Smoked pork or smoked brisket makes people smile. Maybe the smoke master, sometimes called the pit boss, smiles the most.
Smoking meat, like cooking meat, has some guidelines of best practices for best results. Grills or ovens can vary, but they all transfer heat to the food. Smokers are like that, too. There are a lot of options and they all do pretty much the same thing: cook the meat while also creating smoke for flavor.
My experience is with the Masterbuilt digital electric smoker. Smokers can get bigger and fancier and that doesn’t take away the principles of smoking. Smoking meat is low and slow. Those barbeque food shows talk about that. Cook at a low temperature for a long time. Longer cooking than on a grill or in an oven, for sure.
Burn off the factory coating.
My Masterbuilt smoker was pretty right out of the box. Bright and shiny inside and that factory smell. That smell can become part of your first smoke if you don’t cook it out. Run your smoker at the highest setting, 275°, for 4 hours. Leave the vent on top wide open. Add wood chips at the 3 hour 15 minute mark and let them smoke for the remaining 45 minutes.
After four hours, let the smoker cool. The inside doesn’t require cleaning. As you use the smoker, even infrequently, the smoke will coat the inside of the smoker. There’s no getting around that. The grates should be scrubbed with soap and hot water to make sure you remove any residue from the factory coating. It probably won’t hurt you and it will do nothing to make the food taste better.
Oiling or seasoning this smoker isn’t necessary since the walls are not food-contact surfaces like the grates of a grill are.
Your smoker is now ready for its maiden voyage, so to speak.
The right wood.
All wood makes smoke. Not all smoke is the same, however.
For the most part, hardwoods are preferred. Oak, maple, walnut, hickory, mesquite, alder, and fruit tree wood all make good smoke for your meats.
Walnut and hickory are good choices and pack a punch of flavor. Too much smoke from these two can give your meat a bitter smoky taste. Bitter can sound off-putting. It is one of the five flavors. Bitter is contrasted well, and mostly neutralized, by acid. If you are making a bitter pork loin with a slightly acidic Cole Slaw, that might work. Just because something might be bitter is not a reason to avoid it.
Some woods, fruit tree wood mostly, is a more delicate smoke and tends to be better suited to pork, chicken, and fish.
Pit bosses have been known to combine various kinds of wood to get a particular flavor. Using the right woods and experimenting with combinations is a good way to get skills with your smoker.
There are wrong woods to use. Mostly all pine and cedars* are a poor choice for smoking meats. Included in the don’t use list are elm, sycamore, eucalyptus, and sassafras. These woods are fast-burning which impedes low and slow and contain resins that make dark or black smoke and can put toxic substances on your food.
Other woods to avoid are commercially produced woods like pressure-treated lumber or painted wood scraps. Sawdustfrom unreliable sources or unknown wood contents may contain chemical toxins that are not eliminated during smoking like paints or glues. Sawdust will also burn too quickly to be useful so efficiency is as much a reason to avoid it as are contaminants.
*Cedar-grilled salmon was a popular dish. The significant difference here is the cedar plank isn’t burned for smoke. It is heated to release flavors and the wood is usually soaked to delay combustion.
This website has some good content for more about woods to prefer and to avoid.
Smoking versus cooking.
The Masterbuilt smoker has a burner on which a pan rests to smoke the wood chips. It also is the single source of heat to cook the food.
It is doing two things at the same time.
We can make it do just one.
Pitmasters will smoke heavily for the first few hours and then cook, but no smoke, for a few hours more.
The chief goal is to keep the low and slow without overpowering the smoke.
Pitmasters may use various techniques or procedures, 3-2-1 or 2-2-1 to smoke and cook and finish their meat.
The first number is how many hours to smoke.
The second number is how many hours to wrap in foil and cook. Some pit bosses or masters will add beer or apple juice to the foil to help steam the meat.
The third number is the time spent on a higher heat source for color and flavor.
