On Apr 12, 9:30 pm, Denny Wheeler
wrote:


I damn near went that road--as I said to frohe, that's how I season
steak.

You will be surprised how good your meat will taste with only those
ingredients.

Bet I'm not (see comment about steak). g

Sounds like you have a lot of the basics handled, so all you need is
to sit down and isolate each aspect of what you are doing to the
meat. Sometimes, you have to start over. When I was learning to bake
bread, I must have baked about 100 loaves before I got the Italian
crust I was looking for. The devil was in the details, of course.

The cherry and maple I got from Dave Bugg 2 years ago.

Can't imagine DB steering you wrong.

Can't detect any sign of greenness about the hickory. As to the color
of the smoke, on this cook I never did see the color--was on for dark
when I put the meat on, and didn't bother adding wood after daybreak
today.

I don't cook on propane, so I am sure someone else's opinion would be
better on this than mine. Two years of seasoning would eliminate the
green wood idea, so now it is an application method. I know there are
methods to placing smoke boxes in the gas models but I don't know what
they are.

Personally, I think folks put too much wood into those gas cookers to
compensate for the lack of wood or charcoal. It just isn't needed.
If your wood is seasoned, cut the amount back, and try one wood at a
time before you start mixing.

I have been known to get billowing smoke...

Ooops.... regardless of your primary fuel, billowing smoke is not good
for any reason. It give that hard, acrid flavor that the creosotes
and resins give, not the mellow smoke a little gray blue plume will.
That could certainly be the culprit, and there is a large camp that
believes that if you put a very cold, large piece of meat that will
retain its cold temps (like a brisket) it will cause the hot, steamy
creosote to form on the cold meat.

But 10 1/4 lb is pretty small for a packer, yes? For
sure I'll be cutting the next one up--aside from the 'fit the pit'
issue, there's the "it's only me and that's a lot of meat" issue.

10 1/4 lbs... are you sure this wasn't a German Shepard? Just
kidding... that is a pretty small brisket!

The buddies I could invite over either are online friends, or people
who have problems with what they can eat.

Well, that sucks. Half the fun of smoking a chunk of meat is sharing
it with friends.

But, having all this, and wanting to improve it, gives me a chance to
try various things on/with it.

Absolutely. And as has been said many places and many times, one of
the best things about cooking is you get to eat your mistakes!

Brisket's good, don't get me wrong--but for me, the #1 bbq meat is
spares.

Spare what?

Kidding....

Hope you let us know here how your next effort turns out.

Robert