Expectations Low

Looks like Phin will be on my BTR show tonight. He informs me that he has barbecued dozens of whole hogs, so I think he may possibly have some valuable input. And he's from North Carolina.

I'm ashamed to say that Kentucky is a lame barbecue state. I never knew anyone up there who smoked meat.

Right now, I'm trying the thin-smoke approach on a rack of spare ribs. I went to Winn-Dixie and got one rack of ribs and a bag of hickory chips, plus another foul four-pack of Milwaukee's Best. I threw a rub on the ribs, and they're going to get six full hours of weak smoke at 225 degrees. We'll see if it works.

I really like using a towel to carry pork to the smoker. It's so easy to hold onto, and then you lay it down and do the rub on top of it, and when you roll it up, all the mess is inside it.

My rub continues to amaze me, because I knew nothing about rubs when I came up with it. In fact, I still know nothing about rubs. I guess as long as you have salt, cumin, and mustard, you have a rub. The chipotles make a wonderful difference, but plain cayenne is excellent.

I wish I had some beef fat to smear on them. But corn oil is actually okay.

I'm going to check the smoke box every half-hour until about 6:30 and make sure that wimpy smoke is working.

I have a feeling I am wasting pork, spices, chips, and bad beer. But it's for science, so I'll get over it.

Speaking of science, here is what my scientific training suggests to me. You're probably better off using lots of thick smoke.

Here is my theory. The effect smoke has on ribs is mostly from airborn crap depositing itself on the meat and working its way in. Or maybe some of it comes from compounds formed when the smoke gases hit the meat. In any event, the gases are not penetrating the meat. That's physically impossible, or at least extremely slow.

The effect must be from the chemicals on the outside of the meat spreading into the depths and reacting with the pork. If that's true, you would want to get the chemicals onto the outside of the meat as early as possible, to give them the maximal amount of time to do the job. If you use weak smoke, the chemicals will form very slowly, so you would expect the effects to be much weaker, because you would have less stuff doing the work.

Maybe that's wrong, but it comports with common sense.

I always smoke the hell out of the meat until the outside looks right, and then I let it cook without smoke. If my theory is right, the stuff that forms while the smoke is billowing is at work during the smokeless part of the cooking.

Anyway, we'll see what the test proves.

Remember this: whatever the truth about smoke is, barbecue lore is absolutely full of complete bullshit. Never trust it when your experience contradicts it.