Interesting article about the dreaded stall

Guamaque said:

Absolutely !! Thermal mass knows no boundaries. To demonstrate an extreme example , if you moved your cooker at equilibrium, with pit and meat temps the same, to a snow bank, of course the meat temp will fall , even if you keep the pit temp the same, all the heat is going into the snow and not your meat, until the snow temp is equilibrated with the pit.

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That's a bit extreme, but I kind of see your point. I work on high vacuum furnaces (10e-9, 2000+°C) so I kind of understand thermal dynamics. I just have yet to do a brisket at work:heh:


I'm not arguing, I just posted this to put me on the road to being a farker

I thought that the cologen didn't break down until 190* and above any how? Interesting theory presented for the stall though. I can appreciate the interest, I just look at it as more time to drink beer and play with the kids though!!!

Guamaque, that is why my tuning plates in my cooker are 3/8" thick cold rolled plate. Same reason why I "pre-heat" my cooker for a good 2 hours before I put the meat on. Once all that steel is equalized, it chugs along at a much more even and stable temp. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claim though, just years of cooking experience with my pit.

CarolinaQue said:

Guamaque, that is why my tuning plates in my cooker are 3/8" thick cold rolled plate. Same reason why I "pre-heat" my cooker for a good 2 hours before I put the meat on. Once all that steel is equalized, it chugs along at a much more even and stable temp. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claim though, just years of cooking experience with my pit.

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Carolina Q,

You are right on. You added thermal mass to your pit. Pre heating will eliminate the pause we speak of. The downside of this is that it is wasteful and not efficient to heat your pit / cooker to 400 degrees for 3 hours with nothing in them just so you don't get a dip or pause. The best idea is to work with the pause, as it is predicted and needed.
However, our published guest has made a " factual statement" as to the cause of the pause based on false science. This theory could have been made by a hobbyist with just a theory, but not a theory based on physics. The explanation for the pause is wrong. The site should not have published his theory as science, but just as an opinion as we all have them. Once you speak science, you need facts. And the data is clearly non scientific.
The thermal mass conservation theory is well established.

Q.

Sammy_Shuford said:

I saw it as explanation of what happens, not as how to change anthing!

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Whoa. Read it again. I'd say that only smoking for a couple of hours and then wrapping in foil is a bit out of the norm.

Guamaque said:

Pre heating will eliminate the pause we speak of. The downside of this is that it is wasteful and not efficient to heat your pit / cooker to 400 degrees for 3 hours with nothing in them just so you don't get a dip or pause.

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I'm gonna try this for my next brisket and see what it does to the stall. I have a BGE so figure it's a valid example as the ceramic has decent thermal mass. The bigger question is will avoiding the stall provide for a moister product since it's not clocking unnecessary hours and losing unnecessary moisture to reach tenderness?

Guamaque said:

Carolina Q,

You are right on. You added thermal mass to your pit. Pre heating will eliminate the pause we speak of. The downside of this is that it is wasteful and not efficient to heat your pit / cooker to 400 degrees for 3 hours with nothing in them just so you don't get a dip or pause. The best idea is to work with the pause, as it is predicted and needed.
However, our published guest has made a " factual statement" as to the cause of the pause based on false science. This theory could have been made by a hobbyist with just a theory, but not a theory based on physics. The explanation for the pause is wrong. The site should not have published his theory as science, but just as an opinion as we all have them. Once you speak science, you need facts. And the data is clearly non scientific.
The thermal mass conservation theory is well established.

Q.

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Well, I don't go as hot as 400*. I tried that a couple of times and had issues with getting the pit back down to my cooking temp. I will say that my target pre-heat temp is 30* or so above my pit temp so when the meat goes on, that cool mass of meat brings the pit temp down to my cook temp.

As far as those couple of hours of extra fuel in regards to wood and efficiency...there's always some thing to do during that time. It's all a matter of perspective I suppose!

Tim

Thanks -- I got something out of that. That site has some good recipes -- their reverse-engineered Vous dry rub is great on ribs. I'd used it three times and get consistently awesome results.

