Not getting smoke flavor

Assuming it's not something obvious like you had them in foil...

My experience is that electric cookers do best with small form factor flavorwood; i.e. chips, pellets or better yet, sawdust. Even so, if heavy smoke is what you are looking for you might need to move to a smoker that relies on combustion for heat instead of electrons.

Also, be aware that regardless of the cooker, smoke is not going to penetrate into the center of a thick cut like a pork butt. That's why you mix the bark in with the inner meat, because the inside meat tends to be bland. (For this same reason many inject to add flavor to the interior of butts)

Hope that helps!

-Gowan

Did you're cook temp differ from the first cook to the other three ?

deeman said:

I am still new here and have learned a lot from this site and just upgraded to a membership to get even more helpful info.

I tried smoking my 4th pork butt and hoped for a different outcome, but I am still not getting ANY noticeable smoke flavor. It's like it came from the oven.

I am using a Brinkman Electric Smoker (egg type) and I use bagged apple wood chunks from Meijer (like Walmart). There is a very good amount of smoke poring out of the smoker during the entire cook time.

On a good note, it's the best pork butt I have done - I finally had patience and let er' sit until it read 195.

Also - as a last note, the first butt I did had great smokey flavor but I pulled it too early so although it tasted nice and smokey it was a bit tough. The three remaining butts did not have any smoke flavor.

Any advice?

thanks!

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I have zero experience with electric smokers.
But, in my opinion, the smoke seems to get into the meat early in the cook.
I did 2 big butts yesterday (20# total - boneless) and foiled them at 170 to speed things up after around 6 hours.
But those butts had perfect flavor - the crowd went nuts.
I used my WSM and used about 4 fist-szed chunks of cherry wood.
I also had a 5# brisket on.
But the smoke flavor was certainly there.
Are you throwing your meat on straight out of the fridge?
Try letting it come to room temperature before you throw it on, if you're not already doing that.
Cold meat seems to resist smoke more than room temp meat.
Other than that, my only advice would be to get a proper charcoal smoker
Good luck!

How long were the Butts on the Smoker???

"The wood was placed directly beside the element and not wrapped in foil. I also mixed up the wood between wood soaked for an hour and dry wood."


Don't know how hot this element gets but if your wood chips catch fire you will get very little or no smoke flavour. Hope this helps,
Big Kahuna

As for letting the meat come up in temp before putting on the cooker, that is actually a bit counter productive to getting a good smokey flavor...plain & simple the longer its on the more smoke it absorbs… put it on right out of the fridge, it will go through the same "warming" in or out of the smoke, might as well do it in the smoke IMO.

deeman said:

okay - let me ask this. If there is a very good stream of smoke coming from the smoker, can some of this smoke simply not add smoke flavor?

Seems like a dumb question and maybe I am over thinking it but does some smoke "enhance" the meat while other types just release and add no flavor to the meat? Could it be the wood?

All I know is the darn thing smokes a lot during the entire cook. In terms of quantity of wood I use the chunks in the bag and went through about 12-15 chunks in the 4 hours. Roughly 3-5 at a time and replenished every 1.5 hours.

It took 4 hours to cook the 2.7lb butt to 190*

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Hmm, it almost seems to me that you might be used to over smoked food... I mean no offense by that at all, its just that its very common for folks that are newer to smoking to be used to their "uncle Joe's" bbq that is often times far too over smoked to actually be enjoyable to those with expirence.
Smoke should be an ingredient in the food, just as salt & spices... not the dominating flavor. Properly smoked meat should have a fairly mellow tone to it, not an in-your-face type flavor.

I suggest this, make another butt, smoke it till it pulls (195-205*) and then just pull off a piece of outter bark and taste that for smoke, if the smoke is there but not too overpowering, then you've done right.
You should also see a small amount of smokering just under the bark, probably not much since you're using electric, but the burning wood should produce enough nitrogen dioxide to make a small/thin one...

Another great way to tell if you're getting adeqate smoke/too much smoke is to try some the next day when you haven't been smoking anything. While smoking your senses become saturated with smoke, making it extremely difficult to tell how much is really there.
Its kinda like when you're around a camp fire, you don't realize how much you stink until after you've showered and then pick up your clothes...

Dave Russell said:

What Knucklehead said.

Also, if you want more smoke flavor, use some or all hickory, not just apple. Here in the south, plain ole' apple smoke just doesn't count as bbq. I do mix fruitwood in, but you gotta have some hickory in there for butt and brisket, IMHO.

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Big time on this point. I'm a hickory guy who recently picked up a bag of apple chunks to see what all the talk was about. Apples and Oranges (or hickory :tsk, night and day, etc, etc, etc between the two. If you want smoke flavor you need a heavy hitter like Hickory or Mesquite.

Use wood!!