With a Masterbuilt, we can do these procedures. The last part, higher heat, is a relative thing. Our smoker will not get hot enough to char. It can, however, do a good job at making and keeping a crust.
One alternative to this slight challenge is to grill the finished meat for those char marks and crispy bits. I’ve used the grill for marking after smoking and it does add nicely to the finished product.
Plan for a longer smoke than you think.
Low and slow is also long and delayed.
That’s a good thing.
In a world of near-instant gratification, delayed gratification offers a different approach.
Masterbuilt has this page which is a great place to start when planning how long you’ll need to smoke. Getting the most from your smoker includes letting it do what it does. No food is made better when it is rushed. So, plan for a long time. While you’re waiting, make the sides, organize the counter, ice the beers, and find the Jarts.
Let it rest.
What’s missing from that time to smoke page on Masterbuilt’s site is the resting time.
Ask two pitmasters how long to rest a brisket and you’ll get three answers. There’s no shortage of opinions on how long to rest the meat. Everyone seems unanimous that you should rest the meat.
For beef brisket, 2 hours seems to be the agreed best minimum amount of time. Some say three hours, if you can do it. Some take it much longer.
The best procedure for resting your meat is to wrap it. I use foil because I have foil. I do not have butcher’s paper. Butcher’s paper seems to be preferred. Depending on the size of your meat, you can also baggie the wrapped meat in doubled-up ziptop baggies which hold the juice that comes out and makes clean-up easier. And, you get a meat juice shot which is amazing.
Then, when the meat is wrapped, and bagged if you’re doing that, it goes into a cooler without the ice. The smallest cooler that will hold it is best to minimize heat loss.
There’s a lot of science in cooking and resting meat. Cooked meat–pan-fried, roasted, grilled, or smoked–benefits from resting. Just because the meat has reached the final temperature doesn’t mean it’s done cooking.
Bakers know that bread removed from the oven still has 20 minutes to go before it’s done. Part of the baking process is the cool-down process. So too with meat. The resting part is the final step in the cooking process. The details are on the web to find. Here’s a good start to see how resting matters. The final result of the patience to let it rest is a moist and juicy piece of meat.
Manage the vent for humidity, heat, and smoke.
On top of my smoker is a small wheel vent which Masterbuilt calls an air damper.
Read some smoker forums and you’ll find a lot of views on the use of the vent. This one has some useful viewpoints.
When I first started smoking I left it nearly fully closed. That seemed right since it kept most of the smoke in the smoker.
It did do that and allowed for some other unintended consequences. It restricts the airflow which slows down the smoking of the wood chips.
A partially-closed vent also keeps in the moisture from the meat which can interfere with getting that much desired crust. If you are using a liquid during your smoke, apple juice, pineapple juice, or even water, a restricted vent will keep that extra humidity in the cabinet which can prevent a crust from forming. Some folks argue in such a situation the smoker turns into a steamer which defeats the purpose.
I smoke now with the vent fully opened and I like the results. A better smoke flavor and a good crust on the meat. Opening the vent all the way makes for an efficient smoker.
Treat your meat.
Grilling an unseasoned steak seems unthinkable. The first think we want to do is give it a good seasoning with salt and pepper.
The meat you smoke also needs some attention.
Brining or curing are popular ways to treat the meat before it smokes.
A brine is salt dissolved in water. That’s it. Often sugar is added to a brine to increase the firm texture of the finished product. There are ratios for salt sugar and water. Many ratios will vary depending on the meat being brined, the duration of meat in the brine, and flavor intended outcomes. The basic brine I use for meats, smoked or grilled, is
1 quart of water
1/4 C Salt
2 T Sugar
Bring to a boil, cool to 40° F, and store or use.
A cure is salt, sugar, and flavor in the form of herbs or spices. That is rubbed on the outside of the meat and can remain for hours or days. Strictly speaking, the flavor has no part in the curing process. Flavor is a value-added component in the cure.
