Are we over engineering this simple form of cooking?

[bookoobbq]

Was thinking about this topic this morning as I pretty much think about smoking meat day/night haha. Let me get started where this thought popped into my head.

So I've been watching every episode of Aaron Franklin (Franklin Barbecue) tv series (you can watch all episodes free on PBS website) and I noticed something. Maybe it's just tv but I noticed he's rarely concerned with meat probes everywhere and crazy mods to his cookers and he leaves his firebox door wide open on all of them.

It got me to thinking, we seem to be obsessed with buying a smoker and doing every god foresaken mod we can find to do to it. We buy every latest gadget there is. He cooks on everything from commercial sized custom tank smokers down to oklahoma joe residential consumer offset smokers and I noticed he doesn't mess with adding gaskets to everything, diffuser plates, sealing every nook and cranny, etc. It's a smoker, not a pressure cooker. Smoke seeps out everywhere on his smokers and he's not the least bit concerned and his barbecue seems to turn out perfect judging by the lines before the sun comes up and selling out by noon.

Now maybe part of that is because he has the knowledge to know when and when not to make adjustments and things and the average consumer is so concerned with the most automated ways to set it and forget it.

I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this topic. It's just an observation I made and I too get excited about all the mods I see but it makes me think.. Are they really necessary? Lets hear thoughts on the topic.

 

[SmokinAl]

His smokers are custom built to his specs.

He has smoked thousands of briskets etc.

He has his way of doing things that work for him.

Most of us need a little help in the way of accurate therms, & some smokers will benefit from mods that make them perform better.

I would say if your smoker is unmodified & you are happy with it, then why change it.

I don't think any of the suggested mods are going to do any harm & they almost always make the smoker more efficient.

Al

 

[bookoobbq]

 
His smokers are custom built to his specs.

He has smoked thousands of briskets etc.

He has his way of doing things that work for him.

Most of us need a little help in the way of accurate therms, & some smokers will benefit from mods that make them perform better.

I would say if your smoker is unmodified & you are happy with it, then why change it.

I don't think any of the suggested mods are going to do any harm & they almost always make the smoker more efficient.

Al

Al-

I agree. I'm all about the mods and tinkering and improving things. This is just an observation I made. 

 

[chef jimmyj]

His smokers are custom built to his specs.
He has smoked thousands of briskets etc.
He has his way of doing things that work for him.
Most of us need a little help in the way of accurate therms, & some smokers will benefit from mods that make them perform better.
I would say if your smoker is unmodified & you are happy with it, then why change it.
I don't think any of the suggested mods are going to do any harm & they almost always make the smoker more efficient.

Al

This and he has a team to babysit fire, temps, move meat around, etc. When you are one person, kids running around, small chores to be done, any mod that will get that smoker running a little more steady, a little more evenly and lets you walk away for 30 minutes without worring the fire will go out or get out of control, is worth doing...JJ

 

[noboundaries]

Even Aaron Franklin has his pit masters.  He hires folks to tend his smokers. 

Yes, I will definitely agree we often get wound up about leaks and temps.  It's about control and consistency is my guess.  I was guilty worrying about leaks and maintaining exact temps when I first started smoke roasting meat just over three years ago.  Back then I sealed up my WSM.  It saved me fuel.  I bought the Maverick thermometer.  It helped me ensure I knew my chamber temp and exactly when the meat was done.  I bought a blower.  It gave me back time because it took away babysitting my smoker.  Over the last three years I've smoked low n slow, middle of the road, hot n fast, plus start slow - end fast.  You know what, it all delivered mouth watering results.       

I'm a cook, not a chef, and there's a BIG difference between the two.  Near as I can tell, and I could be full of it, the man difference is that chefs are taught to do things in an exacting manner so they can be duplicated.  Everything from process to presentation is part of their curriculum.  Cooks are much more casual, generally speaking. 

