To get a handle on how cooking changes meat, it helps to know what’s in it in the first place.

The Makeup of Meat

Muscle tissue typically consists of a few basic components: water, protein, fats, and tiny amounts of carbohydrates, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals.

These figures are averages and don’t include bones. Some individual cuts will have more fat and less protein and water.
Animal % Water % Protein % Fats % Other
Beef 72 21 6 1
Pork 69 20 10 1
Chicken 73 21 5 1
Lamb 73 20 5 2
Cod 81 17 1 1
Salmon 64 21 14 1

No matter how fatty or lean the cut of meat, it is constructed in the same way.

Myth The red juice is blood.

BUSTED! People call the pink juice from meat blood, but it is not. It is myowater. If it were blood, it would be dark, almost black, just like your blood, and would coagulate on the plate. But instead it remains pink, thin, and watery. Let’s just call it “juice” from now on, OK? I’m convinced that calling it blood is why many people swear off meat and others insist their meat be cooked well-done.

Slow-Twitch Vs Fast-Twitch Muscles

Muscles need fat and oxygen for fuel. Myoglobin stores oxygen for release during heavy exertion, and in general, the more work a muscle does, the more oxygen-laden myoglobin it needs. This makes the muscle darker in color and richer in flavor. Dark meats like chicken thighs consist of slow-twitch muscles designed for steady movement and endurance. White meats like chicken breasts, on the other hand, are mostly fast-twitch muscles designed for brief bursts of energy. White meats tend to be less juicy and flavorful because the muscles are worked less and contain less myglobin, fat, collagen, and moisture. That’s why chicken breasts dry out more easily than legs and thighs. Chickens and turkeys get more exercise standing and walking, so the legs and thighs have lots of slow-twitch muscles, more pigment, more juice, more fat, and more flavor. That’s why dark meat is more forgiving when cooked.

Because they fly and swim, ducks and geese get even more exercise than chickens and turkeys do and they have more dark meat. Duck breasts are deep purple, almost the same color as lamb or beef.

Modern domestic pigs raised in confinement fall somewhere in between. They don’t get much exercise and have been bred to contain less intramuscular fat to become “the other white meat.” But heritage pork from pastured pigs is noticeably redder, juicier, and more flavorful because of the extra exercise and the extra myoglobin the muscles get.

Beef is all pretty much loaded with myoglobin and dark red all over, so it has a deeper, richer flavor.

Fish live in a practically weightless environment, so their muscles contain very little connective tissue. The color and texture of fish vary depending on the life it leads. Small fish like rainbow trout swim with quick darting motions and have mostly fast-twitch muscles and tender, white meat. Bluefin tuna, on the other hand, swim long distances with slow, powerful tail movements, so they have firmer, darker, sometimes even red flesh. Either way, the lack of connective tissue means that fish never really gets tough when cooked, although it can dry out on the grill because there isn’t much collagen to moisturize the muscle fibers.

Buying Meat

Lean in and I’ll tell you the most important secret to getting good meat: Get to know your butcher. Knowing a good butcher is more important than knowing a good stockbroker. The head butcher is usually on duty early morning through early afternoon, and the assistant comes on for the later shift. Stop at the counter and ask for an introduction. Don’t be surprised if he is a she. Get the direct phone number of the meat department. Bring her a slab of your ribs for lunch one day. Set yourself apart from the crowd.

I often hear, “I’d like to try cooking a whole brisket, but none of my local groceries carry it.” Of course not. There’s not enough demand. But most butchers can order whatever you want and have it there in a few days. They can also custom-grind hamburger with your favorite blend, cut steaks to the thickness you want, and get the freshest fish. If they can’t or won’t, find a new butcher.

Linger over the meat counter and choose carefully. Look at the thickness and evenness of the cut. If one end is thinner, that end will overcook. Look at the exterior fat. You’ll want to remove most of it, so find cuts with the least waste. Often, two packages of the same cut can have very different marbling. Look for liquid in the package. This is called purge, and it may be a sign that the meat has been frozen and thawed. This moisture and flavor cannot be replaced. Avoid packages with a lot of purge.

Remember, cool meat attracts more smoke.

Read the fine print when you shop. Meats labeled “enhanced,” “flavor-enhanced,” “self- basting,” “basted,” “pre-basted,” “injected,” or “marinated” can have salty fluids or flavorings injected. These additives can enhance taste and improve moisture retention when cooked, but why pay more for saltwater? You do not need additives if you prep and cook the meat properly. If you want salt, add it yourself.

Myth Let meat come to room temperature before cooking.

BUSTED! A lot of recipes, especially those for big roasts, direct you to take the meat out of the fridge an hour or two ahead of time and let it come up to room temperature before cooking. Here’s the theory: Say you want a steak to be served medium-rare, about 130°F. If your fridge is 38°F, then the meat must climb 92°F. But if the meat is at room temperature, 72°F, then it only needs to climb 58°F. It will cook faster and there will be less overcooked meat just below the surface.

But a 1½-inch-thick steak takes more than 2 hours for the center to come to room temperature. A 4½-pound pork roast 3½ inches thick takes—are you ready?—10 hours!

Take your meat straight from the fridge to the cooker. It is safe, it will warm much faster in the cooker than on the kitchen counter, and remember, cool meat attracts more smoke.

Tenderness of Meat

Two major factors influence meat tenderness: the condition of the myofibrils and the condition of the connective tissues. If the myofibrils remain intact and the connective tissues remain unaltered, meat can be tough. Cooking meat slowly breaks them down and softens them. The specific muscle, the breed of the animal, what the animal was fed, its age, how it was slaughtered, how the meat was aged, and how the meat was cooked and sliced all influence tenderness as well.

Enzyme Tenderizing

Enzymes are large molecules, mostly proteins, that act as the catalysts of the cellular world. Enzymes are largely responsible for the tenderizing of some meats as they age. You can buy powdered enzyme meat tenderizers in stores. Adolph’s is the most popular brand. Its active ingredient is the enzyme papain, extracted from papayas. You can also use fresh papaya juice as a tenderizing marinade. Fresh pineapple juice also contains an effective tenderizing enzyme, bromelain. Canning and bottling render the enzymes ineffective, so you must use fresh juices.

Most enzymatic tenderizers work best in the 120 to 160°F range. They are ideal for quickly tenderizing thin cuts of meat. But on a thick cut, if you are trying to cook the meat between rare and medium, you’re likely to get a mushy surface and not much internal tenderizing. Some recipes suggest poking the steak with a fork to allow enzymes to penetrate. Stabbing drives contaminants into the meat and is not a safe practice.

Mechanical Tenderizing

The time-honored method of tenderizing meat is to beat it with a meat mallet. The one shown below has a flat surface on one side, which flattens the meat and breaks some of the bonds between the connective tissues, loosening the fibers. The flip side has triangular spikes that actually cut through the fibers. Neither is recommended.

Some cooks prefer the more contemporary Jaccard tenderizer below, which has a number of very sharp stainless-steel blades that slice through the meat fibers and connective tissues. But anything that punctures the surface of the meat can push pathogens into the center. If you cook the meat above 165°F, you have nothing to fear, but if you cook to medium-rare, or pink, you could be asking for a tummy ache with a Jaccard.

 

Pound Chicken Breasts for Even Cooking

If you cook the center of the bulge in a chicken breast to 160°F, as you must for food safety, then the tapered edges become dry and tough. The solution is to pound the breasts flat. Now, when you cook, the heat can enter evenly on all sides.

Lay the meat in a zipper-top bag or on a sheet of plastic wrap just off center and fold the other half of the plastic over it. The plastic keeps the juices from flying around the room. Flatten the bulge with the bottom of a heavy skillet or saucepan, both of which apply more even pressure than a mallet or rolling pin. Don’t haul off like you are pounding a nail. Thwack it gently and focus on the thick end. Several focused whacks work better than one vicious spanking. Take it down to about ¾ inch thick. Because it is so thin, it will cook faster.

Slicing Meat Across the Grain Makes it More Tender

Start by noting which way the grain of the fibers runs in the raw meat. In the flank steak shown below left, it runs from lower left to upper right. When you slice the cooked meat, you should cut at a 90° angle across the grain from the upper left to the lower right, parallel to the black line.

In the photo below right, the top slice is cut the wrong way—with the grain. It will be stringier and harder to chew. The bottom slice is cut properly, across the grain and thinly. It will be easier to chew.

Juiciness of Meat

As we know, meat contains about 70 percent water, but what we perceive as juiciness is more complicated than that. So what influences juiciness?

  1. 1. Free water in the raw meat

  2. 2. Water bound with proteins

  3. 3. Water bound within the architecture of the muscles

  4. 4. Melted and softened fats, especially marbling

  5. 5. Gelatinized collagen

  6. 6. Saliva, which is activated by the sight, smell, and taste of food, as well as by seasonings, especially salt

Some meats, like pork ribs, pork butt, and beef brisket, are often smoked low and slow up to about 203°F, way past well-done and into the zone where water is supposed to disappear. Much of it does. But these cuts get their juiciness from rendered fat, melted connective tissue, and salty rubs that force you to salivate.

Myth Searing meat seals in the juices.

BUSTED! This myth has been debunked in many labs, yet it can still be found in such improbable locations as the Ruth’s Chris Steak House website: “Our USDA Prime steaks are prepared in a special 1800°F broiler to seal in the juices and lock in that delicious flavor.”

Although searing browns and firms up the surface of meat, it does not weld the fibers shut and lock in the juices. As the food scientist Harold McGee says in his landmark book, On Food and Cooking, “The crust that forms around the surface of the meat is not waterproof, as any cook has experienced: the continuing sizzle of meat in the pan or oven or on the grill is the sound of moisture continually escaping and vaporizing.”

This doesn’t mean we should not sear. Searing produces browning, and as we shall see, that makes meat taste better.

What You Need to Know About Salt

Salt is a magical rock. It is the single most important flavor enhancer. Salt is a mineral, NaCl, consisting of one ion of sodium (Na) and one ion of chloride (Cl). This tiny, water-soluble crystal suppresses the taste of bitterness, balances sweetness, and deepens and enhances flavors. Just a small amount can really improve a dish. It can also aid in moisture retention during cooking and even tenderize.

Varieties of Salt

There are many types of salt, but when they are used in cooking, it is almost impossible to taste the differences.

  • Table salt is sea salt that has usually been mined from underground salt domes. It is then dissolved in water and refined to remove everything except NaCl, then ground into small, uniform, cube-shaped grains. Anticaking agents are added so it flows freely from salt shakers. Some table salt also includes iodine, an additive that helps prevent iodine deficiency.

