If you aren't using wood, you aren't making "real" BBQ.

txschutte

txschutte

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The article sounds pretty spot on to me. :-D Oh, and +1 for cooking with "wood."
 
I tend to agree with her when it comes to wood.. Who wants bbq that's not smoked. wood is what was used back in the day, not liquid smoke, gas grills or ovens. and the words boil, broil, or steam have no place in our world
 
I think she's pretty much right but i do feel the lump charcoal, hardwood briquettes and wood chunks i use and cooking over the fire is real BBQ. I wouldn't expect her to address that in the article though because she's talking about large quantity restaurant cooking.

Not a fan of easy bake ovens, electric or propane "smokers" for real Q even though they make "smoke"
 
I call bull ****! She is a moron. I am so sick of that is bbq that is not bbq. If you want to get technical it should be made in a pit a real hand dug pit and it should be covered with leaves and burried in dirt. Bbq has evolved and has branched out in a lot of directions. Are you really going to agree that the guy who cooks with charcoal in a WSM or an ugly drum smoker or a pellet grill or whatever fuel or smoker you use is not real bbq? The words real or authentic bbq are a load of crap. There is no such thing as authentic or real bbq. Bbq is always evolving. Certain parts of bbq are new but it is still bbq.
 
Right about some things, wrong about others. Writer can't seem to wrap her mind around the fact that smoke is the important thing and heat source is really irrelevant. BTW, she's also conflating "BBQ" with "smoked", which is a mistake because they aren't equivalent terms. Not all "smoked" food is "BBQ" and not all "BBQ" is smoked.
 
Demosthenes9 said:
smoke is the important thing and heat source is really irrelevant.
Click to expand...
Did you know that most of the flavor actually comes from combustion gasses and only part from smoke? Propane or natural gas actually produces combustion gasses that flavor the food just not as much as wood will. Electric of course produces no combustion gasses.

You can fake it by burning chips and pellets in non wood/charcoal burners but it's not the same.
 
Fwismoker said:
Did you know that most of the flavor actually comes from combustion gasses and only part from smoke? Propane or natural gas actually produces combustion gasses that flavor the food just not as much as wood will. Electric of course produces no combustion gasses.

You can fake it by burning chips and pellets in non wood/charcoal burners but it's not the same.
Click to expand...


IIRC, it's the smoke ring that comes from combustion gasses. I get plenty of smoke flavor from my propane rig whether I use chips, chunks or pellets in an AMNTS, and dad, bless his soul, got WAY TOO much smoke flavor from his electric Mr. Smoker.
 
Demosthenes9 said:
IIRC, it's the smoke ring that comes from combustion gasses. I get plenty of smoke flavor from my propane rig whether I use chips, chunks or pellets in an AMNTS, and dad, bless his soul, got WAY TOO much smoke flavor from his electric Mr. Smoker.
Click to expand...

No one would say that you can't put a smoke generator with a non wood burner and get smoke flavor...it's the complexity of the flavors you get from all wood.

Combustion gasses add the majority of the flavor aside from the smoke ring.

Combustion byproducts
Logs, charcoal, gas, pellet, and electric cookers each produce tastably different flavors because each fuel produces a unique combination of combustion byproducts.

Electric cookers use a hot coil for heat, so there is no combustion and thus no combustion gases. Even if you put wood chips on an electric coil, the flavor of the smoke is vastly different, and to my palate, inferior because the food lacks the complexity that combustion gases the other fuels produce. The secret to good flavor is the right combustion gases plus smoke from wood
 
Fwismoker said:
No one would say that you can't put a smoke generator with a non wood burner and get smoke flavor...it's the complexity of the flavors you get from all wood.

Combustion gasses add the majority of the flavor aside from the smoke ring.

Combustion byproducts
Logs, charcoal, gas, pellet, and electric cookers each produce tastably different flavors because each fuel produces a unique combination of combustion byproducts.

Electric cookers use a hot coil for heat, so there is no combustion and thus no combustion gases. Even if you put wood chips on an electric coil, the flavor of the smoke is vastly different, and to my palate, inferior because the food lacks the complexity that combustion gases the other fuels produce. The secret to good flavor is the right combustion gases plus smoke from wood
Click to expand...



Yeah, just ran over and reviewed Meathead's article on it and I get where he's going with it and I agree to an extent.

Am collecting my thoughts on it and will reply later.
 
I have to agree with the article,... to an extent. I agree that wood has to be used in order to make real BBQ and I happen to use nothing but wood to cook with but to say that using a charcoal cooker with wood chunks isn't "real" BBQ would be a mistake. An electric smoker using wood chips can create a very nice product as can a gas cooker or any other that uses an alternative fuel source for heat as long as the flavor is from burning wood in SOME form.
The source of the heat is not important, only the source of the flavor that is imparted to the food. I use a stick burner and I personally think that the flavor and quality of the finished product from that type of cooker is unmatched but an insulated cooker run with a good clean burning lump and some wood chunks makes some pretty good Q as well and we all choose our cookers for personal reasons including time for cooking and space to put a cooker or what kind of cooker the HOA or building management will even allow!
Real BBQ is a meat that is slowly cooked with real wood smoke for flavor. As long as the smoke flavor isn't coming from a bottle or a seasoning of some kind, it's the real thing in my opinion.:wink:
 
I disagree with a few points in the article, but, they are my own biases. However, I wholeheartedly agree with Shane, that all wood does not define BBQ. If you are burning wood to create the flavor, then you are cooking BBQ, and quite frankly, if you want to burn that wood in a gas or electric cooker, as long as you are burning wood, you are cooking BBQ, perhaps not good BBQ, but still, it is BBQ.

The real issue, is I am one too, who gets tired of the dogma of 'you have to do this, or it ain't that'. I cook in a tin can, over charcoal. And even friends of mine out here have told me I don't cook BBQ because I am not all wood, well, whatever, when I feed people, they think it's BBQ. I don't understand why it always has to come down to being some exclusive thing.

I'll add this, the misspelled words thing, drives me nuts. On one hand, I hear all the time 'English is our language' etc...well, then stop disrespecting it and use it properly. Spell things right.
 
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