I think this all comes down to planning and patience. The bad stuff is at the beginning.
If you think about it, commercial bbq pits only heat up ONCE. Like, years ago. After that, they stay hot, until they burn out. The pros don’t have to think about bad smoke because they never see it. But we have to think about it, because even if we smoke meat daily, the fires are out when we aren’t cooking. It doesn’t make sense for a pro to let a pit go cold; it doesn’t make sense for us home cooks to keep ours hot!
When we are inexperienced, we plan the cook time as the amount of time the meat is over the heat. So, we might set up our cooker at 1PM, figuring to have ribs by 6…. But it takes a charcoal cooker an hour to reach 250° and stabilize, and we’re used to that 15 minutes on a gasser! No big deal, put the meat on and grab those degrees as it comes up to temp! And, maybe, because of inexperience, we’re chasing temps an bit? And meanwhile, that charcoal is chuggin’ like a steel mill in 1940s Pittsburgh.
Dinner comes, and yeah, that meat is damn well smoked, all right! The texture is good, but maybe it’s just a leeeeeeetle bit… not burnt, not ashy, but… something? <BURP>
”Honey, where is that bottle of Tums?”
When we get some experience, after burping up all that creosote and after doing some reading, we realize that we’re doing everything right, almost! What we got wrong was the starting time. We needed to start that fire an hour earlier, and let it get up to temp and stabilize, and let the wood chunks get past smoldering so that the gasses combust as they rise. And next time, we start that fire at 11:30. And the meat goes on when it’s holding mid 200°-300° somewhere.
Is your fire holding 250°ish and you’re still getting white smoke? That’s fine, put the ribs on. 15 minutes of white smoke over 5 hours isn’t going to make a difference. Maybe there is some incomplete combustion, maybe not, but you’re close enough. The bad smoke is the early stuff, the stuff where you think you’re smoking meat because you never saw it before.
If you think about it, commercial bbq pits only heat up ONCE. Like, years ago. After that, they stay hot, until they burn out. The pros don’t have to think about bad smoke because they never see it. But we have to think about it, because even if we smoke meat daily, the fires are out when we aren’t cooking. It doesn’t make sense for a pro to let a pit go cold; it doesn’t make sense for us home cooks to keep ours hot!
When we are inexperienced, we plan the cook time as the amount of time the meat is over the heat. So, we might set up our cooker at 1PM, figuring to have ribs by 6…. But it takes a charcoal cooker an hour to reach 250° and stabilize, and we’re used to that 15 minutes on a gasser! No big deal, put the meat on and grab those degrees as it comes up to temp! And, maybe, because of inexperience, we’re chasing temps an bit? And meanwhile, that charcoal is chuggin’ like a steel mill in 1940s Pittsburgh.
Dinner comes, and yeah, that meat is damn well smoked, all right! The texture is good, but maybe it’s just a leeeeeeetle bit… not burnt, not ashy, but… something? <BURP>
”Honey, where is that bottle of Tums?”
When we get some experience, after burping up all that creosote and after doing some reading, we realize that we’re doing everything right, almost! What we got wrong was the starting time. We needed to start that fire an hour earlier, and let it get up to temp and stabilize, and let the wood chunks get past smoldering so that the gasses combust as they rise. And next time, we start that fire at 11:30. And the meat goes on when it’s holding mid 200°-300° somewhere.
Is your fire holding 250°ish and you’re still getting white smoke? That’s fine, put the ribs on. 15 minutes of white smoke over 5 hours isn’t going to make a difference. Maybe there is some incomplete combustion, maybe not, but you’re close enough. The bad smoke is the early stuff, the stuff where you think you’re smoking meat because you never saw it before.
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