A New Commandment I Give Unto You!
If you haven't checked out my 12 Commandments of BBQ, you should. I'm adding #13 to the list:
"Thou Shalt Wait Until Thy Meat Is 100 Degrees Before Smoking!"*
I get all kinds of cooking questions at work. It's part of my job at Traeger Pellet Grills, and it usually provides me with a pulsebeat of what people are cooking, what they're having problems cooking on their grills, and generally what they want to know.
One of the topics that's been coming up with some regularity is "A friend of a friend of a friend told me that you can't smoke meat after it's reached XXX degrees." BULL POOPIE!
I don't know who started this---but it DEFIES LOGIC! Listen! If you start smoking meat when it's cold, all you're going to do is seal the pores on the surface of the meat. If you really want the smoke flavor in the meat, you need to allow the meat fibers to warm up, so they'll loosen up, thereby allowing the smoke to more deeply penetrate the meat fibers. Think about it like this: When you go for a massage or physical therapy, what do they do first? Warm up the muscles! What is meat? MUSCLE MATTER! ("Oh my gawd Harold, the man is making sense!")
So...let the meat warm up to at least 100 degrees F. before you even consider adding smoke to it. Since meat doesn't begin to cook until it reaches 120 degrees, you'll be fine. I've been doing this for over 20 years and I know what I'm talking about.
As I've trained people in the art of producing award winning barbecue, the people who were having problems achieving good smoke flavor in their meat began putting my theory into practice and guess what?! They found out that IT WORKS!
*this commandment in no way superceeds the original! The Original 10 are still valid and should be practiced on a daily basis.
"Thou Shalt Wait Until Thy Meat Is 100 Degrees Before Smoking!"*
I get all kinds of cooking questions at work. It's part of my job at Traeger Pellet Grills, and it usually provides me with a pulsebeat of what people are cooking, what they're having problems cooking on their grills, and generally what they want to know.
One of the topics that's been coming up with some regularity is "A friend of a friend of a friend told me that you can't smoke meat after it's reached XXX degrees." BULL POOPIE!
I don't know who started this---but it DEFIES LOGIC! Listen! If you start smoking meat when it's cold, all you're going to do is seal the pores on the surface of the meat. If you really want the smoke flavor in the meat, you need to allow the meat fibers to warm up, so they'll loosen up, thereby allowing the smoke to more deeply penetrate the meat fibers. Think about it like this: When you go for a massage or physical therapy, what do they do first? Warm up the muscles! What is meat? MUSCLE MATTER! ("Oh my gawd Harold, the man is making sense!")
So...let the meat warm up to at least 100 degrees F. before you even consider adding smoke to it. Since meat doesn't begin to cook until it reaches 120 degrees, you'll be fine. I've been doing this for over 20 years and I know what I'm talking about.
As I've trained people in the art of producing award winning barbecue, the people who were having problems achieving good smoke flavor in their meat began putting my theory into practice and guess what?! They found out that IT WORKS!
*this commandment in no way superceeds the original! The Original 10 are still valid and should be practiced on a daily basis.
posted by MrBBQ at
6:46 PM
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