  • Kosher salt has larger, flake-shaped grains and small amounts of anticaking agents but no iodine. Many chefs prefer kosher salt because the larger grains make it easier to pinch and sprinkle. Also, it is slower to dissolve on food surfaces, making it popular as a finishing salt. Morton’s and Diamond Crystal are the most popular brands, but their grain size is different. I use Morton’s in my recipes to standardize results and because it is easier to find.

  • Pickling salt contains neither iodine nor anticaking additives. It dissolves well in cold water, so it is a good choice for brines.

  • Sea salt, in today’s marketplace, usually describes salt that has been collected from shallow ponds from which the seawater has been evaporated. All salt comes from the sea or from underground deposits that were once the sea, so technically all salt is sea salt. But sun-dried sea salt usually has minute amounts of minerals and other impurities from the sea that can give it subtle flavors and colors ranging from pink to black. The vast majority of sea salt on the market is refined in a similar fashion to table salt and contains 99.5 percent sodium chloride. Among unrefined specialty sea salts, grain size can vary significantly from producer to producer. A bag of large-grain sea salt can also include fine powder. I don’t use sea salt in cooking since it is difficult to standardize quantities (see page 34). It can also be very expensive. I use sea salt only as a garnish at tableside.

  • Seasoned salts, like garlic salt and celery salt, can be found in grocery stores. I never use them in cooking because I prefer to control the amounts of these ingredients myself, as in the homemade herbed seasoned salt that I keep on my dining table.

  • Curing salts were created centuries ago, before refrigeration, to preserve meats such as bacon, hams, and corned beef. They all contain salt and nitrite, and some contain nitrate as well. These preservatives are very effective against the deadly botulism bacterium. Most curing salts are colored pink with a small amount of red dye so you don’t confuse them with table salt. The most common are Prague powder #1 and Prague powder #2. Pink salts such as Himalayan rock salt should not be confused with curing salts, and pink curing salts should never be used to season food during cooking or at the table.

Brining

If you like your meat juicy, tender, and flavorful, salting it before you cook can improve it on all three fronts. Dry brining and wet brining both get salt into the meat, and that improves its ability to hold water and boosts flavor.

Salt and Juiciness

When meat cooks, a significant amount of water evaporates from the surface and some gets squeezed out from cells and connective tissues that contract under heat. Lean cuts, like chicken breasts, turkey breasts, and pork loins, can dry out easily. How do you cook these meats to proper temperatures without turning them into shoe leather? Surprisingly, salt can help.

Meat proteins are complex, long, and coiled. When sodium and chloride ions penetrate the muscles, the electrical charges alter the proteins so they can hold moisture more tenaciously. As a result, less is lost during cooking.

Researchers at Cook’s Illustrated discovered that a chicken soaked in plain water and another soaked in wet brine each gained about 6 percent by weight. They cooked both birds as well as an unsoaked bird straight from the package. Weighed after cooking, the unsoaked chicken lost 18 percent of its original weight, while the chicken soaked in water lost 12 percent of its presoaked weight, and the brined chicken lost only 7 percent of its weight.

Lab tests conducted by Professor Blonder showed that the brine retained by the meat is concentrated near the surface. Thus, brining counteracts one of the biggest problems of grilling by helping hold moisture near the surface, which almost always dries out by the time the center is properly cooked.

Salt and Tenderness

Cooking meat gently to the proper temperature can tenderize it by relaxing the proteins, a process called denaturing. Salt can also denature proteins even before the meat hits the heat. But if you add too much salt, the muscle proteins can turn tough again during cooking.

Salt and Flavor

Salt actually expands our taste buds, so it acts as a flavor amplifier. It also suppresses our perception of bitterness.

How Brining Works

To study brine penetration, Professor Blonder took a 12-inch-long section of pork loin and soaked it in a wet brine. Periodically, he lopped off a cross-section and treated it with an indicator that detects salt. Here’s how far the brine penetrated:

30 minutes

:

1/10 inch

1 hour

:

¼ inch

8 hours

:

½ inch

24 hours

:

⅔ inch

That’s right: After 24 hours, the salt still hadn’t yet traveled 1 inch into the pork. Because it has less connective tissue, chicken is more porous, and salt will penetrate farther. Fish is more porous still. But you get the picture. When you brine, the salt remains pretty close to the surface.

To see how heat impacts salt penetration, he took a pork loin and rubbed it with curing salt. Then he washed it off and cooked it at 230°F. Periodically he cut off a slice and put it on a filter paper with a chemical that reacts with the salt. When the internal temperature of the meat rose, the salt migrated farther inward, far faster than it did when simply soaking in a wet brine.

Internal temperature 100°F

:

about ⅓ inch

125°F

:

½ inch

145°F

:

¾ inch

160°F

:

1 inch

Blonder’s experiments also showed that even though chicken and turkey skin are more than half fat, they will absorb salt. During cooking,

the skin releases the salt into the meat. Meats with a thick fat cap block salt penetration almost completely.

Myth Osmosis is how salt gets into meat during brining.

BUSTED! Cookbooks tell us that salt is pulled out of the brine and into the meat by osmosis. Osmosis is when ions and molecules pass through semipermeable membranes. Salt is a tiny two-atom molecule, and it gets into the meat primarily by diffusing through wide-open pores, sliced muscle fibers, capillaries, intracellular water, and other channels. Once within the meat, osmosis helps the salt get through cell membranes and into muscle fiber proteins.

Dry Brining Vs Wet Brining

For wet brining, we submerge food in a saltwater solution of 5 to 10 percent salinity. To wet brine you need to calculate the amount of water and the amount of salt, and then you have a big container of water you need to fit in the fridge. Dry brining is simpler and equally effective. The late chef Judy Rodgers of San Francisco’s famous Zuni Café popularized the dry-brining technique, and since discovering it, I almost never wet brine anymore.

To dry brine, you simply salt the meat a few hours before cooking. How much salt? Salt tolerance is so personal that it’s nearly impossible to give an exact amount. As a rule of thumb, sprinkle on about ½ teaspoon kosher salt (or ¼ teaspoon table salt) per pound of trimmed meat.

I dry brine almost all my meats, including steaks and chops, both beef and lamb, as well as many vegetables. They all benefit from the flavor boost and the water-retaining properties of salt. And dry brining helps poultry skin crisp, while wet brining softens it.

For Steaks and Chops

About an hour before cooking, sprinkle the salt on the meat, massage it in, and return it to the fridge. After an hour, you’re ready to cook.

For Roasts

Rub the salt over the entire surface area. For the best results, refrigerate the meat overnight or for a day. If the meat is tapered, like a leg of lamb, use less salt on the thin end.

For Chicken and Turkey

Professor Blonder’s tests have proven that salt does penetrate chicken and turkey skin, so go ahead and sprinkle the salt right on the skin. It may help crisp the skin. Breasts need more salt than thighs because they are thicker. Refrigerate for at least 2 to 4 hours.

Wet Brining

Wet brining works best on fish, chicken breasts, turkey breasts, and pork loin chops: food that cooks so quickly that the absorbed moisture doesn’t have time to drip out during heating. Chicken thighs, turkey thighs, and cuts of pork like ribs and shoulder are moist enough from fat that they don’t need wet brines. I never wet brine red meats unless I am making a cured meat like corned beef. Wet brines can make poultry skin soggy and harder to crisp.

If you decide to wet brine, the brine should contain 5 to 10 percent salt by weight. Recipes often call for 1 cup table salt to 1 gallon water for a 7.7 percent brine by weight. If you have kosher salt, use about double the volume.

Sugar in the Brine

Sugar is a huge molecule, and it cannot penetrate more than a fraction of an inch into meat. But adding sugar to a wet brine in about the same quantity as salt does have some benefits. The sugar sticks to the meat’s surface, gets into microscopic pores and cracks, and aids in browning, especially at lower temperatures.

Brining Vs Pickling Vs Curing

Pickling and curing are variations on the brining theme.

Pickling brine is more concentrated and strong enough to discourage microbial growth, thereby preserving the food. Pickling brines often include sugar, spices, and vinegar, and the brining time can last a week or more because it may take that long for some of the larger molecules to dissolve and enter the food.

Curing brines are also highly concentrated and usually include salts with nitrites and/or nitrates, which effectively kill the bacterium that causes botulism. Corned beef, hot dogs, bacon, ham, and many sausages are cured. Curing often takes days, even weeks, and can include sugar and spice and everything nice. Curing can be done wet (with salt dissolved in water) or dry (with salt applied to the food surface). The salt content is so high that curing can dehydrate the meat.

Rubs and Spice Blends

Some meats just don’t need anything more than a little salt and pepper. A great steak comes to mind, or a really fresh piece of swordfish. On the other hand, some meats like pork ribs love being rubbed with spices or swimming in sauce. As a rule of thumb, strong-tasting foods need little more than salt, while mild-tasting meats like pork, chicken breast, and turkey are blank canvases to be painted with herbs, spices, and flavorful liquids.

Dry rubs are spice blends that are rubbed onto meat before cooking. They include a wide range of flavors, such as barbecue rubs, jerk seasoning, curries, five-spice powder, chili powder, herbes de Provence, Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, and Old Bay. You can buy premixed rubs, but they are easy to make yourself, and every good barbecue cook should have a signature house rub to brag about. (Steal my recipes on pages 166–173, then experiment with your own variations.)

Spices and herbs are huge molecules compared to salt and they just don’t get more than a fraction of an inch past the surface. Think of salt as a treatment for the interior of the meat and spices and herbs as an exterior treatment, like a sauce.

You cannot judge a rub straight from the bottle: It tastes very different after cooking. The juices of the meat mix with the herbs and spices and they undergo chemical reactions catalyzed by the heat of the fire. You may hate rosemary, but it won’t stand out among the symphony of flavors in the rub and the meat.

Find a rub recipe you like, make a big batch, and put it in a large spice shaker with a lid. If it clumps or cakes, take a tip from diner waitresses: Dry some raw rice in the oven or a pan on the stove top and add it to the jar to absorb moisture.

Myth Massaging in the rub pierces the surface and makes the juices run out.

BUSTED! There is a reason they are called cuts of meat. Meat is muscle that has been cut to remove it from the bones, fat, and other muscles. It contains gazillions of muscle fibers that have been sliced open. The surface is full of microscopic ridges, valleys, pockmarks, and pores. Massaging in a rub won’t hurt the meat one bit—the meat will not lose any more juice than if you were to just sprinkle it on. In fact, rubbing a rub helps get it into the meat.

Injecting: No Wait, No Waste, More Flavor

Rubs, mops, marinades, brines, and sauces can deliver a lot of flavor to the surface of meat. But if you really want to get fats, herbs, spices, and other large molecules deep into the muscle tissue, injection is best.

You can do it at the last minute. It creates less waste. No huge containers are needed. And it doesn’t create refrigerator space problems.

