British BBQ Society Forums

I'm sure i saw a post from Steve at Royal Q about this but i can't seem to find it now.

I was smoking a couple of pork shoulders at the weekend, and i was wanting to be careful not to over smoke them so i put the smoking wood in when i put the shoulders on. When i ate them i didn't get much of a smoked flavour , and this got me thinking about this point and was wanting to give it another try this weekend.

What temp's should the meat be before i add my smoking wood?

Make sure your meat is at room temprature when it goes on, you want to add your wood straight away for maximum smokey goodness.

Also, don't just throw on some chunks or chips and let it go at that. I usually keep smoke on the meat for a good 2 hours when smoking a large piece, and 1 hour when doing ribs.

Thanks Mike i'll give this a try with the ribs as i've not had great results recently.

The amount of smoke flavour you require is your personal preference. Whilst in Tennessee this year I found a lot of the meat to be more smoky than I like but a lot of what i taste in the UK seems to be less smoky than I like. One man's meat is another man's poison...

Something that may help that I only learnt in Tennesse on the cooks class is that apparently meat only takes on smoke flavour until it reaches 140 degrees so that may help. I used to keep the smoke going in for the first 3 hours but now I will follow the temp guidlines as it makes more sense.

esselle wrote:Something that may help that I only learnt in Tennesse on the cooks class is that apparently meat only takes on smoke flavour until it reaches 140 degrees so that may help. I used to keep the smoke going in for the first 3 hours but now I will follow the temp guidlines as it makes more sense.

This was the bit of info i was looking for i'm sure i've seen it before but couldn't find it.

Thanks.