I've been a cook for more than 40 years, though I was never paid to do so.  I watched my mother and grandmother cook, but never received a single lesson from them.  Men did not cook back then on either side of my family.  When I went to university though, I needed to cook for myself and my roommates, so my mom wrote down a few of her recipes for me.  Armed with those and a Fanny Farmer cookbook, which I still own, I taught myself to cook. 

Over the decades I learned that there is no one way to do something and have it turn out delicious.  I have made incredible pot roasts in the oven, on the stove top, on the grill, over a campfire, and in a smoker.  For at least three of those I have no friggin' idea what the cook temperature is in the cooking container I am using, yet the meat comes out tender and juicy. 

Experience, both failure and success, breeds instinct.  For example, the very first time I cooked rabbit stew was in survival training on a campfire.  After several days of not eating, and unable to find/catch anything, the instructors gave us three rabbits, water, sacks of potatoes, onions, carrots, salt, and a big ass pot.  It was enough food to feed the 50 people in the class.  No one had any idea how to cook it all so I took over, assigning the rabbit cleaning, veggie prep, and then doing the cooking.  Want a challenge?  Try to keep 50 people who haven't eaten in four days away from a delicious smelling pot until the meat falls off the bones of three rabbits.  Still one of the best dang meals I ever ate, probably due to the circumstances.            

Bottom line, even the leakiest of smokers can produce great tasting meat. How much time you want to devote to the result will depend on the leaks.   

 

[stealthchef]

I'm pretty knuckle-headed about my philosophy. BBQ was invented by poor people (that holds true for all the different "origins" of it). The whole thing I love about BBQ is that without much money invested, anybody can do it and do it well. So to that extent, yeah, sometimes I see somebody taking something simple and over-complicating it. I'm sure their finished meal is enjoyed as much as anyone else's. 

For me tho, I don't see me ever paying $1000 for a grill/smoker. I don't see me modding a $400 grill/smoker into an aircraft carrier. Maybe sealing things up some to help it work better. I can see me making a grill out of a 55gal drum, because that looks fun. If I'm having fun with everyone, that's what matters. Hanging out by the smoker with everyone, drink in hand, conversations in the air...that's what matters.

 

[bookoobbq]

This is the kind of discussion I wanted to stir up. Good reads guys! Like I said before, I'm all about the overthinking as well but I also embrace the simpleness of it. It's good to hear different people's point of view. In the end, any barbecue is better than a frozen tv dinner, whether made in it's simplest form or completely over engineered. 

 

[bbqbrett]

I'm pretty knuckle-headed about my philosophy. BBQ was invented by poor people (that holds true for all the different "origins" of it). The whole thing I love about BBQ is that without much money invested, anybody can do it and do it well. So to that extent, yeah, sometimes I see somebody taking something simple and over-complicating it. I'm sure their finished meal is enjoyed as much as anyone else's. 

For me tho, I don't see me ever paying $1000 for a grill/smoker. I don't see me modding a $400 grill/smoker into an aircraft carrier. Maybe sealing things up some to help it work better. I can see me making a grill out of a 55gal drum, because that looks fun. If I'm having fun with everyone, that's what matters. Hanging out by the smoker with everyone, drink in hand, conversations in the air...that's what matters.

I think that is a great way too look at it. For me there is a pretty expensive smoker I would buy if I had the room for it but I don't at this time. Right now I am just doing all my smoking on an old gas grill. Keep one side with a pan for charcoal and wood and keep the meat on the other side for nice indirect heat. Like you I am having fun with it and put out some good food.

 

[3montes]

The only smoker I ever did mods to was my Brinkman Smokin' Pit 20 years ago. The mods helped it greatly. I was also using all the Maverick probes back then. After that I started buying more quality custom fab smokers that required no mods because they were built properly to begin with. Then I ditched all the electronics and just got back to simple basics. I use oven thermometers in my smoke chamber to give me chamber temps and a ThermoWorks for probing meat.

I have gotten to know my smokers well enough that all I need to do is look at the exhaust to know if I need to do anything. I don't temp probe the meat until the later stages of cooking. I realized that I don't need to know when the meat is 98 degrees.