The secret to injecting is to go easy. A good guideline is to shoot for 1 to 2 percent of the meat’s weight in salt and skip the big flavors like garlic, pepper, and herbs that mask the natural flavor of the meat. I have judged pulled pork and brisket at barbecue competitions where the meat was gushing juice, but it didn’t taste like meat. It tasted like apple juice and garlic. I want pork that tastes like pork, beef that tastes like beef, and turkey that tastes like turkey.

The best injections are saltwater or stock. And you don’t need much. Because meat is 70 percent water, it is already nearly saturated. Your injection will go between the muscle fibers and bundles, not within the fibers, and any excess will squirt out.

Since injecting can push contaminants from the surface deep into the meat, I recommend it only for meats that are cooked to 160°F or higher, like chicken, turkey, pork butt, and beef brisket.

Gizmos

There are a number of injection gizmos on the market, ranging from simple hypodermics to pumps that look like something used by the Orkin Man. For home use, I recommend a good, sturdy, meat-injector hypodermic.

The needles for this purpose are different than normal hypodermics. They aren’t open at the tip because a large opening at the tip gets clogged with meat easily. Meat injectors have holes in the sides of the needles that are less likely to clog, and the tip is a sharp point. Look for a stainless-steel one (plastic ones tend to break) with sturdy connections between the needle and the syringe body, and between the syringe and the plunger. You also want a tight gasket (preferably silicone) between the plunger and the interior of the syringe. The needle should be easy to remove, so everything is easy to break down and clean up. It helps if the needle can be stored inside the syringe, too, and the whole hypodermic should have a capacity of at least 2 ounces. You can get a nice stainless-steel model for less than $20.

Myth Apply the rub, then wrap the meat in plastic wrap and let it rest overnight for maximum penetration.

BUSTED! Plastic wrap does not force the large molecules into the meat like some sort of vacuum or pressure system. The plastic just gets stuck to the rub and pulls it off when the wrap is removed. Restaurant kitchens are required to cover or wrap meat so juices won’t contaminate other foods like vegetables, but at home, it’s not necessary if you are careful about cross-contamination.

You don’t have to put on a spice rub well in advance like salt: You can apply it to the meat just before cooking. Rub the mixture right onto the bare meat or help the rub stick by first applying a little water, mustard, or ketchup. My experience is that these additions make little or no difference in the final flavor, so use whatever you want to get the rub to stick.

Ingredients for Injection

Many barbecue champs use commercial products such as Butcher BBQ Original Brisket Injection, the ingredients list of which includes flavor enhancers like monosodium glutamate (MSG), hydrolyzed vegetable protein (another source of MSG), autolyzed yeast extract (more MSG), disodium inosinate, and guanylate. Butcher BBQ’s blends win trophies, and I’ve been impressed with the product during tastings.

Marinades rarely penetrate more than ⅛ inch.

I fill my injectors with a brine that is no more than 2 percent salt by weight. It diffuses to a lower concentration within the meat, which is enough to enhance flavor and bind water, but not so much that it gives the meat a cured flavor. When I add flavor, I try not to go crazy. You can add oils, herbs, spices, sweetners, syrups, sauces, stocks, broths, colorings, pretty much anything. But be thoughtful. Do you really want your turkey to taste like Dr Pepper? If you use herbs or spices, grind them fine. Dark liquids like soy sauce or Worcestershire will turn light-colored meats like chicken or turkey an unappealing color. And don’t go crazy with sweeteners. I have included some injection recipes on pages 161–162.

You can cook injected meat right away, but if you let the meat rest for an hour or more, or even overnight, the brine will disperse more evenly. Then apply your rub, and cook.

The Secrets and Myths of Marinades

Marinades are simply thin liquids that foods swim in before cooking, but marinades are bathed in myth and mystery. They usually have quite a few ingredients, such as salt, oil, flavorings, and acids. The molecules of each of these ingredients are different sizes. Some are attracted to the chemicals in meats, and some are repelled by them. In a few hours, even overnight, they rarely penetrate more than ⅛ inch. This means that marinades are more effective on thin cuts of meat.

What marinades do best is find their way into cracks and crevices on the surface of meats, producing a flavorful, baked-on seasoning, much like a dry rub. You can make a marinade with ingredients like wine, fruit juices, coconut milk, soft drinks, liqueurs, and other exotic flavors you won’t get from your spice rack. When the marinade dries out during cooking, it leaves behind its flavors.

The big problem with marinades is that they make the food wet. Most foods benefit from a flavorful brown crust that comes from radiant heat. When the surface is wet, it steams and doesn’t brown.

Gashing Helps Marinades Work

It helps to gash your food to allow the marinade flavors to sink in deeper. Cut slices into the surface or rough it up, and you’ll give the marinade cracks and pits to enter. You’ll also create more surface area for better browning.

Myth Marinades penetrate deep into meat.

Busted! In a series of experiments, we soaked a variety of meats and vegetables in a marinade of oil, vinegar, table salt, and green food coloring to see how deep the coloring penetrated. (Food coloring is a large molecule comparable to flavor molecules found in marinades.) Seafoods and some vegetables absorbed the coloring deeply, but for other meats, the coloring never got much past the surface.

We also soaked foods in marinades, cooked them, and carefully removed core samples from the center so as to not get juices from the surface on the samples. There was no evidence of the marinade penetrating that far.

We cut a crater in a steak and filled it with oil. After many hours, none of it had been soaked up by the meat because meat is 70 percent water, and oil and water don’t mix.

Making a Marinade

Once you understand how marinades really work, you can use them to your advantage.

  • Start with salt. The most important ingredient in a marinade, salt not only enhances flavors but also excels at penetrating meat. Soy sauce is a great source of salt.

  • Go wild with flavoring. Typical flavorings include herbs and spices like oregano, thyme, cumin, paprika, garlic, and onion powder, and even vegetables such as onion and jalapeño. It’s a good idea to add some umami, the savory, meaty flavor found in meat stocks, soy sauce, and mushrooms. It is also good to add just a little sugar to enhance surface browning.

  • Use acid judiciously. Citrus marinades have it all: acid, sugar, flavor, and aromatics. Acids can denature proteins on the surface and make the meat mushy, so use them judiciously. I limit acid to no more than one eighth of the blend and use it primarily for flavor. Typical acids include fruit juice (such as lemon, apple, white grape, pineapple, orange, and even white or red wine); vinegar (apple cider, distilled white, sherry, balsamic, raspberry, or any flavored vinegar); cultured dairy (buttermilk and yogurt); and even sugar-free soft drinks.

  • Make it thin. Some recipes call for marinating in barbecue sauce. Don’t do it. It’s a waste of sauce because it is too thick to penetrate. And because most barbecue sauces are sweet, they can burn.

  • Ditch the alcohol. Marinating in wine, beer, or spirits may not be a good idea. In his award-winning The French Laundry Cookbook, chef Thomas Keller says, “If you’re marinating anything with alcohol, cook the alcohol off first. . . . Alcohol in a marinade in effect cooks the exterior of the meat, preventing the meat from fully absorbing the flavors in the marinade. Raw alcohol itself doesn’t do anything good to meat. So put your wine or spirit in a pan, add your aromatics, cook off the alcohol, let it cool, and then pour it over your meat.” I agree heartily. Reduced wine brings exotic flavors to the party.

  • Be safe. All uncooked meat contains microbes and spores that thrive outside the fridge. If your marinade recipe calls for heating it, let it cool to refrigerator temperature before using, to discourage microbial growth. Always marinate in the refrigerator.

  • Use a nonreactive container. Acids and salts in a marinade can react with aluminum, copper, and cast iron, imparting off flavors to food. Soak in plastic, stainless steel, porcelain, or, best of all, plastic zipper-top bags. You need less marinade in a resealable bag than you do in a bowl, and there’s no cleanup since you can throw it away when the marinating is finished. Squeeze or suck out the air from the bag and most surfaces of the meat will be in constant contact with the marinade.

  • Go naked. The fatty skin on chicken and turkey acts as a barrier to marinades and becomes soggy. If the skin won’t get crispy, what’s the point? Get rid of it. Skinless chicken will drink up more flavor.

  • Consider cutting. You might want to cut larger pieces into serving sizes. Small, thin cuts of meat marinate faster.

  • Watch the time. Marinate fish and veggies for 30 to 60 minutes at most, depending on the thickness. An hour or two is enough for most other meats.

  • Flip now and then. Turn the meat in the bowl or turn the bag every hour or two for even marinating.

  • Discard used marinades. A marinade becomes contaminated with raw meat juices. Never reuse it.

Why I Do Not Recommend Vacuum Marinators

Several companies make devices into which you place the food and a marinade, and then create a vacuum. In theory, the vacuum sucks air out of the food, letting the marinade in. I don’t recommend them because the vacuum can also suck in microbes from the food surface. If you don’t cook the food to about 165°F, past well-done, you run the risk of a tummy ache or much worse.

Industrial Marinades

You have probably noticed that more and more meats in the grocery are premarinated and “enhanced,” which can include injection. The advantage is that these meats make cooking dinner quick and easy. The downsides of premarinated meat are that the meat might not be the freshest, you may not want the additives and preservatives in the marinade, and the meat takes on extra weight from the marinade, so you’re paying meat prices for water and flavorings.

Rub It or Sauce It

A better way to bring flavor to food than marinating is to use a spice rub. Blends of spices and herbs deliver more flavor per square inch than marinades do. Or use a sauce. Simple sauces of chopped herbs, oil, vinegar or citrus, and aromatics can be mixed up right on the cutting board. (See my recipes for Board Sauces on page 188.)

Why We Love Bark, Crust, Caramelization, and the Maillard Reaction

When heat is applied to food, the chemicals in the food change. A lot. Heat is powerful energy. Some changes are obvious, some are subtle, and some invisible. The most important changes are the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Together they make the miracle of flavor called GBD: golden brown and delicious.

The Maillard reaction is named after French scientist Louis-Camille Maillard, who studied the browning of foods in the early 1900s. Maillard discovered that as the surfaces of foods get warm from dry heat, the compounds in meat react with one another, scores of new compounds form, and the surface begins to get brown and crunchy, developing a depth of flavor and texture.

The Maillard reaction begins at low temperatures but really kicks in after 300°F. As in many chemical reactions, time can be traded against temperature. Twelve hours at 225°F will brown meat nearly as deeply as 15 minutes on a hot grill, but the exact mixture of flavor compounds will differ. Good thing, too. Wouldn’t it be boring if all food tasted the same, no matter how it was cooked?

Many chefs use the term caramelization to describe the browning of meats, but in most cases it is really the Maillard reaction. Caramelization is an entirely different chemical reaction, although the two can occur simultaneously and interact. The Maillard reaction involves mostly amino acids and proteins. Caramelization involves mostly sugars and other carbohydrates. It is, in fact, the reaction that creates caramel, the browning of sugar.