CarolinaQue said:

Guamaque, that is why my tuning plates in my cooker are 3/8" thick cold rolled plate. Same reason why I "pre-heat" my cooker for a good 2 hours before I put the meat on. Once all that steel is equalized, it chugs along at a much more even and stable temp. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claim though, just years of cooking experience with my pit.

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I think you're correct.

CarolinaQue said:

Guamaque, that is why my tuning plates in my cooker are 3/8" thick cold rolled plate. Same reason why I "pre-heat" my cooker for a good 2 hours before I put the meat on. Once all that steel is equalized, it chugs along at a much more even and stable temp. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claim though, just years of cooking experience with my pit.

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We cook a lot of comps and what you are doing is very similiar to how folks use their Jambo pits...

double insulated direct flow cooker with large exhaust stack for maximum airflow that is pre-heated for a few hours....Design of those smokers certainly cuts cooking time down considerably and foiling takes place at much lower internal from my experiences...Of course with a stick burner it is easier to get desired color quickly and then finish cook in foil with charcoal/lump if you wanted etc...

pocoloco said:

I'm gonna try this for my next brisket and see what it does to the stall. I have a BGE so figure it's a valid example as the ceramic has decent thermal mass. The bigger question is will avoiding the stall provide for a moister product since it's not clocking unnecessary hours and losing unnecessary moisture to reach tenderness?

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I believe you will find that it makes no difference if you cook until a birsket or pork butt is tender. What makes a long cooked piece of meat tender is the breakdown of the connective tissue that is binding the fibers of the meat together, this must be achieved without denaturing the protein of the muscle fibers themselves. You still need to denature the collagen, you will still drive off moisture that is trapped within the collagen bound tissues as it denatures. The collagen on BBQ does not render, it denatures and becomes a liquid, which is the moisture we detect in long cooked meats.

Fat does render, with the moisture evacuating the meat, while the fatty acid and long chain carbon sugars reamaining as a component within the meat. This is why a properly done pulled pork or brisket point has a sweetness and unctuous mouth feel. In this case, the water has been evaporated. There is physically less fat in the meat.

I agree with the physical explanation offered previously, in terms of how the need for equilibrium is the key factor in determining stall length, but, I still believe it is the process of denaturing the collagen that determines when the meat is done. I would add, I have had meat that easily finished in the 200F range, but, have run across meats that were done in the 180F range and others that never seemed to get tender.

Guamaque said:

I like the article, it's thought provoking, but it is dead wrong. I am a physics major, and this article blows smoke. Pardon the pun. :laugh: The reason for the stall is detailed in the thermal equilibrium curve. The higher the thermal mass of your pit, the longer you will experience the stall. Heat approaches equilibrium after 2-3 hours, then slowly approaches the equilibrium over a long time, as the curve graft shows. Once it is achieved, the pit and surrounding can not take in more heat and the meat temp will rise.

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Stall is not due on the thermal mass of your pit or the time required for your system to reach equilibrium.
The fact that the stall is going on 5-8 hours into the cook should make that point obvious.

MG_NorCal said:

Stall is not due on the thermal mass of your pit or the time required for your system to reach equilibrium.
The fact that the stall is going on 5-8 hours into the cook should make that point obvious.

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I was wondering the same thing. Why does it happen after everything should
have long since equalized? And why would the meat stall at 150-170* when
everything around it is above that temp long before then?

I see the whole cook as one long stall. :-D

John

Guamaque said:

temperature has to equilibrate with the dirt, meat, metal, bricks, patio etc. over a long period of time before the meat temp can rise.

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Where do you get the idea that the dirt and patio affect the meat in your cooker?
By what means is the influence exerted?

Guamaque said:

Experiment yourself, use a plain pot of water with a sealed lid and a digital probe inside. Low and slow, 225, you will have the stall for 3-4 hours, once thermal mass equilibrium is reached, the internal temp of the pot of water will shoot up..

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I'd like to see the data on this.
If it did happen, I'd attribute it to connective tissue breakdown as landarc suggests.