I have also come to realize I don't look at the oven therms much anymore either. I open the door and spritz the meat or whatever and close the door then realize I never looked at the temp.

I enjoy the process and the results more these days.

 

[sxfxz]

I believe so. I have gotten a prime brisket, trimmed it, rubbed it in salt/pepper/garlic, smoked it over just oak at 275, wrapped when it got dark (around 8-10 hours) and kept going until it jiggled like jello. I was really pleased with the results. Now it's just refining it.

Most critical key I've found to BBQ is fire control.

http://s10.photobucket.com/user/SxFxZ/media/205EA3A3-7019-44EC-9C99-227D76F40817.jpg.html

 

[stealthchef]

1. SxFxZ Nailed that brisket. You, sir, did it correctly.

2. My son's first b-day looked just like that. Isn't that the best feeling ever?

3. I only got to taste a burnt end, and then it was gone. Is that not the second best feeling ever (aside from being a husband and a dad)?

4. What is the 1 thing you'd tell a newbie after that great BBQ?

 

[sqwib]

I was much like Noboundaries.

A lot of "over-complicating" has to do with "the learning curve" This includes learning the quirks, shortcomings and advantages of your pit/smoker/grill. We all go through this. That is why it is important to keep trying, especially after a failure or what we believe to be a failure. This is not the wrong approach but simply a phase we need to go through.

I learned to take accurate notes and document stuff for later cooks, my website has helped me through my learning curve and most of my cooks I just wing it now, same goes for recipes, I don't measure, thats for Baking lol.

There sometimes is a need to "tweak" a smoker or pit.

The learning curve for me was also to learn what my family liked, this was hardest for me...cooking beef to 150° overcooking chicken, cooking ribs that barely stayed on the bones, cooking with almost 0 smoke flavor, this all goes against my style of cooking and I change up depending on who I am cooking for.

I look back at some of my earlier Notes/Posts and say to myself, Wow I was anal, but thats all part of the learning curve.

When I built my pit and ran it the first few years I was so concerned about maintaining a specific temp, now I don't worry. I sealed all the leaks and was anal about a tight firebox. After a while I realized a lot of this didn't matter. I learned about thermal mass and heat transfer and how it applied to my pit. I learned wind is not your friend but cold doesn't matter so much.

I learned certain woods left an acceptable amount of coals and some others, not so much. I learned how to trim, cut, slice different cuts of poultry, and meat.

I learned about foiling, not foiling, drip pans, cooking temperatures, water pans, brining, curing, food safety.

On my GOSM I use to have thermos all over the place and watch it like a hawk, now I just turn it all the way up, load it and enjoy the cook.

Stuff I have learned through experience has helped me to RELAX like doing the bend test on ribs, or doing a little wiggle on a brisket. I still use my thermapen on rare beef, pork loin and butts, but don't have twenty probes sticking out of the meat during the cook.

I am however a stickler on fire management on my pit for the cleanest burn, and may obsess a bit here, unless the meat is foiled..

The learning curve for me has been greatly reduced by forums such as this, where I asked a Gazillion questions, but I feel I have learned a good bit so I can give back what I have learned to the forum, this makes it all worth it.

 

[stealthchef]

You are the kind of person I try to be like! I keep a therm on the meat and another on the ambient temp. It's so much much more to be a true pit master, the guy that keeps the party happy to make everyone enjoy the event itself! You are awesome to get that. My sister and I are so opposite in life and I had to do BBQ for her wedding and I poured my whole life into it. That's the greatness. A "22 Weber. A Chimney smoker you don't know where or why. You just do it. 

 

[GaryHibbert]

I have to agree totally with SQWIB. My first smoker, an elcheapo WallyWorld offset, I tried everything to improve it. I sealed up as many leaks as possible. Extended the exhaust chimney about 8 times til I figured I had the best length, put in a heat sink and heat baffles, added an AMNPS and mailbox, switched the firebox over to propane, and altered the height and position of the grates. Did it help? Sure--a bit. Was it worth the time and effort? Sure it was, because every time I modded something I learned more about my smoker and smoking meat.