Grilling sweet vegetables like corn and onion deepens their flavors through caramelization. Sweet barbecue sauces develop interesting new flavors when caramelized, which is why they are hard to judge when they are tasted straight out of the bottle. But slather them on a rack of ribs and let them see a touch of heat, and the caramelized sugar changes the entire flavor profile. Honey makes a good addition to barbecue sauces because it consists mostly of fructose, which caramelizes at lower temperatures than table sugar does. But it can also burn easily, so be careful with temperatures and when substituting one type of sugar for another in tried-and-true sauce recipes.

Brown Good. Black Bad.

The goal is to achieve a range of colors between golden amber and whiskey brown—but not black. Brown is complex lyric poetry. Black is coarse carbon. Here are some tips on how to enhance browning, as shown below in the delicious example of a smoked coulotte cut from a beef sirloin.

  • Add a pinch of sugar. When making a spice rub, add a little sugar for foods that will be cooked low and slow. If you are cooking hot and fast, on the other hand, skip the sugar because it will burn. Sugar substitutes will not aid browning.

  • Keep things dry. Water can only reach 212°F, but fructose doesn’t caramelize until 230°F and glucose doesn’t until 320°F. For better browning, pat the food dry with paper towels before cooking. This is another reason why I am not a fan of marinades and bastes: They can prevent browning.

  • Keep things at the right temperature. To get a good brown surface, you need one of two things: a hot direct-radiant-heat source from below, or long, low cooking times. Master your cooker. There are times when you want to quickly heat the surface of food, and there are times when you want to slowly heat the interior.

  • Turn frequently. When you turn only once or twice, the heat builds up and food burns easily. But when you turn frequently, you are in a sense rotisserie cooking, letting the surface heat and brown, and then flipping it so it cools. Frequent flipping prevents burning.

  • Give ’em space. Leave plenty of space between food chunks so steam can escape, especially in a pan or on a griddle. Otherwise, the temperature will plummet and you won’t get GBD.

The Fat Cap: To Trim or Not to Trim

Let’s say you have a hungry crowd of rowdies to feed and a big honkin’ pork shoulder, beef brisket, leg of lamb, or prime rib with a thick layer of fat on top. Do you trim off the fat cap (as shown below) or leave it on? Plenty of cooks leave it on, but that is not the best choice.

When to Leave on Some Fat

The best strategy is to remove all but a thin, ¼- to ⅛-inch layer of fat on one side only, as seen on the top of the slice of brisket shown below. I use this method for brisket, pulled pork, ham, leg of lamb, and other cuts with thick fat caps. Much of the fat will melt away, leaving a sliver behind so people can still get a taste of its flavor, as well as the spices and herbs you lovingly blended and rubbed all over the meat.

A thin fat layer helps prevent evaporation and produces juicier meat, but it can also prevent a hard, crispy bark. If your meat sits directly above the heat in your cooker, try putting it fat cap side down to create a heat shield and protect the meat surface from drying out.

There is one exception: The coulotte, or sirloin cap steak, is popular in Brazilian steakhouses partially because of the flavorful fat cap. A layer of fat is left attached and the meat is grilled on skewers above wood coals, as shown below. When served, the fat is left on and it tastes mighty nice.

Myth The fat cap will melt and make the meat juicier.

BUSTED! The subcutaneous fat cap rests between the skin and muscle of animals. It is usually white, fairly hard, and can be as much as an inch thick. Beef consultant and food scientist Dr. Antonio Mata says, “Fat will not migrate into the muscle as it is cooked. Fat is mostly oil, meat is mostly water, and oil and water don’t mix.” In addition, in most cases, a layer of connective tissue holding the muscle groups together forms an anatomical barrier between the muscle and the fat cap. The fat cap melts when it softens during cooking, and some of it drips onto the fire, where it vaporizes and settles back on the meat, adding flavor. But the potential danger of leaving a thick layer of fat on the outside of steaks and chops is that it can drip so heavily onto the fire that it flares up and deposits soot on the meat. Moreover, most people will trim off the fat at the dinner table, along with your carefully crafted spice rub. There goes all the flavor.

When to Cook Hot and Fast, When to Cook Low and Slow, and When to Do Both

In most outdoor cooking, the goal is a nice dark exterior enriched with complex flavors caused by the Maillard reaction and caramelization, along with an interior that is cooked from edge to edge as close as possible to the optimal temperature for tenderness and juiciness. This is true for both meats and vegetables. Since the heat source cooks the outside of the food, but the exterior cooks the interior, we must look at the two as separate cooking projects.

Your food is already dead. You don’t have to kill it again. Chances are you cook too hot and fast. Much of the time, low and slow is better, and more often still, a low and slow followed by hot and fast, a vital technique called reverse sear, is best of all.

When to Cook Hot and Fast

The thinner the meat, the higher the heat. Hot and fast works for thin, skinny foods like the skirt steak pictured above, asparagus, and shrimp because they cook quickly. If you want a good dark brown sear (and you do), you need high heat to create that sear without overcooking the interior.

To cook hot and fast, you need to get the food directly above and close to the heat source so infrared radiant heat can go to work on it. This is when you crank your grill to warp 10 and “Give her all she’s got, Scotty.” When cooking on high heat, you usually want the lid up, so the heat is being applied only to the bottom surface. You don’t want weak reflective heat to cook the top and send heat to the center. You want all the heat from one side, and you want it pounding on the surface. Then you turn the food often, like a rotisserie, so much of the energy escapes from the top and doesn’t get a chance to overcook to the center.

When to Cook Low and Slow

Very thick cuts need to be cooked low and slow. Hot and fast will just carbonize the surface of thick cuts like a pork butt or beef roast before the heat gets to the center. Water is a good insulator, so heat slogs slowly through the watery interior of foods, especially meats.

Professor Blonder took two pork loin roasts about 4 inches wide and 3 inches tall and roasted one at 325°F and the other at 225°F. By the time the center of the meat hit the target temperature of 145°F, the outer layer of the one cooked at the higher temperature was a parched 170°F, while the one cooked at the lower temperature was still moist, about 160°F (see the graph below).

Lowering the temperature and closing the lid will cause less heat buildup on the exterior and give the heat time to move to the center, so more of the meat is cooked to the target temperature. Low heat is essential for tough cuts like beef brisket, pork shoulder, and ribs, which have lots of connective tissue. If they are cooked long enough, to 203°F or so, magic happens. Fats melt and the tough connective tissue softens up like Homer Simpson in Marge’s arms. Another benefit of cooking low and slow is that it gives salt time to migrate toward the center, which then seasons the meat throughout.

To cook low and slow, you need to master the single most important technique for the backyard cook: the two-zone setup (see page 8), for which you need a warm convection (indirect) zone off to the side, where warm air circulates around the food, and a hot radiant (direct) zone, where you can put food directly above the heat.

When to Use Both (Reverse Sear)

Cooking something like a 2-inch-thick steak at 225°F is problematic, because it is ideal when the interior reaches 130°F. At a cooking temperature of 225°F, you can get a beautiful even color on the interior, but you can’t get a nice, dark crust on the steak.

The solution for thick steaks, chicken, and even potatoes is to combine both methods: low and slow plus hot and fast. It is called two-stage cooking, or reverse sear, and it allows you to cook both the interior and the exterior perfectly by cooking them more or less separately.

Start by setting up your grill for two-zone cooking. Try to get the indirect zone as close to 225°F as you can with the lid on. Put the meat (let’s say it’s a steak) on the indirect side, toss a little hardwood on the fire, and then close the lid so the meat will roast slowly in smoky convection air. Flip it once or twice, until the interior temperature is about 15°F below your target temperature. For this, you need a good instant-read digital thermometer like a Thermapen (see page 97). When your steak hits 115°F in the center (or your pork chops or pork roast reaches 130°F, or your chicken or turkey gets up to 150°F), take it off and put it on a plate for a moment. The interior is almost done. Now it’s time to work on the exterior.

Crank up the heat on the direct-heat side as hot as you can get it. If you have a charcoal grill with a height-adjustable coal bed, get the coals right below the cooking surface. You may want to dump more hot coals on the direct side of the grill. Or set up a hibachi with a thick bed of hot coals. For a gas grill, turn the burners to high or turn on your sear burner. On a pellet smoker, crank it to high and preheat a griddle or pan on the grate.

Pat one side of the meat dry with a paper towel so when you put it on the grill, evaporating water doesn’t cool the surface and steam the meat. Put the meat dry side down on the hot side of the grill and leave the lid open. You don’t want any heat reflecting off the lid down onto the top of the steak, roasting the interior. You want to pound one surface with energy. But don’t leave it there for long, or the heat will start to work its way to the middle. Flip it and let the surface cool. Keep flipping until the crust turns deep, dark, bourbon brown, but not black. You do not want carbonized protein or fat. You want to take the interior to about 130°F and the exterior just shy of burnt, because when you do, dazzling things happen: You have the perfect steak.

Reverse sear is the best way to get edge-to-edge even doneness on a thick steak without a thick band of battleship gray meat just under the crust.

Reverse sear works for many foods. Take chicken breasts, for example: fatty skin on one side, lean meat on the other. If you start over high heat, there’s a good chance you’ll blacken the skin before the inside is cooked. You could cook it skin side up, but then the meat on the bottom gets overcooked and dry, and the skin stays rubbery.

The better approach is to cook the breast in the indirect zone, with warm convection air and smoke, bring it to just under the desired internal temperature, and then move it over direct radiant heat, skin side down, to crisp it. Then you can serve tender, juicy meat and crispy skin. Check out my update of the classic Cornell Chicken recipe (page 298) to see the concept in action.

The reverse sear even works for big roasts like prime rib. Start low and slow, lid down, and finish hot and fast, lid up, and never have a 1-inch band of overcooked meat again. Even baked potatoes are best when reverse seared (page 358). In fact, many foods that are more than 1 inch thick reach perfection with two-zone, two-stage cooking.

What Factors Influence Cooking Time?

Many variables influence cooking time, most importantly the cooking temperature, cooking method, type of meat, thickness of the meat, weather, humidity, water pans, spritzing, and especially the accuracy of your thermometers.

  • Cooking temperature. The temperature of the cooker is crucial. The hotter you cook, the sooner your food will be done. Get two good-quality digital thermometers: one for your cooker and one for your food. You couldn’t cook without the built-in thermometer in your indoor oven, and you can’t cook outdoors without a thermometer, either.

  • Cooking method. Grilling directly over the flame will cook food faster than if the food sits alongside the flame. A pork butt wrapped in aluminum foil will cook much faster than an unwrapped one. Using thick, wide, cast-iron grill grates will speed cooking slightly because they absorb and conduct heat more efficiently than air does.

