Cooking with Coals

by Smoky Hale

The barbecue cookoff team, 'Cuz We Kan, is well known for burning our wood down to coals in a separate pit and shoveling them into the cooking pit. Even though I have for many years loudly advocated this as the only way to barbecue, many folk just haven't gotten the word. Several people have asked for more information. I will try to shed as much light on the subject as I can.

The reason that wood is burned to embers before exposing meat to its heat is pure and simple: flavor. Some of the earliest references to cooking have mentioned first reducing the wood to embers. In The Great American Barbecue & Grilling Manual, I cite a passage from The Iliad where on the beach at ancient Troy, Achilles, Patroclus, and Automedon cooked goat, sheep and pork, and according to the poet Homer, "When the flame had died down, he spread the embers, laid the spits on top of them, lifting them up and setting them upon the spit racks...." In writings from colonial time, to pioneers and plainsmen, wood was always burned to coals for cooking. In outdoor living, there were always two fires, a camp fire for heat and light and a smaller bed of coals for cooking. Among knowledgeable folk, this is still true.

When food was placed in the rising stream of heat, it took on the flavor of that heat stream. When this stream contained the smoke of burning wood, the flavor of the meat was tainted with the constituents of that stream. The EPA has published a list of 214 constituents of wood smoke, just the reading of which will make you gag. Besides grossly unappetizing flavors, many are carcinogenic and/or toxic. Just to list a few of the most dangerous: carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, methyl chloride, phenol, and chlorinated dioxins. People learned by trial and error, that food cooked in heat stream containing the smoke of burning wood did not taste as good as that cooked over the heat of embers.

Even when barbecuing began in eastern North Carolina, the pork was always cooked over a bed of hot coals. The earliest photographs of barbecuing show using racks of wood to hold the hogs over a shallow bed of coals shoveled into place from a separate fire pit. I remember, as a teenager, the first barbecue that I assisted in. We dug a shallow pit long enough and wide enough to accommodate a yearling beef. We piled it high with oak and pecan and fired it up about nightfall and went to bed. By daylight, next morning, we spread the bed of glowing coals, put the meat rack on the posts, put on the meat and started basting. The meat was served about sun down, with plenty of "smoke" flavor, but there was never a wisp of smoke of burning wood to be seen.

We who learned to barbecue from old masters who had learned older masters, learned that which gives meat the desirable "smoke" flavor is invisible and that visible smoke can only deposit the phenolic (Lysol) flavor and the tarry creosote deposits. While we learned this as a practical matter, we had to wait until recently for the Ph.D.s in fields like food chemistry and food technology, could explain the physical causes. While phenol is an excellent bactericide and is important in the preservation of cured foods, it is overpowering and unwanted in barbecuing.

With the "rediscovery" of barbecue in America, many folk who had never barbecued began to cook on grills of various sorts. Those who cooked on pits where the meat was directly in the heat stream, could not escape the facts about burning wood. Those who began their barbecuing career with an off-set fire box and an exhaust vent at the top of the cooking chamber somewhat escaped the harsh truth because the hot smoke flowed to the top of the cooking chamber and out the stack without coming in contact with the meat. The meat, instead of being cooked by convection in the stream of heated air, was cooked by radiant heat from the hot metal of the cooking chamber. Those cooking in such a side winder were relatively safe as long as the exhaust was  entirely open and the smoke flowed freely out, but closing the exhaust only a little caused ghastly deposits of noxious flavors. This flow is illustrated in The Great American Barbecue & Grilling Manual in "The Anatomy of a Grill." Lowering the entry to the exhaust drastically reduces the heat losses and cuts the amount of fuel needed to cook, but makes the change from wood to embers essential.

Many of the best--the consistent winners--on the barbecue circuit cook their meat over hardwood coals. Personally, I am firmly convinced that meat cooked directly over coals and in the rising heat stream comes out superior in taste and texture to any other method.

The ember production pit need not be elaborate. A simple pile of burning wood and a shovel to move it is sufficient. A whole or half 55 gal. drum, with a few pieces of steel rod 10-12" from the bottom and a shovel hole on one side at the bottom is ideal. A metal box without one side works well. A few bricks for a base and bricks stack on three sides makes the chore a snap.

Try it. I guarantee that once you taste the difference between meat cooked over clean burning embers and in the noxious smoke, you will never again be satisfied to expose your meat to smoke.

Smoky Hale's latest book, The Great American Barbecue & Grilling Manual, 416 pages, illustrated, is available in local book stores, the Barbecue Store at www.barbecuen.com , www.amazon.com , and Barnes & Noble.

Editor’s Note: Smoky’s point about the less smoke used the better is well taken, as I have over-smoked food in my smoker. It is interesting to note that in Bob Garner’s book, North Carolina Barbecue, photographs reveal both techniques being used. In photos on pages 11 and 24 (taken in the 1930s), smoke is clearly evident in the barbecuing process. But in the photo on page 20, taken in 1944, there is no smoke and a man can be seen shoveling coals into a pit. At the Double-V Jerk Center in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, the jerk cooks use a separate pit to burn the pimento wood down to coals that are then shoveled into the cooking pit. The cook explained to me that cooking over the wood instead of the coals would cook the meat too quickly. But after the coals are shoveled into the cooking pit, fresh, thin branches off the pimento tree are thrown on the coals to generate small amounts of smoke.

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