Now I have a MES 30 Gen 1. I used the same mailbox and AMNPS (with legs), and now use a Maverick 733 and a $12 instant read therm. One probe in the meat and one in the cook chamber.

The only mod to the MES I've done is to remove the top vent and add a shiny tin can for a chimney. Not much.

But the lessons I learned along the way from my successes and failures, along with the priceless info from this forum, have made me unbelievably better. I'm usually very pleased with the bbq I put out.

There's no stress in bbq now. The cooking temp doesn't have to be bang on--just close. The meat is done when it's done. I don't obsess with the little things, I just bbq and enjoy.

Sure, every once in a while I have a total fail. And believe me, when I have a fail its usually a real humdinger. But hey, life would be pretty boring if things always worked out perfectly.

Gary

 

[hardcookin]

It seems that Franklin sets the standard these days, and he doesn't get real complicated. He just stays consistent with what works for him.
One thing he does do is buy good brisket. And I remember reading he is particular with what wood he uses. How many of us are particular with what wood we burn?
There is an awful lot of information floating around on the Internet and I think that can be good & bad. Sometimes everything we read that our brain absorbs gets us over thinking smokes. On the other hand it can be helpful looking up how to smoke things and what rubs & sauces to use etc. And who doesn't like gadgets...

Too me you need to learn fire management and what the pit likes before you can even get close to producing a good BBQ. Every pit is different and all requires learning to manage the fire to achieve proper temps which in turn will produce good Q.
I think the more you smoke the simpler things become.

 

[dirtsailor2003]

KISS method is best.

Keep It Simple Smoker.

Most over think and over complicate the process.

 

[sqwib]

KISS method is best.

Keep It Simple Smoker.

Most over think and over complicate the process.

This is true, but the KISS method is sort of what I like to refer to as an "Achievement".

Most folks that use or suggest the KISS method are seasoned and have been around the block.

You really don't see many newbies saying use the KISS method.

 

[johnmeyer]

KISS is good.

However, tinkering is better.

Why?

Because you can get what YOU want, not what a manufacture built for everyone else.

Also, I refuse to believe that we all wasted time putting hemis on our '57 Chevys. That was a classic case of tinkering and "over engineering."

 

[sxfxz]

[quote name="johnmeyer"] Also, I refuse to believe that we all wasted time putting hemis on our '57 Chevys. That was a classic case of tinkering and "over engineering."
[/quote]

As much as I love souped up big blocks, nothing beats cruising in a 4 door 57 with a straight 6 and 3 on the tree. lol My dream car. Owned one for a while, sold it to move to TX. I'm 26, there's still love for 57's!

http://s10.photobucket.com/user/SxFxZ/media/ED2C0D34-313A-4D99-B81F-D59EAB4EEFA1.jpg.html

 

[palladini]

I have only had my Weber Kettle for about 4 years now and my Masterbuilt 30 inch for about the same amount of time.  Everything I did before that was burgers, steaks and Hot Dog on Gas grills i owned over the years.  The last smoke I did, which I remember ( I am on disability for memory issues) was about the middle of August this year.  Money is a serious issue in this House, living in Ontario, Canada, with the highest hydro rates in North America.  Any way, I did a Pork Butt Roast, marinated in some Apple Cider and a bit of Apple Cider vinegar and some Garlic and some fresh herbs I got out of the garden and half a mickey of Amber rum, for two days then smoked it to IT of 205.  I will tell you that was the best pork roast I have ever done.

In the house, I do fair amount of cooking, my problem is I can do one dish good, but meal a meal together, I have lost that ability.

As far as Mods to my smoker, I think the 5 X 8 AMNPS might be the only mod I have ever did.  I set that on the rods left of the smoker box and it does very good there.