Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons (2 page)

DON’T BE JOHN D. FROM OKLAHOMA

 

HE’S A GOOD GUY. A NICE GUY.
But this guy has been cooking barbecue for quite a few years now, and he’s still searching for that magic bullet. He’s the kind of guy who’s always in love with the one he’s with–in this case, whatever new method, idea, or piece of equipment is the hottest thing in barbecue at the moment. He keeps messing with sauce recipes and buys new gear as it hits the market. He’s forever trying new techniques he reads about on online barbecue forums. To him, everything seems like a good idea. The problem is, he doesn’t stop to think about how some methods and equipment might clash. Having collected all of this information and stuff over the years, he incorporates a little bit of everything he’s learned into his cooks. But he has yet to develop his own natural instincts for barbecue.

You can learn barbecue from a variety of people, but you can’t mix and match techniques. You can’t take parts of Five Easy Lessons and incorporate them with tips you picked up online or from the winner of your city’s annual rib fest. This is why I’m so adamant about using the prescribed tools and following the directions to a T. Once you learn the basics, you’re free to futz around. But as a newbie, you don’t have the ability to know which techniques and methods go with each other, so you just have to follow along and trust me.

 

DON’T USE IT OR BUY IT. GET RID OF IT!

 

IN BARBECUE, LESS IS MORE. It is much simpler, and requires much less equipment and expertise than you might believe. When it comes to great barbecue cooks, I say, beware the man with one gun. Here’s a list of gear you don’t need. This is the stuff many first-time barbecuers and even some seasoned veterans use, thinking it will make the cooking easier. In fact, these items can ruin a low and slow cook, and they should be avoided at all costs.

 

 

LIGHTER FLUID

If you want meat to taste like gasoline, why not pour the gas directly into the marinade? Charcoal soaked in lighter fluid may ignite faster initially, but once it has burned off, the lighter fluid residue overwhelms the barbecue’s subtle smokiness and infuses your food with an unpleasant flavor. Once you learn how fast and easy it is to fire up a chimney starter with three sheets of newspaper (page 28), you’ll never go back.

 

CHARCOAL BRIQUETTES

These noxious nuggets contain more filler than government cheese. Anthracite coal, borax, sodium nitrate, and the other unsavory gunk makes them burn slower, hotter, and more evenly, but these additives give barbecue the Exxon Valdez of flavors. Don’t even try to use up the leftover bag in your garage on your first few cooks. Give it to your neighbor if you want to follow the path to true low and slow mastery. Hardwood charcoal (see Buy It, Use It, or Quit the Program, page 14) is essential for a clean, controllable fire.

 

L*QU*D SM@KE

These are the dirtiest words of all in the low and slow lexicon. And it’s phony-tasting crap. Never use it, or for that matter, any sauce, rub, marinade, or flavored wood with ingredients that defy the natural laws of physics. Smoke is, by definition, not liquid.

 

HALF-BURNED COALS FROM YOUR LAST COOKOUT

Don’t be penny-wise and ten-pounds-of-ribs foolish. Reusing coals makes for an unpredictable fire, and the ashes that fall to the bottom of your grill or smoker can block the vents and obstruct airflow. Also, there’s a reason charcoal is used as a filter. Charcoal absorbs moisture and other miscellaneous tidbits and odors from the air, which will make old charcoal smolder and give off musty flavors when sparked up again. Always start with a clean cooker.

 

SOAKED WOOD

Curse the fool who started the myth that water-soaked wood burns more slowly and is therefore ideal for low and slow cooking. Wet wood thrown on burning charcoal will indeed burn slowly, but it also causes a drop in temperature in the cooker, smothers the fire, and makes the wood and charcoal smolder. Smoldering wood releases tar and other chemical byproducts that are not good flavoring agents.

 

WOOD CHIPS OR PELLETS

Small bits of wood burn up too fast on live charcoal. To get the right amount of smoke, you’ll have to replenish the wood chips frequently, which requires opening and closing the cooker. This causes the temperature in the cooker to fluctuate. This is a bad idea.

 

TEMPERATURE GAUGE

Most cookers come equipped with built-in temperature gauges, and 99 percent of them don’t work. They’re welded onto the lid, which means they can’t give an accurate reading of the grate temperature, which is the only temperature you need to be concerned with. Analog meat thermometers can also be unreliable, and new barbecuers tend to misuse them, namely by dropping the thermometer spike into the vent of the smoker or grill. Not only does this block the airflow, but these thermometers are not designed to read air temperature. They’re meant for sticking into meat.

