Page 58 - Amazing Ribs - Book

slab of babybacks and about five to six hours to cook a slab of St. Louis cut ribs or spares.
The best tasting smoke comes from hardwoods, nutwoods, and fruitwoods. Never use any kind of pine or sappy wood unless you want meat that tastes like turpentine. Never use construction lumber because it is often treated with poison- ous chemicals to discourage rot and termites.
Charcoal is not a good source of smoke. When you first light charcoal it produces an acrid smoke. When it is fully ignit- ed and has a thin coat of white ash charcoal produces little smoke. That is when you add wood.
We don’t care what you have read, there is no need to soak wood. First of all, it doesn’t absorb much water. That’s why they build boats from wood! Secondly, all that billowy white smoke is really steam because the wood cannot combust until the water on the surface of the wood evaporates at 212°F. Then the wood can go up in temperature to 500°F+ where it can combust. Then let it burn with a bright blue and orange flame. When it does, wood makes clean “blue” smoke with few impurities and the smoke is almost invisible because the par- ticles are so small. Invisible “blue” smoke from burning wood tastes better than billowing white smoke from smoldering wood. Click here to learn more on this topic.
Don’t obsess over which wood to use. The differences are sub- tle and you should concentrate first on getting quality meat, trimming it, salting it, rubbing it, temperature control, and sauce management. We don’t have space to get into wood theory here so if you want to know more and learn why we tell
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