Mad Science Experiment - Smoke Rings

The results are in!!!

Pieces came off at different times over the course of about 45 minutes, but I had a system to keep everything organized and when all the pieces were ready I was able to process them systematically. This is a good thing because when I took the pictures off my camera I found I had only taken 14 photos, so I missed taking photos of two pieces. Because of the system I was able to quickly identify exactly which pieces did not get pictures. It was the Dry Brined piece and the Wet Brined piece.

The system I had to keep everything in order was to put toothpicks in the pieces in each cooker to identify which ones they were. Then when taking pieces off of the cooker, I had three different pans to put them in, so only pieces from the same cooker wound up in a pan. Then from the number of toothpicks in each piece in the pan I knew exactly what cooker and what piece it was. Then when evaluating them I did them in a specific order by cooker and number of toothpicks and wrote down the results for that cooker and piece number.

The pictures were taken as I processed the pieces, so they followed that same order, and I also included the toothpicks in the photos for identification if needed. It's a good thing I did because this is how I was able to figure out which pieces I had forgotten to take photos of.

OK, I know you are itching for the results, here they are. All pieces were cooked to between 195 and 200 degrees. The cookers were running at 275 throughout the cooking process. to measure the smoke ring, I sliced each piece in half and took the measurement of the smoke ring at its thickest point that was not a corner or gouge/cavity.

WSM w/Water Pan - Plain
1/2 inch thick smoke ring. Boring flavorwise.


WSM w/Water Pan - Spritzed
1/2 inch thick smoke ring. Boring flavorwise.


WSM w/Water Pan - Brined
1/2 inch thick smoke ring. Tasted rather good actually.
(sorry, no photo)

WSM w/Water Pan - Rubbed
3/8 inch thick smoke ring. Tasted good.


WSM w/Water Pan - Slathered and Rubbed
3/8 inch thick smoke ring. Tasted good.


WSM w/Water Pan - Brined, Slathered, Rubbed and Spritzed
3/8 inch thick smoke ring. Tasted better than the others.


WSM w/Sand Pan - Plain
1/2 inch thick smoke ring. Boring tasting.


WSM w/Sand Pan - Spritzed
1/2 inch thick smoke ring. Boring tasting.


WSM w/Sand Pan - Brined
1/2 inch thick smoke ring. Good meat flavor.
(sorry, no photo)

WSM w/Sand Pan - Rubbed
3/8 inch thick smoke ring. Tasted good.


WSM w/Sand Pan - Slathered and Rubbed
3/8 inch thick smoke ring. Tasted good.


WSM w/Sand Pan - Brined, Slathered, Rubbed and Spritzed
3/8 inch thick smoke ring - This one had the best bark and best flavor of all of the pieces today.


Oven - Plain
No smoke ring at all. This was the most boring flavor of all of them.


Oven - Tenderquick rub
5/8 inch thick smoke ring. This tasted OK. Nothing special.


Oven - Liquid Smoke and Tenderquick Rub
5/8 inch thick smoke ring. This did not taste bad, but if I was sereved this anywhere I would never order it again. The smoke flavor did not taste like real smoke and was very subtle and kinda weird tasting. I would never mistake this for real smoked BBQ, no way, no how.


Oven - Cherry Wood Ash
1/4 inch light colored smoke ring, but it was there! I did not taste it however.


I was surprised at how clear the results seem to be at initial glance. There are some noticeable patterns in these results. Here is what I am taking from this at first glance.

1. Cooking in a gas oven does not produce a smoke ring. (I knew this already though, but nobody can say I didn't include this)

2. Wood ash on meat does indeed form a smoke ring.

3. Meat cooked in an oven with Liquid Smoke could not fool anyone familiar with real BBQ.

4. Introducing extra moisture to the meat from a water pan, brining or spritzing has no effect on smoke ring penetration.

5. Adding a rub to the meat reduces penetration of the smoke ring. Slathers, spritzes and brines do not seem to cause any more reduction in the smoke ring, it appears to be just the rub that makes this difference.

Well, that's what happened today folks. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

Final Beer Tally: 11 :lol: I either overestimated with the 30 pack, or underconsumed. We went out earlier for a birthday dinner and is why it took me so long to post the results. So I had to stop drinking the beers from the 30 pack. I guess this means I have extras for the leftovers, so it's all good.

beerguy said:

Great job. Im wondering if all the toothpick holes let the air out of the smoke rings....I'll go to my room now...

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DOH!:shock: I never thought of that!:lol:

Sofa Q said:

Maybe if you drank more beer you would have been able to try the one covered in cherry ash.

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No way. The pic does not do it justice. It did not look even remotely appetizing, and it smelled ashy. You woul dhave to be wasted to eat something like that, and there would have to be the promise of money or sex to probably entice the person to do so.

All, I shoudl have mentioned that I tried brining a whole butt a couple years back. I brined it for 48 hours an d found it only penetrated about 1.5 inches into the meat. The only reason I think it worked this time was becuase I had quartered the butts, and there were no pieces over 3 inches thick. So the strong brine I made was able to penetrate thoroughly. The brine water when I drained it was a lovely pink color, and the meat tasted a little hammy and the flavor was ehanced from the salt. It was good. However, trying to brine a whole butt will probably just disappoint you.

These pieces were too small to deal with injecting in my opinion and is why I brined them instead. I think injecting a butt is a way to "brine" quickly. It gets a salty-solution with optional flavors added down into the meat quickly making it more moist in the end. I'm of the opinion that injecting a solution with salt into the meat gives you the benefit of brining by making the proteins wrap around the water molecules in the inject solution and trapping them in the meat while it cooks, the same as brining, except you are increasing the initial surface are the solution is exposed to by putting it inside the meat as opposed to waiting for it to fully absorb.

My brining in this experiment was basically similar to an inject in my opinion, but without any sweet or flavorings added. You can add those to brines as easily as to an inject, and a lot of people do.