 

HIGHLY SPECIALIZED BARBECUE TOOLS

Do not buy an electric charcoal starter, a telescoping digital meat fork, a basting mop, a stainless steel smoker box, a rib rack, or any other shiny, “time-saving” barbecue accessory ensconced in a velvet-lined attaché case and marketed to the masses. It’s a well-known phenomenon that once you have the reputation of being a serious barbecuer, people who know nothing about barbecue will begin giving you books, celebrity-endorsed tools, and accessories that you should never use. My motto: Accept graciously, re-gift rapidly.

 

CAMPFIRE GIRL TRAINING

You won’t be holding hands or singing songs around your cooker, so please just forget everything you ever learned elsewhere about starting and tending a fire or cooking over an open flame.

BUY IT, USE IT, OR QUIT THE PROGRAM

 

CHANCES ARE, you already have most of the gear you need for all five lessons. If you’re starting from scratch or restocking your barbecue equipment, the following products are not optional. This is the stuff you must have for a successful cook. Don’t ask questions. Just get it.

 

 

HARDWOOD LUMP CHARCOAL

This is natural charcoal made by burning wood. Unlike briquettes, it is not ground up, blended with filler, and reformed into neat little squares. It actually looks like burned pieces of wood. Lump charcoal burns clean, has no chemical additives, and produces less ash and residue—all of which adds up to cleaner smoke and better barbecue.

You’ll find lump charcoal at many grocery stores and most national retailers that sell grilling supplies, including Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Wal-Mart. It’s bagged under brand names like Royal Oak, Lazzari, Holland, Cowboy, and Nature-Glo. Because lump charcoal is a natural product, the type of wood used to make it, the size of the pieces, and how it burns will vary from brand to brand and even bag to bag. Experiment with different brands, find one you like, and stick with it to get the most consistent cook.

Nakedwhiz.com
tests and rates dozens of brands and is a good resource for learning about lump charcoal. (Don’t order lump charcoal online. The cost is prohibitive, and the extra pounding the charcoal takes during shipping breaks it into smaller pieces.)

 

WIRE GRATE BRUSH

Nobody wants to taste the leftover crispy burned bits from your last cookout. Clean, well-scrubbed grates are a must, as is a wire grate brush with a long, sturdy handle made from a durable material.

 

WOOD CHUNKS

Notice the word
chunks
. Not chips. Not shavings. Chunks. Chunks are approximately fist-sized pieces of wood. Because they burn more slowly than chips, you won’t have to replenish the wood as often during a cook, which means you won’t have to keep opening and closing the lid of your cooker. You’re free to use whatever type of wood you prefer (see Smoking Wood, page 30), but hickory is synonymous with barbecue and most hardware and grocery stores stock it. If you have an offset smoker, use splits of wood—longer pieces that are split from logs.

 

EXTRA CHARCOAL GRATE

Natural lump charcoal is irregularly shaped. With the second round grate set crosswise over the original charcoal grate in a Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) or kettle grill, less charcoal will fall through the grates, so you’ll get a longer, better burn from the charcoal with less waste. For an offset, buy a piece of expandable metal grating cut to fit over the charcoal grate.

WEBER CHIMNEY STARTER

Plenty of companies make a workable chimney starter, but the Weber has a larger charcoal canister and is simply engineered better for starting a fire cleanly and quickly. It’s also my reference guide for measuring out the right amount of charcoal for each of the cooks.

 

ALUMINUM LOAF PANS

These rectangular 12½ x 6½-inch containers are ad hoc water pans for the kettle grill and the offset smoker and will help moderate the temperature inside your cooker. (The WSM has a built-in water pan.)

NEWSPAPER

Not glossy circulars or cardboard or perfumed magazine inserts. Just three sheets of plain old newspaper for each chimney of charcoal you ignite. Why? Because I said so.

TONGS AND PAPER TOWELS

I saved the most important gear for last. These two items illustrate just how low-tech and simple barbecue can be, if you let it. Tongs and paper towels can be used in place of nearly every fancy barbecue tool or accessory on the market, for tasks from flipping meat and moving grates to picking up stray pieces of charcoal. As a home barbecuer, you don’t need lots of specialized equipment for the volume of cooking you’ll be doing.