great local butcher, see what she has available. If you don’t have a butcher in your neighborhood, check your local grocery store. The big-box retailers typically have larger cuts of meat. Your local grocer typically cuts those large cuts of meat into smaller cuts that are more palatable to someone feeding a family of four.
To understand what to look for, head to Chapter 5, where I explain meat cuts complete with illustrations.
Keeping your spice shelf fresh
Spices are key to modern-day barbecue, but one thing is for sure: If your spices are old, they’ll flatten or dull the flavor of your meat. Figure out what spices you use the most, and make sure that you always have them on hand, fresh. Spices typically have a shelf life of about a year when stored in a cool, dark place.
A great resource for spices in general and how to pair meats with spices is The Flavor Bible, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg (Little, Brown and Company). The book pairs different spices with different foods and vice versa. It’s like a dictionary for spices. It includes the meats and other foods they complement.
Preparing the Meat
Certain pieces of meat are fine straight out of the package, but a brisket, for example, usually needs some trimming. In this section, I explain how to prep your meat before you cook it.
Trimming the fat
Most cuts of meat you find at a retail butcher counter are already trimmed so they have about ¼ inch of fat. However, if you buy a large cut of meat for barbecue, you may need to do some additional trimming.
Even ¼ inch of fat may be too much for your taste, so you may want to trim the meat down to the muscle structure of your meat. (Chapter 5 has information on trimming.)
Trimming can often enhance the flavor of your barbecue by making sure that your bark adheres to the meat without any waste. Bark is the outer crust of spices and fat that forms on meat as it cooks. It can sometimes make the meat look burnt, but bark is the essential element of flavor when barbecue is cooked properly.
Adding spices or liquid
Sometimes you just want the meat to stand on its own with no seasoning or alteration of the pure taste of the meat. However, more often than not, you want to add a bit of flavor or promote juiciness that you may not get with the plain cut of meat. Rubs, brines, and marinades are good ways to achieve an extra layer of flavor to take your dish over the top. Here’s what each of these does:
Rubs: A rub is a mix of seasonings, sometimes including sugar, that you typically apply to the piece of meat right before throwing on the smoker. Some recipes call for the rub to be applied several hours in advance, but those are the exceptions.Choose the rub you like for the cut of meat you’re smoking and rub it in thoroughly by hand to ensure that the rub adheres to the raw surface of the meat. Oftentimes in competition barbecue, pitmasters use plain yellow mustard as a base against the raw meat before applying the rub. The mustard helps the rub adhere to the meat. As the meat cooks, the mustard dissolves, essentially turning into vinegar while the rub sticks to the meat.
Brines: A saltwater-based brine penetrates below the surface and throughout the meat. You can inject seasoned salt water or submerse your meat in it for up to 24 hours.
Marinades: A marinade flavors the surface without penetrating too deeply. You typically place meat or vegetables in an oil-based seasoned bath for at least a couple of hours before you cook it.
Turn to Chapter 12 for recipes for rubs, brines, and marinades.
The Moment (or Hours) of Truth: Cooking
When you’re ready to get going, make sure you take the steps to have a smooth and productive cook. The next sections tell you what those steps are.
Getting the grill or smoker ready
It may take a few hours to get your grill or smoker ready. Preheat your grill or smoker and get it up to the temperature that you need to cook.
Use a charcoal chimney or a wood- or paper-based fire starter to get your coals started. You can choose from several varieties of wood- and paraffin-based starters on the market.
Make sure that the charcoal you use is high quality, clean, and dry. Charcoal that sits outside can get damp, and if it gets damp, it can gets moldy, which can affect the flavor of your cook.
Likewise, make sure that the wood you use to smoke is dry and handy so that you don’t have to interrupt your cook to get more wood. Lay out the amount of wood you think you’ll need to keep the smoke consistent throughout your cook.
Decide on your cooking method ahead of time:
If you’re cooking over indirect heat on a grill, get the fire started at least half an hour to an hour before you want to start cooking. By starting early, you get a sense of how many coals to add at what intervals to keep your temperature consistent and even. You place the fire to one side of the grill and cook on the other side.Figure out how you can add fuel to your fire without disrupting your cook. Some grills have a hinged grate that allows easy access to the coals in the grill. Others have a door to the fire box that you can open without disrupting the grate. If you have to lift the grate — and maybe your meat — to add fuel, just make sure that you plan for it ahead of time and have any tools you need close at hand to make it quick and seamless.
If you’re using a smoker, get your fire started an hour or two before you put the meat on to cook. That way you heat up the outer walls of your smoker, which can seriously affect the time and temperature of your cook.
