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Why does nobody talk about dirty smoke ruining brisket
I keep seeing people on here posting pictures of their brisket with this thick white smoke pouring out of their smoker and everyone says it looks great. That smoke is DIRTY and it makes the meat taste bitter. I ran a stick burner for 3 years in Austin before I figured out that clear thin smoke is what you want. Has anyone else dealt with cleaning up their smoke and noticed a huge difference in taste?
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emma9619d ago
Thing nobody's brought up yet is what kind of wood you're burning. If you're running wet wood or green wood, that white smoke is basically steam and creosote soup no matter how much you chase thin blue. I've had buddies swear by white smoke for bark and it's only because they're using mesquite or pecan that's been sitting in the rain. Meanwhile I switched tokiln dried oak and even my messy startup smoke tastes way cleaner. Maybe the real issue isn't smoke color but people using garbage fuel and then blaming the smoke for being dirty.
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kellygrant19d ago
Come on, that thin blue smoke thing is way overblown. I've been running a cheap offset for years and I get way better bark with a little bit of white smoke rolling, it creates this deep mahogany color you just can't get with that barely-there smoke. Plus, all that "bitter" talk, maybe it's just me but I've fed brisket to a bunch of friends and family and nobody has ever said it tasted like licking an ashtray when I have a solid white smoke going. A lot of those competition guys with their perfect thin smoke end up with a bland, flavorless piece of meat if you ask me.
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...and honestly that's kind of how it works with a lot of stuff people get nerdy about. You see it with grilling, you see it with coffee, you see it with guys who rebuild old cars. They get deep into one tiny detail and act like it's the end of the world if you don't do it their way. The whole thin blue smoke thing is real, I'm not saying it's not, but it's like one of those things where the difference matters way more to the person cooking it than to the people eating it. Most folks eating brisket at a backyard cookout just care if it's juicy and not burnt, they're not analyzing smoke color. So yeah, you're probably right that clean smoke makes a better product, but Kelly's also got a point that a little white smoke doesn't automatically ruin the whole thing for normal people.
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