Canadians are starting to figure out what our southern American cousins have known for decades – the best meats to eat are those that get a healthy dose of smoke.
Local hardware stores have started selling different kinds of smokers alongside their barbecues, and they also offer a selection of wood chips for sale as well. Even local butchers are starting to notice the demand.
"I think it's grown in leaps and bounds," says George Hong, sales and marketing manager for D'Arcy's Meat Market in Campbell Park. "The amount of beef brisket we sell is extraordinary now."
Hong said while last year they sold maybe one or two briskets a week, that's gone up to 10 or 15, weighing in at 10 or 15 pounds each.
"And every person buying that is usually smoking it," Hong says.
The formula for successfully smoking a piece of meat is pretty simple – that formula simply states that all you need is meat, smoke and time.
"There's just some real basics there," says Robert Logue, owner of La Crema Caffé, which offers smoked meats to its customers. "Follow those basics and then add your own little touch."
Meat
There are three basic cuts of meat that are most popular when it comes to smoking – brisket, the Boston butt for pulled pork and pork ribs. There's a reason these three particular cuts of meat are tops when it comes to smoking.
"They're very affordable," says Hong. "The brisket is still a high-quality AAA Alberta product but it is still just a cheaper product because people aren't as familiar with it or know how to use it."
All three are also economical because of one common factor – they are tough as leather when cooked traditionally. And that's simply a function of their … er … function in the animal.
In any animal – even humans – the muscles that are used most often are the toughest. That's because working muscles create more connective tissue as the muscle grows in strength. That tissue is what makes for tough meat.
A brisket comes from the chest muscle of a cow, which is almost always working.
"It's traditionally a tough piece of meat," says Hong. "The fibres are striated throughout the meat and it's quite fatty."
A Boston butt – oddly – comes from the shoulder of a pig, which is always working. So too the ribs of a pig, which are always expanding and contracting with every breath. Of the two cuts of rib, most pitmasters go for the St. Louis-cut side rib instead of the baby back cut.
"Historically it's a cheaper cut," Hong said.
Once you've picked your cut of meat, there isn't much that needs to be done to get it ready for smoking except for putting on a dry rub anywhere from a day to an hour prior to smoking it.
Eden Tourangeau, a frequent D'Arcy's customer, goes for a traditional rub, which usually features paprika and brown sugar as a base.
"Depending on where I want to go with it, I can add something for heat or something for flavour," Tourangeau said.
Smoke
Visit any online forum on the topic of smoking meat and you'll find some pretty central debates that can get very intense. They all tend to focus on two central themes – the best wood for smoking and the best method to use.
When it comes to hardware of smoking, all you need is a vessel of some kind that can maintain a steady, low heat, usually around 225 to 250F, for several hours. Whether you choose to use charcoal, gas, whole logs or an electric source, it just needs to be consistent.
Tourangeau uses charcoal and wood chips in an old charcoal barbecue. Logue went all out for La Crema by investing in an Ole Hickory smoker that uses whole chunks.
"It's very well insulated and ours is a convection one so the air is moving all the time," said Logue.
Some woods are widely recognized to work best with different kinds of meats, much like wines that pair best with different meals. Briskets turn out best with a fruitwood like applewood or cherrywood. When it comes to pulled pork, hickory and oak are the most traditional woods used. And in the case of ribs, hickory and oak are the old standard, along with mesquite.
Logue uses applewood chunks for the ribs, pulled pork and chicken wings La Crema offers.
If you're using wood chips, you'll need to smoke them. That's because you want them to slowly smoulder, not burst into flame. What happens is that piece of meat in your smoker is going to suck that smoke into its outer layer, giving it a delicious flavour that can't be replicated with anything artificial.
But there is such a thing as too much smoke. Depending on your tastes and the size of the meat you are working with, hitting your meat with smoke for two to five hours is a good rule of thumb. Meat sucks up more smoke at the beginning of the cooking process than at the end.
Smoke too long and the smoke particles – called creosote – will accumulate on the meat to such an extent that your fussed-over piece of meat will come out tasting terrible.
"If you put too much smoke on the outside it will turn bitter and sometimes even a little sour," Hong says. "Then it overwhelms the flavour of the meat and it doesn't taste good."
"If you oversmoke it, it's really potent," says Logue. "We take a (log) and we cut it in four and if we're going to do ribs, we can take two chunks of that and that's enough for ribs."
Time
Smoking meat requires commitment and discipline because it takes a long, long time.
The rule of thumb for a Boston butt or a brisket is 90 minutes to two hours per pound. Consider that most of those cuts weigh in at anywhere from six to 15 pounds and you get the picture.
When Tourangeau does a brisket, he gets up at 4 a.m. to light the charcoal.
"I enjoy the heck out of it," Tourangeau says. "It's a great day to spend outside. You get a lot done in the yard. Really it's just making that meat the best it can be and it's just a lot of fun."
The reason smoking meat takes so much time is all that connective tissue that makes it so tough. When you expose it to low heat over a long period of time, that connective tissue dissolves, lubricating the individual meat fibres. Besides the smoke, it's part of what makes smoked meat taste so darn good.
"When you smoke meat for anywhere from 14 to 18 hours, it breaks down that tissue and that fat and it flavours the meat," says Hong.
You're also going for slightly more than done in a perfectly smoked meat product. A brisket is considered well done at 165F internal temperature, but the pros like to see it hit anywhere from 190F to 210F before they even consider carving it.
Logue pulls his pork from the smoker when it gets to between 190 and 200F.
"Then it pulls really nicely," Logue says.
From there it's all about details. Pulled pork needs a good bun to make a great pulled pork sandwich, while brisket and ribs need nothing. And if you've prepared your meat just right, you're not even going to need sauce.
Just make sure you have plenty of hungry guests.