  • Type of meat. Some foods, especially tough cuts like ribs, brisket, shoulder, and rump, get tougher at higher heat levels and tenderer at lower heat levels. Familarize yourself with which cuts of meat are tough and which are tender.

  • Thickness of the meat. Although the weight of a cut of meat is often related to its thickness, weight does not determine how long it will take to cook. Thickness determines cooking time. That’s because meat is done when it reaches the desired temperature in its geographic center. Heat must travel through the meat to reach the center. The traveling time is determined by the distance from the outside of the meat to the center.

    The top three take the same time to cook. The bottom one will cook faster.

  • Weather. Another factor is the ambient air temperature outside the cooker. Cold air will cool the air coming in through the combustion air vents and cool the coals or fuel jets. Wind and rain cool the exterior of the cooker and can wreak havoc with your plans. To overcome them, you will need more charcoal or more gas. If you are not prepared for these variables, dinner will be late.

  • Humidity. As the air around your meat warms up, moisture from the meat begins to evaporate. If you are cooking low and slow at 225°F, this evaporation can cool the meat and slow cooking for hours. If you’re not ready for this temperature stall (see page 59), you better be ready to order Chinese takeout. Other things influence humidity. Cold air is usually drier than warm air, so there can be more evaporation in cold air, and on cold days, your flame has to be hotter to keep the cooker temperature up, and that can dry out the air. You can boost the humidity and reduce the meat’s evaporative cooling by putting water pans inside the cooker.

A Faux Cambro Gives You Breathing Room

There is no bigger blow to one’s pride than standing in the dining room and announcing that the turkey is still not ready while your spouse’s potatoes and beans give out their last gasp of steam. A faux Cambro will save your butt as well as your ribs, brisket, and turkey.

Indispensable to caterers, a Cambro is an insulated plastic box for transporting foods and maintaining temperature.

For a faux Cambro, get a beer cooler large enough to hold a big turkey or whole brisket. Make sure it is well insulated, seals tightly, and is easy to clean. Wheels are a nice feature. Buy an aluminum pan that fits inside to make cleanup easier.

Here’s how to use it: If you think it will take 3 hours to smoke your turkey, then put the bird on about 4 hours before you plan to serve it. Lay a towel in the bottom of the cooler and put the disposable aluminum pan on top of the towel to catch leaks. When it is done, wrap the turkey in foil, leaving the meat thermometer probe in, then place the meat in the pan and lay a second towel on top. Close the lid, but allow the thermometer cable to hang out under the lid if possible. That’s it. With this setup, I’ve kept meats well above 150°F for 3 hours. But beware carryover: It will continue to cook and could rise in temperature as much as 10°F.

A faux Cambro is a great way to get that smoked turkey over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house on Thanksgiving or to get hot ribs to the tailgate party. A faux Cambro is almost a necessity to finish beef brisket. Holding it at a high temperature tenderizes it. The only downside is that the skin on your turkey and the bark on your brisket will soften as it sits. If that happens, you can roll the meat around on a hot grill for a few minutes just before serving to firm up the exterior.

Keep the faux Cambro clean. After each use, wash out the cooler and its components with a cleaning product containing bleach, such as Comet, or wash with soap and rinse with a dilute chlorine solution of 1 gallon water plus 1 tablespoon bleach.

Food Temperature Guide

The food temperature guide on page 53, combined with a high-quality digital thermometer, will enable you to deliver properly cooked food to the table. It shows both USDA recommended minimum temperatures and the temperatures that the pros use.

About The Meat Temperature Guide

The question of when food is cooked to a safe temperature is complicated. We should respect the USDA guide, but recognize that it is simplified for mass consumption. Temperature is just one part of the equation, time is another, the type of food is another, and the acceptable level of risk is another.

It is impossible to sterilize meat so that every single microbe is killed and still have it remain delicious and nutritious. So we settle for pasteurizing, which means that so few pathogens are left that the chances of getting sick are minute.

The USDA has set a standard for pasteurization that is called the 7D kill rate. This means that one cell out of 10,000,000 might survive cooking. When meat is contaminated it could have just a few pathogens per gram to millions of them. For this example, let’s say you have 10,000 steaks and there are 1,000 bacteria on each. A 7D kill rate means that there might be one cell surviving on only one of those 10,000 steaks.

But pathogens don’t all just drop dead at once when the meat hits the UDSA-recommended temperature. Most pathogens start keeling over at about 130°F, and they die faster as the temperature rises. At 130°F, you can get to 7D in about 2 hours. At 140°F, pathogens die in only about 12 minutes; at 160°F, 8 seconds; and at 165°F, 7D is reached almost instantly. Carryover cooking (see page 5) continues to cook the interior when the meat comes off the heat. So if you take a turkey breast out of the oven at 155°F, it continues to kill the microbes as it rests.

Microbes are almost all on the surface of beef steaks. If you bring the surface to 165°F and the center to 145°F, you reach 7D. Burgers, in which the contaminants are mixed throughout the meat, need to get to 160°F in the center. Because of the way it is processed, the structure of the meat, and the pathogens involved, the USDA says chicken needs to be brought to 165°F. Many experts say 160°F is adequate.

Steakhouse chefs know that their expensive beef is best at medium-rare, 130°F, and if they had to cook it to 145°F, medium-well, as the USDA recommends, they would go out of business in a hurry. They also know that they would go out of business even faster if a customer died from eating one of their steaks. But if you are willing to accept a 6D kill rate as safe (10 cells left among 10,000 steaks), or even 5D (100 cells left among 10,000 steaks), you can cook steaks to a moist and tender 130°F. The risk is higher, but still pretty low. That said, the rate of contamination in ground beef and poultry is so high that you should always stick close to USDA recommendations unless you buy irradiated meat. It is all a matter of balancing risk and reward.

Myth Pink pork puts you at risk for trichinosis.

BUSTED! Once upon a time, when hogs ate garbage, it was easy to get sick from the parasite trichinosis in undercooked pork. Today trichinosis has, for all practical purposes, been eradicated in developed countries. The annual average infection rate is fewer than a dozen cases per year in the United States, and most are associated with eating undercooked wild game such as bear, not farmed pork. Modern farming and processing methods as well as public awareness of the importance of proper cooking have all but eliminated trichinosis in pork. This parasite is killed at 138°F and the USDA’s new minimum recommended internal temperature for pork is 145°F. So if you’re cooking bear, get it to at least 138°F, please.

Food Temperature Guide

Beef, Lamb, Venison (Steaks, Chops, Roasts), Duck Breasts

USDA Minimum 145°F (63°C)

Blue, “Pittsburgh”

110–120°F (43–49°C)

Dark purple, cool, stringy, slippery, slightly juicy

Rare

120–130°F (49–54°C)

Bright purple to red, warm, tender, juicy

CHEF TEMP Medium-Rare

130–135°F (54–57°C)

Bright red, warm, tender, very juicy

Medium

135–145°F (57–63°C)

Rich pink, yielding, juicy

Medium-Well

145–155°F (63–68°C)

Tan with slight pink, firm, slightly fibrous, slightly juicy

Well-Done

155°F (68°C) or more

Tan to brown, no pink, chewy, dry

Pork, Raw Hams, Veal (Steaks, Chops, Roasts)

USDA Minimum 145°F (63°C)

Rare

120–130°F (49–54°C)

Pale pink center, warm, tender, slightly juicy

Medium-Rare

130–135°F (54–57°C)

Creamy pink color, tender, very juicy

CHEF TEMP Medium

135-145°F (57-63°C)

Cream color, some pink, yielding, juicy

Medium-Well

145–155°F (63–68°C)

Cream color, firm, slightly juicy

Well-Done

155°F (68°C) or more

Cream color, tough, dry

Pork Ribs, Pork Shoulders, Beef Briskets, Beef Ribs

USDA Minimum 145°F (63°C)

CHEF TEMP Tender, Tugs Apart

203°F (95°C)

High in fat and collagen, best cooked low and slow

Chicken, Turkey (Whole or Ground), Including Stuffing

USDA Minimum 165°F (74°C)

CHEF TEMP Well-Done

160°F (71°C)

Cream color white meat, pale tan dark meat

Ground Meats, Burgers, Sausages, Meat Loaf (Except Poultry)

USDA Minimum 160°F (71°C)

Cook these risky meats to USDA minimum and make them juicy by using a 20% fat blend

  

Hams, Hot Dogs, Sausages (Precooked only)

USDA Minimum 140°F (60°C)

CHEF TEMP Warm

140°F (60°C) or more

Tender, juicy

Fish (Except Tuna Steaks)

USDA Minimum 145°F (63°C)

CHEF TEMP Medium

130–145°F (54–63°C)

Slightly translucent, flaky, tender

Tuna Steaks

USDA Minimum 145°F (63°C)

CHEF TEMP Rare

120–125°F (49–52°C)

Bright red

Shrimp, Lobster, Crabs, Crawfish, Scallops

USDA & CHEF TEMP Until flesh is opaque

Clams, Oysters, Mussels

USDA & CHEF TEMP Until shells open

Baked Potatoes

CHEF TEMP 212°F (100°C)

Other Temperature Benchmarks

These numbers are approximate due to other variables such as the age of animal, acidity, salt content, type of heat, humidity, etc.

34–39°F (1–4°C)

Ideal refrigerator temperature

41–130°F (5–54°C)

“Danger zone” in which many bacteria grow

95–130°F (35–54°C)

Animal fats start to soften and melt

130°F+ (54°C+)

“Kill zone” in which many bacteria begin to die

130–135°F (54–57°C)

Medium-rare, the temperature at which most meats are at optimum tenderness, flavor and juiciness

135°F (57°C)

Connective tissues begin to contract and squeeze pink juice (myoglobin and water) from within muscle fibers

150–165°F (66–74°C)

“Stall zone” when large cuts cooked at 225°F or so take hours to warm due to evaporative cooling

160–205°F (71–96°C)

Collagens melt and form gelatin, making meat succulent

160–165°F (71–74°C)

“Instant kill zone” in which most bacteria die in less than 30 seconds

212°F (100°C)

Boiling point at sea level; the boiling point declines about 2°F for every 1000 feet above sea level

225°F (107°C)

Recommended air temperature for “low and slow” cooking of tough meats high in connective tissue

310°F (154°C)

Browning of surface proteins from the Maillard reaction accelerates, forming thousands of tasty new compounds

325°F (163°C)

Recommended air temperature for cooking chicken and turkey so fat renders and skin browns and crisps

425°F (218°C)

Teflon thermometer cables can begin to melt

500–700°F (299–399°C)

Hardwood creates smoke with gases, water vapor, and microscopic particles

700–1000°F (399–538°C)

Hardwood produces flame

Myth Cook chicken until the juices run clear.

BUSTED! This is indisputably false. If you believe it, you could end up badly overcooking or undercooking your poultry.

