Page 27 - OCT 2020 Barbecue News Magazine

One of our favorite methods of searing is the “afterburner.” We put a grate on top of a charcoal chimney and at temps well over 1,000°F, the meat sears rapidly. You need to flip every 30 seconds or so, and no, there is no risk of vapors from the metal (not hot enough) and no bitter flavor from the flame, both myths. In the picture here I seared 500 UDSDA Prime strip steaks from Allen Brothers that had been sous vided to 131°F and served them to chefs and foodies and they went nuts.
Smoking
Sous vide can also be paired with a smoker. You can smoke the meat before it goes into the bag or after it is cooked. We prefer to smoke after cooking sous vide. The compounds in smoke are volatile, ephemeral, and some are water soluble. Many wash off with the juices that come out of the meat in the bag. If you smoke long enough after sous vide you get a lovely seductive new layer of smoke flavor. You can’t get a smoke ring if you smoke after cooking because by then all the myoglobin has changed color. No matter, the smoke ring has no flavor.
We like a wee bit of smoke on steaks and chicken, and a lot on ribs and beef brisket. Smoke from wood chunks or chips on a gas grill is very mild. Smoke from a pellet smoker is more pronounced, but still delicate. Smoke from wood chunks on charcoal is stronger and how strong depends on how much wood you burn. Smoke from logs and wood embers is stronger still. We have a detailed
discussion of wood, combustion, and smoke at https://amazin- gribs.com/combustion
Because smoke sticks better to wet surfaces, for smoking, don't pat dry the food when it comes out of the sous vide bag. Just put it on the smoker or a grill tricked out for smoking in a 2-zone setup. Plus, because the surface is wet, evaporation cools the surface in the smoker, so the internal temperature of the meat barely rises, allowing you to maintain your preferred doneness. A good tech- nique is to chill the meat after sous vide and before smoking, then flavor it with a rub, then warm it on the smoker to a pleasant sen- sation in the mouth, in the 140°F range, and finally hit it with a sauce.
Another technique we love is to put pellets or chips or sawdust on GrillGratesTM where they smoke just 1⁄2 inch below the meat.
Meathead is the barbecue whisperer who founded AmazingRibs.com, by far the world's most popular outdoor cooking website. He is the author of "Meathead, The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling," a New York Times Best Seller that was also named one of the "100 Best Cookbooks of All Time" by Southern Living magazine. This article was excerpted and modified from his book. More on his book here: https://amazingribs.com/book. For 3,000+ free pages of great barbe- cue and grilling info, visit AmazingRibs.com and take a free 30 day trial membership in the Pitmaster Club.
OCTOBER 2020
BarbecueNews.com - 27