
meat and your pit with black, evil-tasting deposits. Take my word for it,
don't experiment with these.
Hickory, oak and mesquite are probably best for beef, pork and wild game
where you want a lot of smoke flavor. The fruit woods are best for delicate
cuts like chicken and fish. A word of warning: Despite its recent rise in
popularity, mesquite can produce an oily taste if it's overdone. Keep the
smoke to a minimum when using mesquite.
Now that we have a pit and wood, let's get started. First thing you want
to do is build a big hot fire in the pit and let it "burn-in" real good. This
will serve to remove any deposits left from the manufacturing process and
sort of let the metal get used to heat. Consult with your manufacturer as to
his recommendations.
Barbecuing is as simple as you want to make it. Just start the fire and
when the pit comes up to heat, add the meat or other stuff that you want
cooked. A built-in pit thermometer is a real asset to any barbecuer. Before
good thermometers became generally available for pits, the pitmaster could
tell by touch how the temperature of his pit was running. It's a learned
skill. Don't try it until you learn enough about your pit to guarantee your
skin will not stick to the metal when you touch it.
You will quickly learn how to regulate the temperature of your pit. You'll
also be introduced to the options of "cold smoking" and "hot smoking". Sounds
real mysterious don't it? Don't fret, you will learn quick enough. It helps
to have a good friend who has already mastered barbecue basics. You can
learn from him or her.
The best thing you can do is get a good book on the subject of barbecuing.
The absolute best book on the art of barbecuing is Smoky Hale's Great
American Barbeque Instruction Book. Smoky is a good ol' boy from
McComb, Mississippi, who lives for barbecue even if he can't spell it. The
original book is out of print but Smoky will have a new revised version
out soon. Look Smoky up on the Internet for ordering information. The
Kansas City Barbecue Society has dozens of barbecue books for sale. Check
with them also.
All barbecuing is basically the same. Season the food and cook it. Seasoning
comes in all descriptions. It can be as simple as salt and pepper, or you
can go into the exotic rubs and bastes and marinades. There is room for all
this.
Barbecuing is best done at a temperature lower than the boiling point of
water. In theory, this keeps the juices from cooking out of your meat.
Higher temperatures tend to boil away the juices and dry out the meat. The
drying can be compensated for with a mop sauce during the cooking process.
A good mop sauce will enhance anything you are barbecuing. We gave you a
basic mop sauce recipe in Barbecue 101. Your finishing sauce comes at the
very last of your cooking time. You will remember the finishing sauce is the
flavored sauce you apply last and use for dipping.
The larger cuts of meat lend themselves particularly well to barbecuing. The
Texas favorite is beef brisket. A brisket can range anywhere from five to
twenty pounds. A five pounder can be barbecued in four or five hours, and
the larger sizes will take overnight. When you learn the ways of your pit,
you can load the firebox, put the meat on and go have a six- or eight-hour
nap without having to worry about the meat.
Some of the best Texas brisket ever made came out of the pit of Cuzin Homer
Page in Temple, Texas. Cuz had a pit with a smoke chamber of round metal two
feet wide and eight feet long. The firebox was two foot square. Homer would
stoke the firebox about three in the afternoon, and put his briskets on the
pit. He would cold smoke the briskets until about closing time, say
8:00 p.m., when he would restoke the firebox, set the damper and leave for
the night. Next morning about 9:00, he had delicious brisket, falling apart
tender. He used no seasonings or mops, just good Texas oak wood for cooking
and flavor.
Now let's talk a little about seasoning for your meat: A lot of good
barbecuers start with a dry rub for the meat. That is, dry seasonings
applied directly to the meat before it's put on the pit. Chef Paul Kirk from
Kansas City conducts barbecue schools all over the United States. Paul has
his students concoct their own recipe for rub. They all start with a cup of
sugar and a cup of salt. Other things are added. If you want to give it a
try, you might include garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, cayenne
pepper (go easy here), and any dried herbs you favor such as rosemary or
thyme. Most rub recipes include paprika for color.
Here would be a good place to talk about the mysterious "smoke ring" found
on barbecue. When you cut a slice of barbecue, you will notice that there is
a layer of nearly red color near the cooking surface. Actually the layer
goes from dark brown on the outside to dark red to pink as it goes toward
the center of the meat. The color is caused by chemical changes in the meat
from the exposure to the smoke. Many people have the mistaken idea that a
really thick smoke ring is necessary for good barbecue. Not true and not
false. It's just a matter of how long and how extensive the exposure to
smoke was. There are chemicals on the market that will produce an artificial
smoke ring for those who can't get a decent real one. We won't tell you what
these chemicals are. Just don't get preoccupied with the smoke ring.
Now that you have all the tools necessary to produce mouth-watering barbecue,
get out and do it.
Read up on John Raven's classic course on basic barbecue:
Barbecue 101
Barbecue 102: Grilling
Brisket from B to T
We have lots of information online about barbecue, grilling, briskets and other traditional
Texas foods. Read our continuously updated section Traditional Texas Fare
for a complete listing of John Raven's articles.
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