Juices in chicken, turkey, and even pork are colored pink by the protein myoglobin. When myoglobin is cooked, its structure changes and the denatured molecules absorb light differently, so they no longer appear pink. It turns out there is no fixed temperature at which myoglobin changes color because other factors come into play. One research scientist explained to me that the acidity (pH) of the meat is a major factor. “When the muscle is high in pH (low in acid), it takes a much higher temperature to denature the myoglobin. The meat may need to be 170 to 180°F before the myoglobin in breasts is sufficiently denatured to see clear juices. The drumstick and thigh have higher levels of myoglobin, and they require an even higher internal temperature to denature it. As long as the meat reaches 165°F, it is safe to eat.”

  • Serve chicken and turkey at 165°F. I treat raw poultry like kryptonite. Researchers tell us that a significant percentage of chickens and turkeys are contaminated with salmonella. The USDA says to serve poultry at 165°F, and most chefs agree, often removing it from the heat at no lower than 160°F to allow for 5°F carryover cooking. To take the bird’s temperature, push the thermometer probe through the breast at its thickest part all the way into the ribs, then back it out slowly and read the temperature along the way.

  • Serve ground meat, burgers, and sausage at 160°F. Adhere closely to this USDA recommended temperature. The risk of contamination from pathogenic strains of E. coli is too great to mess with when it comes to undercooked ground meat. Prior to slaughter, cattle and pork are usually kept in crowded pens, and fecal matter can easily get on their hides. When the carcass is butchered, knives cutting the hide can contaminate the meat. Also, the intestines, naturally full of fecal matter, can easily be cut open by mistake and spill onto the meat, floor, knives, and gloves. A little E. coli on a steak is not a problem because it remains on the surface and is killed rapidly by cooking. But when meat is ground, the contamination on the surface is mixed throughout. If the center is not cooked to 160°F, pathogenic bacteria can find their way into your gut and cause discomfort, illness, or even death. That’s why ground meat must be cooked to a higher temperature than whole-muscle meat. Don’t screw around. Fortunately, I have a trick for making medium-rare burgers safe to eat (see page 269).

  • Why chefs and USDA disagree on some meats. Whole-muscle meats are a lot safer than ground meats because contamination is likely to only be on the surface and will be killed quickly when cooked. Medium-rare (130 to 135°F) is the best temperature for beef, lamb, and venison steaks, chops, and roasts, and duck breasts. Tasting panels and measuring devices agree that medium-rare gives the best balance of tenderness and juiciness.

  • Serve fish at 145°F. The USDA recommends this temperature because fish are susceptible to parasites. It is easy to overcook fish, so be vigilant with the thermometer.

  • Serve precooked ham and hot dogs at 140°F. This meat is cured with salt, nitrites, and nitrates and precooked, so you are really just warming it up. No need to dry it out.

  • Go to 203°F for pork and beef ribs, pork shoulders, and beef brisket. You should deliberately cook these meats up to 203°F, past well-done, in order to melt the abundant connective tissues and fats.

Myth Meat is safe when it is no longer pink.

BUSTED! Bottom line: Don’t go by red bones or pink meat. Color is not a reliable guide in any meat. The chicken thigh with the purple bone pictured below was cooked to 180°F. It is safe to eat. Red or purple is the color of bone marrow because that’s where blood is made. As birds age, more calcium is deposited on the bones, so the blood in the marrow becomes less visible. But in modern agriculture, chickens are usually sold at just 6 to 8 weeks old, before the bones have completely calcified. Purple bones can sometimes discolor the adjacent meat, so the meat appears pink even though it is safely cooked. The pink color can also happen when nitric oxide (NO) or carbon monoxide (CO) produced by the cooker lock in the pink color of myoglobin.

Ground beef can turn brown from oxidation long before the meat hits the safe temperature of 160°F. Don’t go by color. Use a thermometer.

How to Get the Perfect Maillard Sear

How do you get perfectly even browning for maximum Maillard reactions and maximum flavor? Start with a piece of meat that is more than 1 inch thick. Use cheap wire grill grates to let the browning come from the direct-heat radiation of the fire. Don’t let the meat sit in one place. Move it around a lot so the thin grates won’t make marks, and your steak will get the maximum radiant heat and turn a nice, even mahogany color all over.

How Bones Affect the Cooking

It is a common belief that bones make grilled and barbecued meat taste better. The truth is that the impact depends on the type of bone and on the cooking method.

Bones are complex structures, and they differ from species to species and from bone to bone on an animal. They have architectural functions, such as bearing loads and protecting organs. Here are a few other things that bones have in common and that may help you determine whether to cook your meat on or off the bone.

  • Bone exteriors. The exteriors are walls of calcium and other minerals called compact bone. The larger the animal, the thicker the compact bone. Bone walls do not dissolve or melt during cooking. Small channels run through compact bone to carry blood to and from the marrow, but in general, the calcium is not porous, so no measurable marrow or flavor leaks out during roasting or grilling.

  • Marrow. Red marrow is the hard honeycomb marrow visible in ribeyes, T-bones, and porterhouses because the bones are often cut open by a bandsaw. It can also be seen in the ends of bones. These highly porous marrows, also called spongy marrows, are home to stem cells that produce blood. Although almost all blood is drained from muscle tissue during slaughter, some blood can remain trapped in bones. Yellow marrow is the type you find in the center of femurs and other leg bones. It is mostly delicious fat. Cowboys call it prairie butter. I call it poor man’s foie gras.

  • Connective tissue. Connective tissue surrounds the outer bone walls and anchors muscles to the bone. This sheathing remains tough no matter how long you cook it.

  • The cooking method matters. In wet-cooking methods, such as braising and slow cooking, where the meat is submerged and simmered for hours in liquid, the marrow may dissolve and can have a major impact on the flavor of the liquid and the meat. But bones contribute no significant flavor to meats in dry-cooking methods such as grilling and smoking. A tiny bit of marrow might escape the ends of the bones if they have been cut or if the bone has been sawed open lengthwise, as in T-bones and ribeyes, but the small amount of liquid in red marrow does not travel far onto or into the meat.

  • Bones can affect heat transmission. Keep in mind that some bones, particularly those with a honeycomb-like interior, are slow to heat up because they are filled with air pockets that act like Styrofoam insulation. When the bones do get hot, they can retain heat longer than the meat because they don’t cool from evaporation like muscle does. Depending on your total cooking time, meat closer to the bone can be slightly more cooked or less cooked than meat just ½ inch away. In the case of a steak, the insulation properties of the bone can leave the meat closest to the bone 5 to 10°F cooler than the center. So if you take the steak off at 130°F, medium-rare, it may be rare along the bone.

  • The bone helps retain meat juices. According to Steven L. Moore, director of innovation at BRANDFormula, a food-science consultancy, in many cases bone seals the muscle, preventing it from losing meat juices as it cooks. When a muscle is deboned, there is usually a large area that is exposed and no longer sealed. Removing a chicken breast from the breastbone, for instance, drastically increases the surface area that will be directly exposed to the grill or heat, which will result in more evaporation and juice loss.

    On the other hand, removing bone exposes more muscle to seasoning and browning, and seasoned brown meat is very tasty stuff. So the bone presents a trade-off between less juiciness and better browning on the meat.

    As you can see, there’s no right answer here. You may want to cook a rack of ribs on the bone to gelatinize all that succulent collagen, but you may want to cook a rib roast off the bone to gain more delicious browned meat. Either way, here’s the best reason to leave bones in: We love chewing on them. The surfaces are often charred, and if the sheathing has softened, it can be very satisfying.

Myth Grill marks are the sign of a great steak.

BUSTED! Grocery, restaurant, and grill ads show beautiful steaks and burgers with crosshatched grill marks. Some restaurants even buy premarked chicken that they can microwave and serve. Cooking magazines and books teach readers how to get great grill marks. But those grill marks on Picture 1 (right) are merely superficial branding, unlike the deep, rich sear that delivers maximal taste and texture in Picture 2.

Only about one third of the surface is fully browned on the ribeye in Picture 1. The diamond shapes between the grill marks remain tan, well-done meat, full of unrealized potential.

When it comes to meats and many other foods, the goal is to get golden brown to dark brown color on as much of the meat’s surface as possible because dark brown means hundreds of tasty compounds have been created through the Maillard reaction and caramelization (see page 43).

I’ll admit that some foods do benefit from grill marks. On thin foods like shrimp, skinny chops, skirt steaks, asparagus, and bell peppers, grill marking quickly browns the exterior without overcooking the interior. But watch out that your delicious brown stripes don’t turn into burnt, bitter-tasting scars.

The Dreaded Stall

The Stall. The Zone. The Plateau. It has many names and has freaked out many a backyard pitmaster. You get a big hunk of meat, like a pork shoulder or a beef brisket (two of the best meats for low-and-slow smoke roasting) and put it on the smoker with dreams of succulent meat dancing in your head. You insert your fancy new digital thermometer probe, stabilize the cooker at about 225°F, and go cut the lawn. Then you take a nap.

The meat temperature rises steadily for a couple of hours but then, to your chagrin, it stops. It stalls for 4 or more hours, barely rising a notch. Sometimes it even drops a few degrees. You check the batteries in your meat thermometer. You tap on the smoker thermometer. Meanwhile, the guests are arriving, and the meat is nowhere near the 203°F mark at which it is most tender and luscious. Your mate is tapping a foot sternly, and you’re pulling your hair out.

What the Heck Is Happening?

Pitmasters have long believed that the stall is caused by collagen in the meat combining with water and converting to gelatin. Others speculate that the stall is caused by fat rendering (liquefying). Still others think it is caused by protein denaturing as long-chain protein molecules break apart.

In 2010 Professor Blonder set out to determine the cause of the stall. First he did some calculations that proved that there isn’t enough connective tissue to suck up all the energy necessary to prevent a large hunk of meat from increasing in temperature. He then cooked a large lump of pure fat. No stall. Next he cooked a cellulose sponge saturated with water. It climbed at about the same rate as the fat for the first hour to about 140°F, and then it put on the brakes. In fact, it even went down in temperature! When it dried out after more than 4 hours, it took off again.

He repeated his tests, tried some others, did more calculations, and the conclusion was inescapable: The barbecue stall is a simple consequence of evaporative cooling by the meat’s own moisture slowly released over hours from within its pores and cells. As the temperature of cold meat rises, the evaporation rate increases until the cooling effect balances the heat input. Then it stalls, until the last drop of available moisture is gone and the surface is dry like jerky. That’s the bark formation.

Nathan Myhrvold, author of Modernist Cuisine, put two halves of a brisket in a convection oven at about 190°F with one half wrapped in aluminum foil. The wrapped brisket did not stall. Myhrvold also concluded that the stall was caused by evaporative cooling.

