Mastering the art of fire maintenance
Editor’s note: This is the fifth column in a Barbecue at Home series in which Reid provides how-to advice on becoming a proficient backyard pitmaster.
The art of maintaining a fire for the purpose of cooking meat is a fundamental skill for any backyard pitmaster. It’s also the most physically taxing, time-consuming and often frustrating part of cooking barbecue at home.
Here are my tips, tools and techniques for starting and maintaining a fire that will result in delicious barbecue. As always, wear appropriate safety equipment, have a fire extinguisher close by, and never leave the fire unattended for too long.
Begin with a properly built wood stack in your offset smoker’s firebox. The goal here is to avoid crowding the logs into the firebox — you want plenty of space around the logs for oxygen to flow and feed the fire.
Stack properly sized and seasoned logs in a Lincoln Loglike formation: start with two logs parallel on the bottom of the firebox, and add a pile of charcoal briquettes and wood chips for kindling in between. Next, add two logs perpendicular and another on top of that, and then one more layer perpendicular to that.
Now it’s time to start the fire. Some backyard offset smokers, such as my Pitts & Spitts model, come with a built-in propane gas log-lighter feature. This is a great option for novices, though it can take a while to get the fire going. Pro-tip: Never use lighter fluid to start your fire as it will add an unpalatable petroleum flavor to your barbecue.
The tool I use is called a propane torch, which is also the choice of professional pitmasters. It’s a torch that attaches to a standard 20-pound propane tank. Fire it up, point it at the kindling pile at the bottom of your wood stack, and you’ll have a roaring fire in a matter of minutes.
Note that a propane torch is a powerful tool, and I only recommend it if you are experienced in using propane appliances. Fully review and follow the safety instructions that come with it.
At this point you’ve got a roaring fire in the firebox. The temperature in the cooking chamber is extremely high, so let the fire burn down to coals to achieve a steady temperature. It might take as long as an hour to get a good coal bed.
Now it becomes a chess match between you and the fire to keep a consistent temperature (usually about 270 degrees) for the next 12 hours while cooking a brisket. The tools you will need are a temperature probe (thermometer), a shovel and a whole lot of patience.
Though all backyard smokers have an analog thermometer attached, I use a Bluetoothenabled (wireless) probe that allows for easy monitoring of temperature.
Place the probe in the cooking chamber and use the connected pocket monitor to alert you when the temperature goes above or below the target temperature.
Here’s how the process goes down. You’ve stabilized the temperature and placed the meat in the cooking chamber. Now you’ve got about 20-30 minutes before the temperature starts to decrease because the fire is burning down. Sometimes you can use the shovel to mix up the coal bed to raise the temperature, which may gain you another 30 minutes or so at temperature.
Eventually, though, you’ll need to add more wood to raise the temperature. Note that you don’t want to add full logs at this point, as they will take too long to catch fire. I use 4-by-4inch wood chunks that have been cut down from full logs.
When you first add the new wood, the temperature will usually rise above 270 degrees. Until the new wood burns down, the main technique I use to control the too-hot temperature is to manipulate the firebox door.
If the temperature is too hot, I’ll open the door all the way so an equal amount of heat is going out the door on one end as is going into the cooking chamber on the other end. Depending on what my temperature probe is telling me, I’ll open or close the firebox door a certain amount so that more or less heat is radiated into the cooking chamber.
Once the added wood has burned down to coals and a steady temperature is again achieved, you’ve got about another 30 minutes before you have to add wood or shovel coals to get the temperature back up. If you can maintain that 270 degrees for the next 12 hours, a perfectly cooked brisket will be waiting for you at the end of the process.