What the best piece of advice you've received for BBQ?

[Lake Dogs]

Curious: What’s the best piece(s) of advice you’ve received that improved your BBQ?


I have 3. The first one took my BBQ from a frankly below-average backyard BBQ to a very good backyard BBQ, and the other two combined to take that to a competition-worthy eats.

1) Do not force your smoker to any one particular temperature; let it settle in at its performance level.

I was reading all the top books wanting to have your Q at 225 and lower. As it ended up, I was smothering/choking the fire all to dickens and ended up with creosote meat that was undercooked leather.


2) Temperature is to be measured ON the cooking surface; NOT an externally mounted thermometer.

I found that on one of my smokers the surface temperature was nearly 30 degrees LOWER than the externally mounted thermometer, and another smoker was 20-50 degrees HOTTER than the externally mounted thermometer. I’ll be frank, it’s tough to get a butt up to 195 degrees when you’re cooking at 195 degrees…

3) Sweet Blue. Start to finish. No billowy smoke, and definitely not BLACK billowy.

Lots of hardware vendors will instruct you to soak your wood/chips. B.S. The fire will be cooler and choked down, and the result tends to be billowy white. The result is creosote on your BBQ. Let the fire burn clean. Sweet blue is thin and barely noticeable. Watch what a major difference in the taste that you have. It’s a night-and-day difference.

 

[Ron_L]

Don’t think, just cook!

 

[PatAttack]

Good to see you back, Hance!

Like Hance said, don't fuss about the temp too much.

It's done when it's done.

 

[Titch]

Start early and Hold

 

[16Adams]

Buy a pit barrel cooker.
Learn to leave things alone and cook.

 

[JAKs Q & brew]

Cook it till it done

If you are looking you ain't cooking

 

[zippy12]

Thin Blue Smoke!

 

[Whumpa]

Practice. Reading all the books, watching all the YouTube videos as all good and fine but cooking is the best way to learn.

 

[LongTong]

Grilling is not BBQ!

 

[Greygoose]

Smell it and touch it

 

[SlickRockStones]

My dad built a stone pit at our cabin on Slick Rock Mt. near Brevard, NC. in 1976. He advised me to not use that old charcoal but to grab those hickory splits and get them burning and don’t set the mountain on fire!

 

[blackdogbbq21]

Feel trumps temperature pulling meat

 

[Lake Dogs]

My dad built a stone pit at our cabin on Slick Rock Mt. near Brevard, NC. in 1976. He advised me to not use that old charcoal but to grab those hickory splits and get them burning and don’t set the mountain on fire!

LMAO!!! Yes, I can see where setting the mountain on fire might be counter-productive.

 

[Lake Dogs]

Don’t think, just cook!

No doubt; early on I was OVER OVER OVER thinking and ended up forcing the food to nasty.

 

[jermoQ]

Smoke is a seasoning for BBQ, not the main ingredient...

When I started cooking with this tip in mind, I was making tastier food.

 

[frankenfab]

Feel trumps temperature pulling meat

This. Feel your meat and wiggle the bone. If you don't have a bone, just feel your meat.

 

[TravelingJ]

It's done when it's done.

Start early and Hold

Feel trumps temperature pulling meat

Several of my cigar chat friends, have bought smokers in recent weeks. The above advice, are all things that I've learned here, and told all of them.

The other big one that this board taught me, was that it's okay to have personal preferences. Just because ribs are perfectly bite through, doesn't mean my dad is wrong for wanting them to fall of the bone.

So my main advice, is to cook for your audience. Sometimes your goal is to please yourself-so cook for that. Other times, you want a crowd to be happy-so cook for how they want it.

 

[sudsandswine]

I would have to say, cooking to texture, not to time or temp. This applies to grilling steaks and giving them a poke to brisket and butts, probe tender, or ribs with the bend test. Often time, temp, and texture intersect but it’s important to know what to do when any side of that triangle misbehaves.

 

[sudsandswine]

Several of my cigar chat friends, have bought smokers in recent weeks. The above advice, are all things that I've learned here, and told all of them.

The other big one that this board taught me, was that it's okay to have personal preferences. Just because ribs are perfectly bite through, doesn't mean my dad is wrong for wanting them to fall of the bone.

So my main advice, is to cook for your audience. Sometimes your goal is to please yourself-so cook for that. Other times, you want a crowd to be happy-so cook for how they want it.

This too :clap2:

 

[toddrhodes]

Two things:

Have to burn, to learn. For me, I've learned far more from my mistakes in BBQ than from anything I've read/watched/been told. Experience is the best teacher.

And leftovers, specifically vac-packing and freezing or just refrigerating if they can be eaten soon after the main cook. It's amazing how the flavors develop a little better and you trade some texture for flavor - but good lord have my lunches been fantastic lately. I try to plan one big cook per week. That produces a couple nice dinners and a couple weeks' worth of leftovers. Just trying to be efficient in my wood usage

I thought of a third one - Google once told me I should check out bbq-brethren.com. That was some solid advice.