One of the biggest problems I have with modern grilling is this reliance on
temperature, moon phases, funky gadgets, odd mixes of wood, spinning around on
one foot while singing Mary Poppins songs, fussing with the meats over and over
again, opening and closing cook chambers, yadda yadda. I find these youtube
channels full of irrelevant garbage that doesn't help you get a good product at
all, but exists only to promote the channels and up the viewership.
Cooking with fire is supposed to be simple. No gadgets. No three hundred dollar
thermometers. Forget about probes, secret signs, moon phases, and anything
else. Just the fire and the meat. After all, that's how we started, as humans.
I bet some por cave man found a charred carcass after a forest fire, decided to
eat it and said, wow, this is tasty. Let's see if I can replicate this.
Now that i've got all that off my chest, let me get to your question.
It depends on what kind of smoker you have. The one i've always used is the off
set smoker. This is the one that has the firebox on one side and a cook chamber
arranged vertically, like a fridge, or horizontally, like a piano, on the other
side.
For a long lasting fire, I added a 6 quart chimney full of unlit lumps to the
firebox, then fired up another chimney full. Once the flames had calmed down
from shooting out the top of the chimney, I poured them over the unlit charcoal
in the box. I add a full chunk of hardwood to the coals, or, when I had it,
fruitwood. Do not soak it. Left the firebox lid open for five minutes, then
closed it. This let any impurities in the smoke evaporate into the air, and not
into the cook chamber. If you're using firewood, and you don't remove the bark,
you can find all sorts of gross things there. Letting that stuff burn off and
escape into the air is a good thing.
I close the vents on the firebox halfway to slow down airflow and thus let the
fire burn longer. Leave it alone for about half an hour. This gets your cook
chamber nicely hot. Then you can bring out your meat and put it on the racks.
Which, presumably, you cleand and oiled.
Do not worry over much about the temperature inside the smoker fluctuating when
you add new coals. And you can minimize this by preparing a fresh chimney of
coals fifteen minutes before you need to add them. Just follow the same
procedure. Light chimney, wait for them to burn down a bit, open firebox lid,
pour chimney on, add new wood chunk, leave firebox lid open for five minutes,
close.
Your meat is not going to care too much if your temp fluctuates between 270-320
degrees. This is cooking with fire. It happens. It's supposed to be fun, not
regimented.
Now, if you're cooking on a kettle grill, you can do sort of the same thing,
but it's going to burn much hotter due to the smaller area. Think how it takes
a small room less time to heat up than a cathedral, for example. Make sure when
you add new coals to the grill that you top off the water pan. That pans is
going to be important in keeping the temp lower.
If you're cooking with a ceramic egg, you don't need to add new coals very
often, if at all. Those things are amazing, but i've never had the opportunity
to use one, so can't really tell you much.
I hope this helps some. I haven't had the opportunity to smoke anything for
well over a year, because I got nowhere to store a smoker and firewood anymore.
Sigh.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Rawlings" <twosocks76@xxxxxxx>
To: "Blind Cooks" <blindcooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2020 15:28:09 -0800
Subject: [blindcooks] Cooking with charcoal
Before I get going, this discussion is open to anyone and everyone who wishes
to read and/or participate. Unless Im mistaken, Rob Hudson is the only list
member who cooks with charcoal. I hope there are others, because Ill take
as much feedback as I can get.
Heres my issue. I finally, after several years, decided to make a smoked
pork loin for dinner last Friday. It turned out well, but the wood chunks
burst into flame not long after I added them to the hot coals, despite having
soaked them for several hours. I still pulled the roast in time, and it
tasted great, except the sugar in the rub on the bottom of the roast
caramelized just a little too much. But otherwise good. I posted in a mens
cooking forum about my experience, and several guys told me that I probably
used too much charcoal, making the fire too hot for what I was trying to do.
Yesterday, I tried again, this time with a whole turkey that I dry-brined the
night before. I tried the charcoal snake method, which is supposed to give
you a long, low, slow burn for a longer time, which was what I wanted. Lump
charcoal is all I currently have, so I used that. This time, I think I
didnt use enough charcoal, because after nearly three hours on the smoker,
the internal temperature had only gone from 45 degrees to 120 degrees. I
brought it in to finish in the oven, because it was nearly dinner time, and
the kids can only wait so long. The final results were wonderful, and I
loved the dry cure under the skin of the bird.
So heres my issue. I need to figure out how to get that long, slow fire
that maintains a temperature, inside the smoker, of roughly 275-300 degrees,
preferably using lump natural charcoal. I have found a YouTube channel
called the cookout coach, and I like what I see so far. Aparrently, and I
had heard this before, lump charcoal burns a little hotter, and for a shorter
time, as compared with charcoal brickettes. Now, I understand that a lot of
brickettes are loaded with petroleum products and lighter fluid, things I
definitely do not want anywhere near my food. But aparrently, not all of
them are made that way. I like that they burn a bit longer and are more
uniform in size and shape. Im currently trying to learn exactly which
brands are free of the additives I dont want so I can at least have an
alternative to the lump stuff, if I decide I want to use it.Does anyone,
including you, Rob, have any tips or suggestions here? I really do not want
to reload the smoker with more coals part way through the cooking process, if
I can help it, as that loses a lot of heat from inside the smoker, and
extends the cook time.
Jon
