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Pitmaster at a cookoff in Amarillo taught me to watch the smoke color, not the temp gauge
He pointed at his stack and said "thin blue is good, white puffs mean you're smoldering" and it hit me why my ribs kept tasting bitter. I'd been chasing 225 on the dial and never once looked at what was coming out the chimney. Anybody else learn more from watching a pit than from a number on a gauge?
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josepha325d ago
What clicked for me was how that thin blue smoke is basically unburned fuel getting one more clean burn before it leaves the stack. White puffs mean the fire is starved for air, so you get creosote instead of sweet smoke, and that's exactly what lands on your meat as that bitter coating. Once you start reading the stack, the gauge just becomes a backup, since a clean fire will settle into its own temp anyway and you chase the smoke, not the number.
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