Page 15 - October 2021 Issue

Meathead, AmazingRibs.com
Smoked meats often have a pink layer nestled under the crust. This coveted smoke ring has long been emblematic of authentic smoked barbecue. Backyarders know they have arrived when they make
their first smoke ring. Bar-
becue aficionados look for
smoke rings to prove the
meat was wood smoked.
Well, guess what? You don't need smoke to make a smoke ring. Anybody who tells you that good barbecue needs a smoke ring is blow- ing smoke.
It’s All About The Myoglobin
Smoke can be described, a
bit simplistically, as tiny
particles mixed with water vapor and gases. The AmazingRibs.com science advisor, Prof. Greg Blonder of Boston University, has proven that the smoke ring results from an interaction between a pink protein in meat called
myoglobin and the gas nitric oxide (NO) and to a lesser de- gree, carbon monoxide (CO).
NO and CO are made by the combination of carbon and nitrogen with oxygen dur- ing the combustion of wood or charcoal. In meat, myo- globin changes from pink to gray as it breaks down dur- ing exposure to heat. How- ever, while the meat is starting to cook, if NO or CO land on the surface and dissolve, they lock in the myoglobin’s natural pink color while the rest of the meat beneath the surface turns gray with heat. The pink smoke ring usually only goes about 1/8′′ deep,
although, under some conditions, it can go up to 1/2′′ deep.
This chemical reaction is similar to the one that occurs when you cure meat by sprinkling it with a curing salt con- taining sodium nitrite. These are the salts that give bacon,
hot dogs, and corned beef their characteristic pink color. Sprinkle a little curing salt on meat and bake it in an in- door oven and voilà, you get a smoke ring. In competitions, unscrupulous cooks have been known to sprinkle curing salts on meat to fake a smoke ring. So you don’t need smoke to make a smoke ring!
To prove the point, Blonder placed pork tenderloins in a smoker in five kinds of filter bags: Parchment paper, a kraft paper bag, butcher paper, a Reynold’s turkey basting bag, and a HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter you might buy for a Shopvac. The bags are porous enough to let gases through, but they filter out the much larger smoke particles. All four meats developed smoke rings. No visible smoke necessary.
OCTOBER 2021
BarbecueNews.com - 13
The Science Of The Smoke Ring