Shelf · Salt, smoke & time · Low heat
Smoking
Cooking in a closed chamber at low temperature with smouldering wood, for hours.
- The temperature band
- The smoker · 95 to 135 °C
- The time
- About 240 min
Why it works
Two things happen at once, and they need the same low heat. Smoke compounds settle on and bind to the surface, and meanwhile the long hold between roughly 95 °C and 135 °C gives collagen time to melt into gelatin — hot enough to convert, cool enough not to squeeze the meat dry first.
The tell
A thin blue haze coming off the vent, never thick white billows, and a firm dark bark on the surface after a few hours.
How it fails
Thick white smoke deposits soot and bitter creosote and no amount of resting will lift it — give the fire more air until the smoke goes almost invisible. Meat plateaus for hours partway through as it sweats; that is normal, and turning up the heat to beat it is how you get a dry piece.
In the app, the card opens on the recipe step that names it, with the tell drawn.
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