The stall may begin as low as 150°F or as high as 170°F, depending on the particular piece of meat and the kind of cooker, fuel, and humidity. Generally, the higher the cooking temperature, the shorter the stall, and in some cases, as you approach a cooking temperature of 300°F, there may be no stall at all. Humidity is a major factor because higher humidity means less evaporative cooling. Some electric smokers are so tight and high in humidity that they may experience no stall whatsoever. However, the high humidity may also mean less bark. For tight cookers, one workaround for this problem is to skip the water pan and crank up the heat near the end to crisp the surface.

Airflow is also a major factor. The greater the airflow, the shorter the stall. For example, pellet smokers, which include a fan, create an efficient convection environment that speeds evaporation and shortens the stall.

Why doesn’t the meat just stay in the stall until it is all dried out? Because much of the water in meat is bound to other molecules, like collagen, fat, and protein.

The Benefits of the Stall

The stall has four benefits for barbecue:

  1. 1. It helps create the bark, which can be very tasty.

  2. 2. It holds the meat at a moderate temperature long enough for fats and connective tissues to liquefy, significantly improving texture, juiciness, and flavor.

  3. 3. It gives naturally occurring enzymes, always present in meat, time to tenderize.

  4. 4. It heats the meat evenly so the center and exterior are similar in temperature.

The Texas Crutch

There are two ways to beat the stall. One is to cook at a high temperature, but this can result in tough, dry meat as proteins shrink. The other is to use the “Texas crutch”: wrapping the meat in foil to tenderize and speed cooking. Practically all the top competitive barbecue teams use the crutch for brisket, ribs, and pork shoulder (butt).

The idea is to seal the meat tightly in foil, sometimes with a little water, juice, wine, or beer. The liquid mixes with the juices that drip from the meat, gently braising the meat. Braising is the same process that occurs in a slow cooker, where the meat sits partially submerged in liquid. The liquid transmits heat to the meat faster than air does, speeding the cooking, but most importantly, if the foil makes a tight seal, water cannot evaporate and cool the meat. But crutch for too long, and you will extract flavor and moisture from the meat, remove your precious rub, and seriously damage the bark, making it mushy.

Here are the basics: Use heavy-duty aluminum foil, pour 1 to 2 ounces of liquid into the foil, and crimp it tightly. Make sure that the packet will not leak and that steam will not escape. If the crutch does not hug the meat tightly, or if it leaks even a little, the meat will cool from evaporation and the cooking will slow down drastically. Insert your thermometer through the top of the foil, and crimp the foil around the probe to close the hole so the juices won’t leak out.

Most competition cooks crutch ribs, pork butt, and brisket. The improvements in moisture and texture are small, but enough to make a difference when prize money is on the line. At home, I rarely crutch because I can wait and I love hard bark.

When you open the package, be careful to avoid the hot steamy air that will escape. Keep in mind that the moment you open the foil, the meat will cool rapidly and can go from 203 to 170°F in just 20 minutes. After the meat has crutched, you can take it out of the foil and return it to the cooker at 225°F for about 30 minutes to dry the surface and firm up the bark.

Myth Flip your meat as little as possible.

BUSTED! If you flip more often when grilling at high temperatures, you get better flavor, more even color and doneness in the interior, a better, even-colored crust, and a shorter cooking time. Among the advocates of frequent flipping are Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking; J. Kenji López-Alt, managing culinary director of SeriousEats.com; Nathan Myhrvold, editor of the landmark six-book set Modernist Cuisine; and my colleague Professor Blonder.

Here’s what McGee says: “Flip every minute. Frequent turns mean that neither side has the time either to absorb or to release large amounts of heat. The meat cooks faster, and its outer layers end up less overcooked.”

Basting and Spritzing

Part of the ritual of working the grill is standing with the brush and periodically, like the great artists we are, painting the food with a secret liquid. This process allows us to inhale the aromas (Ahhh, it smells sooooo good), check on the progress (Almost done, honey!), look at the hypnotic flames (Me like fire!), and act like we know what we’re doing (I’m a grillmaster!).

There are pros and cons to basting and spritzing.

  • We are lengthening cooking time. In low-and-slow cooking, where the temperature within the cooker is less than 250°F and the meat is cooked to an internal temperature of 203°F or so, the extra moisture causes evaporative cooling on the meat’s surface, which can increase the cooking time by 10 to 20 percent. For grilled steaks, burgers, and chicken, spritzing, mopping, and basting have less effect on the cooking time.

  • We are softening the crust. The danger of basting is that it can hamper browning and crust formation. For instance, the skin on chicken, turkey, and duck tastes best when dark and crispy. Painting the skin with water-based bastes, even pan drippings or butter (which has water in it), wets the skin, making it rubbery. Painting the skin with oil, however, can sometimes help browning and crisping, especially if the cooker is really hot.

  • We are removing flavor. One of the problems of basting is that the process can wash off smoke, spices, and marinades. Do it too often, and you can remove a significant amount of flavor.

  • We are adding flavor. A thicker baste, like a Texas “mop” (page 179), can adhere to the surface, adding more flavor than will a thin mop of apple juice, beer, or wine.

  • We are retarding browning. Water on the surface has to steam off before the surface can brown.

  • We are aiding browning. Mops high in sugar, such as those made with apple juice, can caramelize and help brown the surface and add new levels of complexity to the bark.

  • We are attracting smoke. Smoke is attracted to and sticks better to wet surfaces. When we baste, we make the food taste smokier.

  • We are helping the smoke ring. By keeping the surface damp, we are allowing nitric oxide and carbon monoxide in the smoke to enter and combine with the myoglobin in the meat to create the smoke ring.

The best time to baste is after the crust forms, immediately after flipping the meat. At that point, the top surface is still hot and bubbly; the mop will mix with the juices of the meat, the water will evaporate and cool the surface, and the flavor will be left behind. If you baste and flip immediately, you will merely pour off the flavorings, and you might actually retard the formation of the crust.

Remember, all uncooked meat contains potentially hazardous microbes and spores. If you use a brush you could be transferring contaminated juices from the meat to the unused baste and back, especially if it was used as a marinade. Stop basting 15 minutes before serving so any contaminated baste on the meat is exposed to enough heat to make it safe.

Myth Lookin’ ain’t cookin’.

BUSTED! It is widely accepted wisdom, appearing in practically every barbecue book ever written, that “if you’re lookin’, you ain’t cookin’.” The message? When you open the lid of your grill or smoker, hot air escapes, cooking slows, and each peek adds lots of time to the length of the cook. This warning is meant to caution cooks who are constantly basting their food or just admiring their handiwork. Makes sense, right? Professor Blonder tested the theory on a Weber Kettle charcoal grill and a gas grill.

On a day when the ambient temperature was in the 70s, he opened a Weber Kettle charcoal grill for 1 minute. The temperature dropped almost instantly and recovered most of the way in about 2 minutes because the metal remained hot and hot air remained trapped under the lid. But it never recovered all the way because the coals had burned down a bit. When the lid was opened for 5 minutes, the temperature bounced back fairly quickly, but again, not all the way. But most importantly, the meat was barely affected by the dip in air tempereature because the heat stored in its thermal mass was enough to continue cooking it, much like carryover. The chicken was cooking the chicken more than the air was.

He repeated the test on a gas grill. When the lid was closed after 1 minute, the air temperature recovered completely in a minute or two, because the fuel kept burning at the same rate. When the grill was opened for 5 minutes, the temperature took almost 20 minutes to recover because the metal had a chance to cool off. But again, the meat barely responded to the opening and closing.

The lesson? You can peek and you will pay only a minimal penalty. Lookin’ doesn’t stop the cookin’.

Strategies for Using Barbecue Sauces

Here’s how to get the most from barbecue sauce on different meats and different cookers.

  • Skip the sauce or serve it at the table. If the meat tastes great—and it should if you’ve cooked it properly—you might want to skip the sauce like they do in many restaurants. A good dry rub, proper smoke flavor, and careful cooking will allow you to go commando. Or serve the sauce on the side and allow your guests to apply it if they wish.

  • Show some restraint! One coat is usually enough—two, max. Resist the temptation to pour sauce all over pulled pork before serving. Let the meat shine through.

  • Sizzle and crisp the sauce over direct heat. Just before serving, paint on the sauce and place the meat over hot direct heat and caramelize the sugars. This changes the sauce’s flavor and gives it more complexity. Stand there and watch in case the sauce begins to burn. On a smoker with an offset firebox, you may be able to sizzle on a grate over the flame in the firebox. I recommend using a preheated gas grill if you have one. Or if you have a kitchen broiler, sizzle the sauce under that for 5 to 10 minutes per side, starting with the back (non-meat) side. Another good way to crisp the sauce is to whip out your propane soldering torch or invest about $30 in a hot butane culinary torch and scorch the sauce just enough to caramelize the sugars.

  • Play it safe. Pour just what you need into a cup. As with marinades and bastes, when you are done cooking, throw out any sauce left in the cup. Never save it or serve it tableside. Use fresh, uncontaminated sauce for brushing and for serving at the table.

Cooking More Than One Large Hunk of Meat

When the whole fam-damily is coming over, you might want to cook a lot of meat at once. Let’s say you want to cook three pork butts (8 pounds each) at 225°F for pulled pork. When you put several cold hunks of meat in a preheated cooker, the air temperature will drop a bit. How much depends on how much air is in there and how fast it is flowing through. In a large smoker, the drop will be barely noticeable. In a small unit, it might be 10°F or more. Once you are back at the target temperature, each piece of meat will cook independently in about the same time as if you had only one hunk in there. There might be slight variations due to humidity and impeded airflow, but they shouldn’t be significant.

On the other hand, if you have those butts crammed in tight, practically touching, hot air can’t flow between them and they will act like one big hunk of meat, significantly changing the cooking time. So try to keep at least 2 inches between hunks of meat.

Then there is the “heat shadow.” An offset barrel smoker (see page 90) has a firebox on one side and a chimney on the other. The meat closest to the heat will cook faster, while the rest of it is in the heat shadow cast by the meat. It’s a good idea to rotate the meat once or twice during cooking, so meat near the firebox doesn’t overcook and meat in the heat shadow doesn’t undercook.

If you have a vertical smoker, like a Weber Smokey Mountain (see page 87), there are two cooking grates. One is right above the water pan and closer to the heat source. The other is about a foot higher, below a parabolic dome. The meat on the lower rack is protected from direct heat by the water pan, and it also gets cool air and moisture from the water pan. The space between the meat and the water is small, so the airflow around it is inhibited. Meanwhile, hot air rises and goes to the exhaust vent in the dome, where some of it escapes and some of it pools. As a result, the food on the lower rack is cooler. But on the upper rack, the meat practically floats in warm currents of convection heat, and it even gets some mild radiant heat reflecting from the dome. Again, you may want to rotate the meat to compensate for hot spots. Or put the larger hunk up top.

