Your Carbon Footprint - Bigger Can Be Delicious

May is National BBQ month (as well as National Salad month - what-ever).  Now I know when most people think about, speak about and invite people over for "BBQ", they're really talking about burgers, brats, chicken and the  like.   This is not BBQ, this is grilling - cooking small pieces of food in less than 45 minutes directly over a (hot) fire.

Real BBQ is about  turning big tough cuts of meat, like brisket, pork shoulder, and ribs into moist, tender, smokilicious morsels thru a low temp, long cooking, carbon footprint expanding, smoke soaked process.

The beauty of BBQ to me, is that it's low tech and very forgiving.  This means that as long as you have patience, a reliable heat source and an enclosed cooking chamber you can burn some hardwood in (rules out your oven), you can turn out great BBQ just like your favorite BBQ restaurant (hint: it begins with "K").

The essential set-up for BBQing is cooking with indirect heat, a.k.a. an offset fire.  This means you don't want the fire, gas or charcoal, directly underneath the meat, because over the long cooking time required, the direct heat will burn the meat.

Rather, you want the fire on one side of the grill and the meat on the other side, so it's cooked / smoked gently from all sides.  When I'm forced to use a small grill where there's not room for this lateral separation of fire and meat, I'll go vertical. 

I'll place the meat on a cake cooling rack set on a large pan, half filled with water, directly over the fire.  The water pan creates a heat shield that protects the meat (just like the tiles on the space shuttle).

Other Helpful Tips

The golden BBQing temperature range is between 225° and 250°.   A probe thermometer in the lid of your BBQ (see today's Quick Tip) is the way to go for monitoring and adjusting the temp without peeking.

For smoke, use chunks of hardwood (NOT pine trees, 2x4's, plywood or other scrap you found in your side yard).  Place them directly on or above the fire to get them smoking, but not afire. Try and maintain a steady flow of smoke for the duration for maximum tasty smoke flavor (& visit http://www.nativeenergy.com/pages/individuals/407.php to buy any needed carbon offsets)

The internal temperature for perfectly done brisket and pork shoulder is 185° to 195°.  At this temp, the collagen that holds all the muscle bundles together (which makes for tough meat) melts, making the meat rich and fall apart tender. 

A simplier test for doneness is the poke test - poke the meat with your finger and if it's soft and gives way, it's done, if it's firm and rubbery, it's not.

Expect to spend 2 to 3 hours to BBQ  whole chickens, 3 to 4 hours for ribs and 8 to 12 hours for briskets and pork shoulders. 

Not that committed? You can always finish it your oven and/or wrap the meat tightly in foil to speed the cooking (though this will stop additional smoke from reaching the meat).  Really uncommitted? Come by the restaurant, we'll sell it to you any time, we do this for a living.

Learn more and eat plenty of  BBQ at our BBQ 201 cooking class June 26th, or shoot me an e-mail with your questions.

I also recommend Bill & Cheryl Jamison's (no relation of ours) book, "Smoke & Spice" (Amazon) for a thorough discussion of BBQ and some excellent recipes.