Confessions Of A Die-Hard Smoker

By JEFF HOUCK The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 23, 2007

TAMPA - I need help. I have a problem.

A smoking problem.

I am fully and unexpectedly in the grip of an addiction to cooking food in my backyard smoker.

The flavor it produces is stronger and more delicious than I can resist. Harmless though it sounds, I am powerless to fight it. I've taken a culinary inventory and determined that I must surrender to its overwhelming pull.

My weakness is larger than I can manage.

Allow me to explain.

It started in January. Knowing my fondness for cooking gadgets, my wife, Grace, bought me a backyard smoker as a birthday gift.

On paper, her thoughtful present looked like the perfect idea, since I already own an electric hot dog roller, a s'mores maker, a creme brulee set, a bread machine, a smoothie blender, a stand-up mixer, a burrito serving station, a gas grill, an ice cream maker, two turkey fryers and a caramel apple dipping set.

Other than the hot dog roller - impulse buy, hello? - all of the devices were gifts. I swear.

Last Christmas, my sister-in-law shipped me a cascading, illuminated beverage fountain. For the past two Thanksgivings, I've made a modified Thanksgiving dinner in an Easy Bake Oven. For Christmas, I gave my wife a chocolate fountain I found at Linens 'n' Things.

I'm that kind of guy.

So, clearly, her giving me another outdoor appliance put her in the role of enabler.

I assembled my Great Outdoors Smoky Mountain Series gas smoker the next weekend. A giant, black, rectangular box with four shelves, a water basin and a burner at the bottom, the smoker stood upright in my living room like a monument. I stared at it in awe the way the monkeys did the monolith in ''2001: A Space Odyssey.''

Hallmark doesn't make a card for such a moment, but it should.

Unlike my gas grill, which is so easy that even I can use it, I had no idea how to use the smoker. The owner's manual was more about assembly than food. The most I knew about cooking that way came from picking through smoked mullet and mackerel as a kid at Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish in South Pasadena. Fish went into the restaurant's log cabin smokehouse, smoke came out, fish appeared on a plate. How it got that way and tasted so delicious was a total mystery.

Smoking 101 Begins

So I did a little research.

I found out there are two types of smoking: hot and cold. Hot smoking involves fully cooking meat, fish or vegetables inside a chamber over several hours with indirect heat that is usually between 180 to 300 degrees. Smoking for two to three hours at the ideal constant cooking temperature of 225 to 250 degrees gets the most tender results.

Cold smoking uses smoke at room temperature to affect a food's exterior. Unlike hot smoking, which kills food microbes and bacteria with heat, cold smoking usually involves salt curing or brining.

My smoker would employ the hot method. Check.

Then there's the matter of generating the smoke. Smokers utilize a couple of different methods of channeling smoke to the food. Just above the propane-fueled flame in my smoker, a small iron box holds chunks of wood. Larger and more elaborate smokers utilize a box adjacent to the cooking chamber in which the wood is burned indirectly from the food.

Sound simple?

Well, not just any wood will do. Hardwoods, fruitwoods or herb woods are best for smoking. Using softwoods such as cedar, pine and spruce will load your food with sticky resin. You don't want your ribs tasting like Elmer's glue.

Then there's the flavor each type of wood produces. Like matching wine to a meal, you can enhance whatever food you're smoking with its natural wood counterpart. Alder is good for pork. Cherry goes with beef and pork. Hickory is a staple in Southern states, but too much can leave a bitter aftertaste. Honey mesquite offers a smoky, sweet flavor, while red oak is the most versatile.

Herb woods are used similar to the way herbs are used in cooking, in that basil, thyme and rosemary woods are used with other woods to make flavor combinations.

Endless Possibilities

Not enough options for you? Then consider that you can fill your smoking box's liquid basin - which sits just above the container of wood chunks in my smoker - with just about any liquid you want. Beer. Apple juice. Wine.You name it.

Then there's the option of marinating the meat. And what spices to rub on them. And ... any of a million choices that could enhance the taste. Head spinning yet? Mine was.

So I sought out a professional to answer my questions.

About two weeks after my birthday, I met Joe Shirley, owner of Smokin' Joe's BBQ in Lithia. He and his wife, Starr, run a catering business next to Rick's Custom Meats, which is owned by Joe's brother Rick.

Joe had worked for years as a meat cutter and manager at Publix, all the while helping smoke wild game that Rick would butcher at home for hunters in the area. Joe showed me with pride the converted refrigerator behind the store that he stripped clean and made into a makeshift smoker. He had since graduated to a larger, professional version, but the fridge box worked just as well.

His advice: Start with an easy cut of meat, a boneless pork shoulder known as a Boston butt. It had a good amount of fat to keep it juicy and flavorful.

