The Grill and BBQ thread

#4,451
#4,451
Dang it... I had a long post that I typed up and it reset when I cane back to my browser. Anyways, I tried this recipe on the Kamado. Turned out great. And especially good for leftover fish tacos (doesn’t sound appealing but when the wife is gone and you try a new recipe w a lot leftover it is what it is - tasted great). Smoked fish recipes seem hard to come by but I found an Emeril one and Costco had whole snapper on sale for $5/lb. it was basically like what you’d get from an oven roasted fish but with a faint smoke to it. Recipe calls for mesquite but I was worried about it being too strong, so I went w apple and it turned out great.

Mesquite Smoked Caribbean Style Whole Red Snapper | Emerils.com
 
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#4,459
#4,459
Another trick is to layer your wood chunks in the coals. For a long smoke, your fire burns down towards the vent, so make sure you put a chunk or two at the bottom.
 
#4,460
#4,460
PhillipFluber said:
Does pre-soaking the wood really do anything? I don’t think so. What is soaking supposed to do? Change the flavor of the smoke, slow down the wood burning process? It doesn’t do either. I started out soaking because someone said I needed to & I wanted this to work because I was told to do it this way.
So after doing it a while & watching the process, I found it’s a complete waste of time. I knew from the start that if the wood wasn’t getting under the water then the water was not getting in the wood. Tried several different things to try & get the wood to sink. None of em worked. Wood naturally floats. You can soak it for 5 minutes, 5 days or 5 months & it’s still gonna float. That means the amount of water getting inside the wood is very minimal. Throw that however long soaked wood on the fire & what little water is in it evaporates quickly & it’s flaming up just like a non-soaked piece.
This is my opinion from my experience. If you do it & think it does something…..keep doing it.

Myth: Soak Your Wood First
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Well I have been using this method for almost 30 years and have never had a problem getting good smoke. I've done almost every other way as well and prefer to soak the chips. I believe the added steam molecules help bring out the smoke flavor. Jmo
 
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#4,461
#4,461
golfballs said:
What’s unwanted about the moisture?
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It's uncontrolled.

In my barrel smoker, I've not been able to get my bark to set when soaking the chunks. I will spray on the hour to add layers, but the steamy environment caused by soaking the wood gives me an undesirable affect
 
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#4,462
#4,462
PotS said:
It's uncontrolled.

In my barrel smoker, I've not been able to get my bark to set when soaking the chunks. I will spray on the hour to add layers, but the steamy environment caused by soaking the wood gives me an undesirable affect
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Do you use soaked chunks the entire cooking time? I only use the wet for the first 3 hours, this is when the smoke flavor penetrates the meat. I do actually use some dry chips or blocks after that.
 
#4,463
#4,463
More important to me than water content is the proper combustion. You need to get the proper amount of air flow across your coals. If you have white or black smoke, the balance isn't right. If you look at your exhaust and see a slight blue tint, then the smoke molecules are about as small as you can get them. The smaller molecules can penetrate better and are much smaller than any water vapor molecule. This lets you get much deeper smoke flavor on thicker hunks of meat like pork shoulders. As mentioned earlier, the most important time to achieve this is in the beginning when the meat is cold as it accepts the smoke better at this point.

Just my two cents after years of trials.
 
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#4,464
#4,464
UT_Dutchman said:
Do you use soaked chunks the entire cooking time? I only use the wet for the first 3 hours, this is when the smoke flavor penetrates the meat. I do actually use some dry chips or blocks after that.
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I only use dry now, but before I never attempted a combination of wet or dry throughout the cook.
 
#4,466
#4,466
MSME Vol said:
More important to me than water content is the proper combustion. You need to get the proper amount of air flow across your coals. If you have white or black smoke, the balance isn't right. If you look at your exhaust and see a slight blue tint, then the smoke molecules are about as small as you can get them. The smaller molecules can penetrate better and are much smaller than any water vapor molecule. This lets you get much deeper smoke flavor on thicker hunks of meat like pork shoulders. As mentioned earlier, the most important time to achieve this is in the beginning when the meat is cold as it accepts the smoke better at this point.

Just my two cents after years of trials.
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If you don't mind, please clarify these smaller molecules.
 
#4,469
#4,469
UT_Dutchman said:
If you don't mind, please clarify these smaller molecules.
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This dude and website explain it in layman's terms better than I can, but it agrees with what I learned in my air quality control class at UT. For reference water molecules are about 2.82 molecules before heated into steam which would only expand them.

