Jump On In...The Water's Fine!

If you can't tell yet, eating BBQ is something I am pretty passionate about. It started out going to my favorite BBQ restaurants and loving the food and experiences with friends and family and as soon as I was able, it turned into a love of making it myself! Nothing beats the smell of some dry rubbed meat sitting over charcoal and wood chips wafting over your neighborhood on a weekend. For me, watching everyone I love enjoying the food I made together is about as good as it gets. So why not give it a try?

At its most simple level, all smoking meat requires is a grill or smoker , a heat source cable of safely heating up wood chips or chunks, and the ability to cook your meat usually off-set of the direct heat source because you can't rush good BBQ! 

If you don't have a dedicated smoker yet that is designed for that purpose, that's ok. Most standard grills can be used to achieve a basic smoke without much effort. If using a standard charcoal grill, simply build a pile of coals off to one side of the grill and place wood chips either directly on the coals or in a tin foil pack with some holes in it to allow the smoke to escape as the wood chips or chunks heat up. Place your meat on the opposite side of the grill from the coals and "Bam" as my daughter says, you are smoking meat! 

Most hardware stores today sell a wide selection of wood chips/chunks for smoking. The most common varieties are hickory, oak, apple, cherry, pecan, and mesquite. As with all things BBQ you will have to play around and decide which varieties go best with which types of food you are cooking. 

Now if you are like me, and enjoy having some gear. You have probably looked at or bought a smoker and want to dive in. Great! Let's go down that BBQ rabbit hole. In general the most common types of smokers you are going to see on the home market are vertical smokers like the Weber Smokey Mountain, ceramic smokers like the Big Green Egg and Kamado, electric cabinet smokers like the Masterbuilt, offset smokers like the Oklahoma Joe series, and pellet smokers like the Traeger line (don't worry my wife shot me down on ordering a 15 foot commercial trailer kettle smoker to put on the deck too!) 

Regardless of what you settle on (and there are other kinds too) the same basic concept of heating up meat over a lower heat than grilling and letting wood chips or pellets generate smoke during the cooking process to absorb into your meat is going to make your BBQ day!

On Deck Dad BBQ I am using a LG Big Green Egg and a 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain for my cooks primarily, so that's what I am going to describe from here.

You have your smoker (or grill), you went out and bought some delicious cut of meat you were dreaming about all day at work Friday, and you are ready to light the fire and get your BBQ on! If using a charcoal smoker, you need to start there. Mostly it boils down to briquets vs. lump charcoal. Briquets are the more traditional rectangular charcoal that you think of when imagining a backyard grill. Lump charcoal is chunks of wood that have been charred into charcoal. There are pros and cons to both in the smoking world, but no matter what you decide to use avoid pre-treated charcoal that comes with an igniter fluid on the charcoal. This is going to leave your food tasting like an auto shop and not the sweet wood smoke smell you are craving. 

Once you have your charcoal you will pour a pile into your smoker. There are of course many ways to light your charcoal (and toys to buy here as well), my prefered way is to use a charcoal chimney to get a load of coals hot and then carefully pour them onto the charcoal pile to get things going. The amounts of charcoal in your pile and starter chimney will depend on the temp and length of cook you are getting into. 

Once your smoker gets up to your desired temp (which can often take 20-30 minutes so be prepared), add the wood chips or chunks to the coals. For most smokes I add 2-3 large chunks of the wood in a spread out area of the coals. Depending on how long you are smoking or how much meat you have on, you may need to add more along the way. That's where the fun comes in as you dial in your smoking process. Unless you are using a blower accessory and temp app (yep they have them, yep they can be awesome), you will use the dampers to adjust the heat by opening and closing them accordingly to adjust the oxygen cycling over the coals in the smoker. Each type of smoker is a bit different here, so trial and error is a great teacher when getting used to your smoker. 

Lastly, if your smoke calls for indirect heat put in your heat deflector or make sure your coals are centered away from the cooking area and get ready for some magic.

Now that your smoker is humming right along, a beautiful plume of white smoke is sifting out of the top air damper and you feel like you should be turning up the BB King and cracking open a beverage, it's time to put your meat on. Every recipe is a little different in the prep required when cooking your BBQ based on the cut of meat, however a good general rule is you don't want to be putting meat directly from the fridge onto the smoker if you can avoid it. Most recipes will call for some time for your cut to acclimate to the ambient temp prior to going over the heat. 

Now for the moment we have all been waiting for - put that meat on the grill grate, throw in your remote thermometer probes if you have them (I highly recommend you have them) and it's finally time to sit back and start smoking!