OK, so I laughed a little at the name. I'll be man enough to admit it.

Then he suggested starting with oak. Nothing fancy. Versatile. Good flavor.

"Be sure to soak it ahead of time so the meat doesn't get too dry," he said. "You can just keep a bucket in the garage with wood soaking in it, so you don't have to plan ahead."

So the next time I wheeled through Publix, I picked up an 8-pound butt.

That first Sunday, I put the shoulder in the smoker at about 11 a.m., filled the basin with spring water, put some oak in the wood box, closed the door and watched the temperature gauge climb to about 165 degrees.

A little more than four hours later - I kept opening the door to check on the pork with a meat thermometer, thereby losing smoke and heat - it emerged golden and perfect. The meat was beyond moist. While slicing it, the pork fell apart under the knife. A thin ring around the edge of each slice showed me how deep the smoke had penetrated.

I kept pestering my wife and son to try a taste. It felt like Christmas morning.

Double The Pleasure

From there, madness set in.

The next weekend, it was two pork shoulders. This time, I filled the basin with apple juice and used hickory chunks. The same cuts of meat produced an entirely new flavor than the week before. I was astounded at the difference.

The weekend after that, I turned to the poultry aisle. I bought two whole chickens at Costco, marinated them overnight - one in barbecue seasoning, the other in Jamaican jerk seasoning - and set the heat on the smoker to low. This time, I tried mesquite chips. Once the temperature gauge read 180 degrees, I opened the smoker door to find two beautiful birds staring back at me in the golden, late-afternoon sun. So beautiful, I had to run for the camera. I sent photos to friends.

"I swear I didn't wait until sunset to shoot these," I told them.

A few minutes after I took the chicken out of the smoker, our neighbors Patrick and Autumn came up the sidewalk with their sons PJ, Nick and Charlie. I ran to get a knife so I could carve them some samples on a cutting board perched on the tailgate of my pickup truck.

Smoking is one thing. Sharing it magnifies the fun.

The ultimate compliment: Charlie, the curly haired toddler, kept coming back for more with a grin on his face. If there's a better sign that your food tastes good, I don't know what it could be.

The next weekend, I upped the ante. Two pork shoulders and two chickens. One pork shoulder marinated overnight in soy sauce, the other in yellow mustard. The chickens both sat for 24 hours in a zippered plastic bag full of Caesar salad dressing.

The pork came out so beautiful this time, I flagged down Patrick as he was driving past my house on the way to his sons' Cub Scout meeting. I held out the shoulder and offered him a piece through his driver-side window. He couldn't refuse.

Clearly, I had crossed a threshold. I realized that I wasn't as addicted to the smoking as much as I was to the transmission of joy through food. The downward spiral continued.

Each successive weekend brought another elaborate flavor experiment. During the workweek, I'd find myself stopping by outdoor cooking stores that weren't on the way home. At times, the obsession interfered with my job. In April, while I was interviewing Jim Sleep, a cook who catered for the Penske Racing team during the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, I fixated on the Green Egg smoker he brings to every track, going so far as to asking him to pose for a photo with it.

Moment Of Truth

One evening about two weeks later, I stopped at three different hardware stores to see which had the best wood for sale. I cut out the page in Cook's Illustrated that rated the best meat thermometers, planning to buy the most accurate model they recommended. During the commute home the other day, I spied a corner BBQ place's woodpile out back and conspired in my head about how I might go Johnny Commando to get it all in my truck bed. I start to think about what it would be like to smoke things that shouldn't be smoked, like Twinkies.

That's when I had my moment of clarity. I realized my problem had reached near-disease proportions.

So I called outdoor grilling expert "Mad Dog" Matthewson, who is scheduled to appear in Tampa with his cohort Gary Merrill this weekend at the Tampa/St. Petersburg Home & Patio Show. They're the Martin & Lewis of grilling, mixing jokes with cooking advice.

We chat about grilling for about 20 minutes when I interrupt.

"I got a backyard smoker in January as a birthday gift," I blurt. "Tell me why I'm obsessed."

This guy doesn't know me. We've never met. But here I am confessing my sins of excess.

To my surprise, he gets it. There's an understanding in his voice.

"It is amazing, isn't it?" he says.

"Look, it's a sport and a challenge, the same way golf is a sport and a challenge."

Go on. This is making sense.

"Like golf, you can go out week after week on the course and have an entirely different experience," he says. "It's like that with grilling and smoking. It's a fine art you tune again and again. If you don't like it, you tune it again. It's like fishing. It's competitive. It gets into your blood. It becomes an obsession."

Wait. Did he say fishing?

I have some trout in the freezer that my nephew yanked out of Tampa Bay.

I bet if I soaked some oak chips in wine before I smoked them ...

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 or jhouck@tampatrib.com.