The solution to cooking multiple big cuts of meat is simple: Start earlier than you think is necessary and monitor temperatures closely. If the meat is done earlier than expected, you can always hold it at serving temperature in your cooker, in your indoor oven, or in a faux Cambro.

Cook Today, Serve Tomorrow

One of the most frequently asked questions I get goes something like this: “I got roped into serving pulled pork for fifty people at the company picnic on Sunday. I plan to cook it on Saturday at home and bring it to the park on Sunday. What’s the best way to do this?”

Fresh is best. You should always try to serve food fresh from the cooker. It has hot juices, the connective tissues have melted and turned to luscious gelatin, the fat has rendered and lubricated the muscle fibers, the browned surfaces are crunchy, and the vegetables are bright and crisp. By the next day, many of the juices have evaporated or run off, much of the tenderness has been lost, the bark and other crunchy bits have become soggy, and oxidation has begun to deteriorate flavor. The reason you can smell barbecue from a block away is its volatile organic compounds, and by the next day, many of these aromatics are gone forever.

If you can’t serve fresh food, you should rethink your plan. Skip the pulled pork, brisket, and ribs, and just grill up some fresh chicken, burgers, or hot dogs instead.

But there is a way to pull this off with style. Mike Wozniak is the pitmaster of QUAU, the 2010 Kansas City Barbeque Society Team of the Year. He breaks the rules and still wins—a lot. He cooked up this trick because he enters dozens of competitions every year, and he got tired of staying up all night babying his brisket and pork butt. He was kind enough to teach me his method so I could share it with you.

The reason you can smell barbecue a block away is its volatile organic compounds. By the next day, many of these compounds are gone forever.

He cooks his brisket at about 310°F for about 4 hours, taking it up to an internal temperature of about 180°F. At 310°F, there is little or no stall. He then wraps it tightly in aluminum foil, pinching off the overlaps thoroughly, and drops it into a clean, watertight trash bag, and squeezes out the air. The whole shooting match goes into a beer cooler and is then submerged under lots of ice, where it chills in a hurry. He warns that a fridge is not cold enough and the thermal mass of the warm meat will raise the fridge temperature much too high, spoiling other foods in there.

The next morning, he takes the meat out of the cooler and out of the bag, but leaves it in the foil—this is essentially the Texas crutch (see page 60)—and puts it back on the pit (you could put it in an oven because it is not going to take on smoke inside the foil) at 310°F for 3 to 4 hours until it hits 200°F. He unwraps it, saving the juices, and if they are not too salty, he uses them in his sauce. The unwrapped meat then goes back on the pit to firm the crust for no more than 30 minutes or so. Then it can be sliced, sauced, and served. Wozniak says he has even used this method and cooked the meat several days in advance, moving the chilled meat to the fridge before reheating.

The Wozniak method also works on pork butts. It’s pretty convenient when you have a smoker at home but are serving at a friend’s house who has only a gas grill.

I don’t recommend this technique for ribs. Their ratio of surface area to meat is high, so they could become too dry. But if you have no choice, cook ribs for about 3 hours at 225°F, foil wrap them, chill them rapidly, and the next day warm them for 2 to 3 hours at 225°F in the foil. Remove the foil, firm the crust, add the sauce, and you’re ready to rock.

Freezing and Reheating Leftovers

I usually cook more food than needed so I won’t be embarrassed by running out. Inevitably, my guests end up fighting over the leftovers. For ribs, I plan on at least 1 to 1½ pounds per person for a meal (remember, about half the weight of a slab is bone and there is drip loss). For pulled pork and brisket, I cook about a pound per person to account for shrinkage and waste before serving. If you have leftover meat that you don’t plan on eating in 3 to 4 days, here’s how to freeze and reheat it later.

  • Freezing. The best way to pack food for freezer (and refrigerator) storage is with a vacuum sealer (pictured below). It sucks out oxygen, the culprit in oxidation that creates off flavors in frozen and refrigerated food. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, use a zipper-top freezer bag. Put the meat in the bag, add a little broth or stock, and then slowly lower the bag into a pot of water. The water will displace the air in the bag. You can then zip it closed. The idea is to get out as much air as possible to minimize freezer burn and oxidation. Be sure to label the bag with its contents and the date.

  • Thawing. Well before you plan to eat your frozen leftovers, thaw them in the refrigerator. This could take 6 to 8 hours for ribs, longer for thicker cuts.

    Here’s a slightly faster way to thaw meat. Fill the sink or a pot big enough to hold the meat with cold water. Put the meat in a watertight plastic zipper-top bag. Leave the bag unzipped at first, and slowly submerge it, keeping the zipper above water. The water pressure will push out all the air. Then zip it up tight. Leave it in cold water, and hold it under with a plate if necessary. Change the water every 30 minutes to make sure the meat is kept cold. Stir it occasionally to break up the envelope of cold water surrounding the meat. Allow 30 minutes per pound; a 20-pound turkey will need 10 hours.

  • Reheating in an indoor oven. Reheat thawed meat at low temperatures so you don’t dry it out. If you are going to use barbecue sauce, paint the meat all over and then wrap the meat in aluminum foil, being careful not to puncture it. Place the foil-wrapped meat on a baking pan or cookie sheet in case it leaks. Preheat the oven to about 225°F. Bake the meat on a rack in the middle of the oven until the center reaches 155°F. Ribs will take about 30 minutes. Larger cuts will take longer. If you have used sweet barbecue sauce, unwrap the meat and put it under the broiler on one side for 5 to 10 minutes, until the sauce begins to bubble. Leave the oven door open so the thermostat will not turn off the broiler. Do not walk away from the oven because sauce can go from bubbling to carbon black in minutes. Turn the meat over and broil for a few more minutes until the sauce is bubbling.

  • Reheating on a grill. Heat the grill to about 225°F with the lid closed and use a two-zone setup. On a gas grill, this is probably about medium. Wrap the meat in foil, and cook it in the indirect zone until the center reaches your target temperature. Unwrap and grill over the direct zone for 5 to 10 minutes on each side. Don’t let the sauce burn.

  • Reheating in a microwave oven. For sliced meat, lay the meat in a single layer on a plate and cover with parchment paper, never foil. Don’t microwave for too long, or the meat will become mushy. Microwaves can also make sauce runny. I prefer the dry heat of ovens and grills, which firms up the sauce and caramelizes the sugars. But if you must microwave, start with about 1 minute and touch the meat periodically to see if it’s ready.

  • Pulled or sliced meat. You can freeze these in zipper-top bags or vacuum bags and reheat them in a pot of simmering water.

Cooking Vegetables and Fruits

When it comes to barbecue and grilling, most folks think of meat, but many vegetables, fruits, and seeds also taste better when grilled or smoked. Plant matter has much less protein and fat than meat, more water than most meats, and more carbohydrates. Cooking plant foods often enhances their flavors, reduces some of their bitterness, helps convert carbohydrates to sugars, caramelizes sugars, breaks down indigestible woody compounds, releases nutrients, and kills microbes.

Reverse searing is a great technique for many vegetables.

While bell peppers, asparagus, zucchini, and eggplant soften quickly over direct heat, reverse searing (see page 48) is a great technique for many vegetables. Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower, to name just a few, are enhanced by the process. Dense and tough root vegetables like sweet potatoes and carrots can be transformed into sweet, rich treats with a slow reverse sear. Peeling, slicing, salting, and oiling will often help. Cutting root vegetables into smaller pieces like disks or chunks and cooking them on a grill topper (see page 103) speeds along the process and gives you more surface area for delicious browning. You can parboil, steam, or microwave tougher root vegetables until they begin to soften and then finish them on the grill. Serve them al dente—tender but with just a bit of crunch. Err on the side of undercooking to avoid limp vegetables.

Stems and leaves can also be grilled, albeit with more care. Cooking collapses them rapidly, and they can burn easily. Belgian endive, radicchio, and romaine lettuce all grill beautifully, especially after a splash of vinaigrette. Keep the lid up, turn them often, and keep an eye on them. A little charring is nice, but don’t let them blacken too much. You can also grill sturdy vegetables such as fennel and onions.

By far our favorite plant parts, fruits are the seed-bearing organs that grow from the flower’s ovaries. They tend to be laden with sugar. Tree fruits such as apples, figs, peaches, and pears are spectacular when grilled.

Smoking and Drying

Tomatoes, olives, chile peppers, and other fruits and vegetables that do well in a dehydrator will also do well in a smoker. Cut them open so they can dry more easily, bring the temperature down to 225°F so the water will steam off, and then make sure you don’t cook them so far that they become brittle or black. They should remain pliable. Tomatoes taste amazing when dehydrated in a smoker.

Competition Barbecue Cooking

With more than five hundred barbeque competitions a year around the nation, there is bound to be one near you. And there are more and more on TV. If you are a backyard cook just beginning to build your repertoire and skills, you have probably been thinking about emulating the techniques you see on television.

But you should absolutely not try to cook for your friends and family the way barbecue teams cook on TV. If you want superb food, follow my recipes precisely the first time. Then, once you have mastered the techniques and want to try something you saw on TV, attempt one trick at a time. Cooking for competitions uses a variety of gymnastic tricks and makes for generally poor-quality dining.

Here’s why: Competition cooks have incredibly good equipment—huge, expensive high-tech machines like the wood burner shown below, a $15,000 trailer-mounted Jambo Pit Smoker used by Scottie Johnson of CancerSucksChicago.com. Behind him is a $4,700 pellet cooker. (Full disclosure: AmazingRibs.com is one of his sponsors.) Chances are that not all the techniques he uses will work on your backyard smoker.

Cooking for competitions uses a variety of gymnastic tricks and generally makes for poor-quality dining.

Competition cooks also know that their entries will be one of several samples served to the judges (usually six samples at a time), and in order to win, they must really stand out. The food must be flashy. Delicacy, simplicity, subtlety, and complexity—all characteristics of great food elsewhere—get you eliminated in a competition. Instead, competition pitmasters go for big, bold, sweet flavors, knowing that most of the time the judge will take only one bite. And they may cook four racks of ribs to get just six perfect bones. Waste is a necessity in competition cooking.

In the chicken category, most pitmasters cook only thighs for competition. A typical prep involves removing the bone; peeling back the skin; scraping off the subcutaneous fat; trimming each thigh until all are identical in shape; coating them with a sweet rub; injecting them with liquid margarine, phosphates, and MSG; folding the meat so only the skin is visible and placing the pampered thighs on top of butter in cupcake tins; and painting them with agave sugar and then a shiny, sweet, red barbecue sauce.

Trust me. Competition food is so bizarre that eating more than one or two bites becomes a chore. I have heard more than one pitmaster confide that he would never cook like this for friends or family.

Remember KISS: Keep It Simple, Students.