Cures are often used for meat that isn’t cooked after curing. Cold smoked salmon and Lox are two examples of food that is cured and not cooked. In the cases where the meat is not cooked, or cooked for a short period an additional salt is added. Tinted Curing Mixture, also called Prague Power #1 and Prague Powder #2. These are nitrates and as such have some controversy. Their goal is pathogen elimination. The side benefit is they make meat pink. Pastrami is a good example of a meat that keeps a pretty pink color.
Most smoked meats are cooked at a sustained temp for hours. That exposure to heat is enough to kill pathogens so TCM is a benefit for the final result.
Wrap your meat.
We mentioned wrapping meat during the 3-2-1 or 2-2-1 cooking process.
Wrapping the meat for resting also adds to an improved finished product. Butcher’s paper, aluminum foil, or plastic film were all mentioned in a search as suitable wrapping media. Is one better? Maybe. Which one do you have at home? That’s the one to use.
The advantage of wrapping seems to be slowing the transfer of heat out of the meat. None of these wrappings will form a seal around the meat to prevent the juices from flowing out and making a mess. For that reason, I use the doubled-up ziptop gallon, or larger, bags. A clean cooler will also hold those juices.
Since some juices will escape, isn’t wrapping just ceremonial folly? Not really. There’s nothing to prevent juices from leaving meat. In the process of cooking, the complex chemical reactions produced H2O that didn’t previously exist. It has to go somewhere. What can’t be held by the meat leaks out.
The wrapping is to keep the heat and to make the finished, rested meat, easy to handle since it is all wrapped up. Well-cooked brisket or butt will want to fall apart from handling it. The wrapping helps prevent that, acting as a support for the meat as it is removed from the cooler. The cooler does the majority of the work keeping the temperature moderated.
Wire screen on the rack for jerky, nuts, or cheese.
Your smoker can be used to smoke jerky, almonds or other nuts, and cheese.
I’ve smoked jerky and almonds. I have not smoked cheese. Yet.
The grates, as they are, seem to be too wide for jerky, and forget about placing almonds on them. For that, I cut a piece of 1/4″ hardware cloth just smaller than the grate. I used wire to affix it in six places and now I can smoke any nuts or jerky without worry that the product will fall off.
Before you affix your hardware cloth, give it a scrub with hot soapy water. Mind the pokey edges.
I’ve since found that hardware cloth is also useful for small fish filets and chicken tenders. That was a test and frankly, they were so small that there was hardly any smoke flavor on them. They were fully cooked, though, and came off the hardware cloth easily enough.
I leave the hardware cloth on all the time.
Sanitation.
While the inside of the smoker may need only twice a year cleaning, the racks require constant vigilance.
Small pieces of meat can stick to the racks. Excess smoke can build up which can present an off, rancid flavor.
The bigger issue is the meat remnants. Those wee bits have been cooked for a while and as they stand, are not a source of pathogenic contamination. Left on the rack grate at ambient temperature and certainty that it isn’t a source of issues goes away. Those wee bits can become sources of decay and rot and can cross-contaminate the next smoke’s meat.
Quite possibly the risk is low. It might be fine until it isn’t. It is that rare occurrence we’re working to eliminate. If you have ever been on the business side of pathogens, you know there is nothing enjoyable about the experience.
Wrapping the smoker racks in foil seems tempting as a solution to saving clean up. Masterbuilt advises against this as it prevents the free flow of smoke throughout the smoker box.
The racks need cleaning after every use. I read one fellow write he puts his racks in the dishwasher. I use green scrubbies to clean my racks and for the real tough parts, a stainless steel soap pad.
I let my racks air dry and store them in an outdoor closet on nails so they’re ready for the next smoke.
There is always a tweak here or there that will boost your smoke and improve the finished product. If you are the note-making kind of person, make notes about what happened with every smoke. What went well and, maybe, more importantly, what didn’t go well? Add ideas about what to do next time.