I wouldn't be so quick to think there is a fundamental difference in the statements I am making and what Guamaque is making, there is a total energy budget involved in cooking a piece of meat, in part, the rendering of the collagen, necessary for a tender brisket or butt, is what I am focusing on. However, if you consider that the phase shift, from solid to liquid, if the collagen use energy in two different ways, you end up with the consideration that some of that energy is released as measurable heat (evaporative or conductive loss or gain), some as retained heat (meat temperature loss or gain) and energy expended to shift the stasis of molecules from one phase to another (measured only by calculating the other aspects). Hence, not a simple equation, as the variables in a given piece of meat are not a known entity.

The reason foil wrapping increases cooking speed is not related to it's retarding evaporation, thus preventing evaporative cooling, it is related to the effective rise in temperature effected by trapping a super heated gas (steam) in direct contact with the meat. There is also a potential gain in pressure, although the amount developed is, I suspect negligable. The steam acts much more efficiently than dry air in accomplsihing thermal transfer of it's heat to the meat than dry air, due to the increased density it possesses and the nature of how thermal transfer of energy works. If you use steam in an closed environment to cook meat, it is, quite possible to dry out a piece of meat while cooking it in a very moist environement. The steam will still remove the moisture and it will evacuate the meat as soon as you change the vessel holding the steam next to the meat to an open environment. Witness the fact that it is possible to have very wet, yet stringy, dry, pot roast.

really good discussion....seems the actual grade of larger cuts(brisket) has not been mentioned etc...I would certainly think phosphate based injections have a role in some methods coupled with cooker etc.....

landarc said:

What makes a long cooked piece of meat tender is the breakdown of the connective tissue that is binding the fibers of the meat together, this must be achieved without denaturing the protein of the muscle fibers themselves.

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Only if the temperature is VERY low (e.g. sous vide), otherwise the major proteins will have already denatured by ~160F.

For a closer look at the original experiment by [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Greg Blonder [/FONT](as well as links some other BBQ-related tests he also performed) be sure to check out this site:
http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/stallbbq.html

The tests and conclusions are quite solid IMHO.
He does some good experiments with smoke ring formation too.

I asked Dr. Blonder to respond to the comments and he sent me this (I am a long-time lurker on this board):

Meathead

I've already written a draft discussing oven thermal mass on
cooking- which has very little effect because air is such a good insulator.
Thermal mass barely reduces temperature fluctuations, and has no effect on
the stall which is a local process of evaporation. Probably should wait til
that article is posted.

If you felt like adding a reply to the thread- though it rarely shifts
hardened opinions- you might point out three things. And then
suggest they stay-tuned as you bring more science- backed up by experiments,
to amazingribs.com:

1) The oven's thermal mass compared to the mass of the meat is irrelevant. A
half ounce sponge stalls in an oven weighing 50 pounds at the same rate as
in a toaster oven. I tested a cup filled with sand and oil and that did not
stall, but according to the thermal mass misconception, it should have
stalled just like a piece of meat of the same mass. Refer them to:

http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/stallbbq.html#sand

2) There is no steaming inside a foil package- and it takes hours for the
temperature to rise to 212F because air simply doesn't carry much heat. Air
is 1000 times less dense than water, and just can't transfer enough energy
in a short time to cause water to boil. Send them to this link for actual
experimental data:

http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/stallbbq.html#foiljump

3) Collagen makes up about 25% of the protein in a cow or pig, but almost
all that collagen is in the bones and skins. The collagen content in most
consumed cuts of meats is typically around 2%, to as much as 5%. Usually
much lower than the fat content. Otherwise, pulled pork would become Jello
with meat threads. Not the source of the stall.

I should add that Dr. Blonder has a long and distinguished career as a working physicist as Chief Technical Advisor at AT&T's famous Bell Labs where he studied superconductivity and the quantum phenomena of semiconductor materials among other things. Much of this research has resulted in practical applications and he holds over 80 patents in the areas of optical disk recording, integrated fiber optic devices, displays, toys, computer systems, software services and improved user interfaces.

I think the person on this board who challenged his conclusions and put forth the theory that the mass of the cooker was related said he was a physics student. He is entitled to his theory, but until he conducts experiments to support it, I am impressed by Doctor Blonder's actual data and his credentials.

meathead