"Dr. Blonder explains that the color depends on the particle size and how it scatters and reflects light to our eyes. Pale blue smoke particles are the smallest, less than a micron in size, about the size of the wavelength of light. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. Pure white smoke consists of larger particles, a few microns in size, and they scatter all wavelengths in all directions. Gray and black smoke contains particles large enough to actually absorb some of the light and colors."

What You Need to Know About Wood, Smoke, And Combustion
 
#4,470
#4,470
MSME Vol said:
This dude and website explain it in layman's terms better than I can, but it agrees with what I learned in my air quality control class at UT. For reference water molecules are about 2.82 molecules before heated into steam which would only expand them.

"Dr. Blonder explains that the color depends on the particle size and how it scatters and reflects light to our eyes. Pale blue smoke particles are the smallest, less than a micron in size, about the size of the wavelength of light. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. Pure white smoke consists of larger particles, a few microns in size, and they scatter all wavelengths in all directions. Gray and black smoke contains particles large enough to actually absorb some of the light and colors."

What You Need to Know About Wood, Smoke, And Combustion
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That was a very interesting read, there are really good points in there that would help beginning pitmasters. Although he does contradict himself about the causes for white and black smoke, saying both are a lack of oxygen. One thing I know from my biology classes is that an animal cell is quite large compared to a molecule so I believe that the meat has no trouble absorbing whatever aromatics are passed by it. Like he said the key is to get the sweet and non-bitter aromatics continually from the wood. The point is the meat will absorb whatever is put in the heating chamber, that's why a water dish works at keeping everything moist. In my original post I was just saying I believe the wet wood initially helps get the aromatics airborne.
 
#4,471
#4,471
UT_Dutchman said:
That was a very interesting read, there are really good points in there that would help beginning pitmasters. Although he does contradict himself about the causes for white and black smoke, saying both are a lack of oxygen. One thing I know from my biology classes is that an animal cell is quite large compared to a molecule so I believe that the meat has no trouble absorbing whatever aromatics are passed by it. Like he said the key is to get the sweet and non-bitter aromatics continually from the wood. The point is the meat will absorb whatever is put in the heating chamber, that's why a water dish works at keeping everything moist. In my original post I was just saying I believe the wet wood initially helps get the aromatics airborne.
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Fair enough, I still don't like the drop in temperature that wet wood can inject into my smoker as then you can get in a circular loop of adjusting air flow constantly until you burn off the initial moisture, but to each their own. It really is more of an art form than anything.

I'll still use water pans filled with boiling water, don't get me wrong.
 
#4,472
#4,472
MSME Vol said:
Fair enough, I still don't like the drop in temperature that wet wood can inject into my smoker as then you can get in a circular loop of adjusting air flow constantly until you burn off the initial moisture, but to each their own. It really is more of an art form than anything.

I'll still use water pans filled with boiling water, don't get me wrong.
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What temperature do you usually cook at? I keep mine around 210, I like the longer cooking time for most meats. In my wood smoker I use the wet chunks to bring the temperature down when it starts climbing. I've found the way the propane smokers smoke wood, the wet wood doesn't seem to hamper the temperature because they are not directly on the flame.
 
#4,473
#4,473
UT_Dutchman said:
What temperature do you usually cook at? I keep mine around 210, I like the longer cooking time for most meats. In my wood smoker I use the wet chunks to bring the temperature down when it starts climbing. I've found the way the propane smokers smoke wood, the wet wood doesn't seem to hamper the temperature because they are not directly on the flame.
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Ahhh that makes sense. I'm on an offset charcoal set up. Most cuts I'm at 210-225. The major exceptions are turkeys (300) and leg of lamb (which is an all together different process that I end up more or less grilling for the last 10 degrees).
 
#4,474
#4,474
PhillipFluber said:
Pressure treated lumber gets it juices forced inside under pressure. So you may be on to something. I’m not trying it!!



Are those chips & shavings still floating after soaking? I don’t use either of them; they wouldn’t last 3 minutes in any of my rigs.
Your campfire theory is not a good example for soaking hardwood for cooking. There are all kinds of softwoods that hold some type of moisture that can be thrown on a campfire
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Some type of moisture? It’s called water, you know H2O. My rig will smoke 20-30 pounds of meat. A pound of soaked chips added during the first two hours of cooking has always worked.
 
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#4,475
#4,475
MSME Vol said:
Ahhh that makes sense. I'm on an offset charcoal set up. Most cuts I'm at 210-225. The major exceptions are turkeys (300) and leg of lamb (which is an all together different process that I end up more or less grilling for the last 10 degrees).
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Leg of lamb, now that's something I have never smoked and I am intrigued. Please share your recipe.
 
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