How can you have too much smoke?

It's all about clean burning fire. Bad smoke (white poofy) is well..... BAD. Invisible is best.

Many newbs think they need to see tons of smoke to be smoking. TBS is the best. TBS = Thin blue smoke.

Some of the best cooks I've ever done you couldn't see any smoke coming off exhaust. But the whole neighborhood smelled yummy.

I still see pics posted here where there is tons of nasty white smoke coming off the cooker. Not what I want when trying to make good food.

Sure. First, clean burning fire that results in a sweet "thin" blue hue smoke is the smoke that you want to cook with. Most newbies (me included) think that the more billowy white smoke you have the better, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Use clean dry wood, whether chunks or chips or splits. The perfect smoke is allllllmost clear.

This (above) is where most newbies make their mistakes. Learning fire control and what is great smoke.

Also, later you'll find that you can still over-smoke meat in most peoples eye/opinion. Mind you, some like hard/strong smoke flavors that are powerful. Others like the smoke flavor to enhance the flavor of the meat, not consume it. Later there's a balancing act at hand. I use charcoal (in a stick burner) and some foil techniques to help me find my balance. Yours certainly can vary.

Too much smoke is, well, it's...



That being said, I'm not sure that it is too much smoke as much as it is the wrong kind of smoke. Thick white or dark colored smoke imparts a bad flavor ranging from bitter to petroleum tasting.

Wiffs of blue to clear smoke is the target.

if my phone camera wasnt so bootleg, this would be a perfect example of sweet blue, well it was actually closer to violet than blue.

Here is a pic of the smoke coming from my Keg running at 275 degrees. It's invisible.

Boshizzle said:

Here is a pic of the smoke coming from my Keg running at 275 degrees. It's invisible.

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Yeppers. That's what I go for. I use a CHITLOAD of chunks when doing pork shoulder because I LOVE the intense smoke flavoring. I always wait for my cooker to start producing the almost invisable blue before putting the meat on though.

I'm using only lump charcoal and not wood. Sometime I see TBS, sometime I don't see smoke at all. I like the smokey flavour I have, but do you think i'm really smoking? Or "smoking" needs woods?

Lump is wood, so yeah, I think you are smoking.

I've probably mentioned this over a dozen times here. But there has been a huge influx of new folks, it might be worth mentioning again.

Hover palm of hand over exhaust for several seconds. Smell hand. It'll tell you if the cooker is burning clean.

JTurner538 said:

I've read that one of the biggest mistakes newbies make is having too much smoke. However, I've been wondering how it's possible to have too much smoke using chunks or chips when people use stick burners that are effectively smoking the entire time and in greater quantities than chunks or chips put out. Anyone want to help a newbie understand?

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The science behind it is that wood burns very inefficiently when it first catches fire, which gives you a thick white smoke that doesn't taste good. A hot fire with nice red coals produces very little visible smoke, but it is there, and it tastes better on the meat. Any time you burn any fuel, and you have thick smoke, that means the fuel is not completely burning. In the world of BBQ, that "not completely burned" fuel does NOT make food taste good.

Guys using stick burners are adding small amounts of wood at a time to an already red-hot fire, so the wood gets up to efficient burning temperatures pretty fast, so you might get a little white smoke for a little while, but not long. Some even pre-heat their wood on top of the fire box, or have a separate fire-pit to get the wood burning before shoveling it into the firebox.

If you were to load a whole lot of cold wood into a firebox at one time, you would get a lot of white smoke as that wood slowly catches fire.

I use charcoal and wood chunks, using the Minion method. As the fire spreads from one coal to the next, it is also pre-heating the surrounding unlit coals, so they ignite and burn efficiently. Same with my wood chunks, which are mixed in with the charcoal. They are already really hot when they start to burn, so they burn efficiently.

The mistake I made as a noob was to think that thick white smoke was a good thing. So, I tossed a lot of cold wood chunks into my fire to keep that smoke coming. That's what veterans mean by noobs using too much smoke.

A better way of saying it would be that noobs use the wrong kind of smoke.

CD

^^ Good point.

I pretty much only burn logs with bigger cuts like butts and briskets, as we live on a woody farm. Right now I have pretty much ornamental pear and some strange kind of oak. It's not the best but it works. I get a lot of white billowing smoke, then TBS. The thick white smoke smells good 95% of the time though, and when it doesn't, I'll use a different log.

El Ropo said:

Hover palm of hand over exhaust for several seconds. Smell hand. It'll tell you if the cooker is burning clean.

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What smell are you looking for?

I was going to post almost the same question today. My chicken turned dark as night yesterday. It was moist and tasted excellent, it was just UGLY. Thanks for the info. I guess I need to change my wood and maybe think about the pre heating idea.

Trumpstylz said:

What smell are you looking for?

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you will smell the meat. when sweet blue is coming out the top you will smell the meat. When White smoke is coming out it smells like a shirt you wore to a bar with people smoking the night before.

when you cup your hand and it smells like sweet yummy pork butt or brisket, you know your in good shape.

A video of this would be helpful!

I have light smoke, but I don't know about "blue"?

I do sit near my smoker and have pulled out a piece of smoke wood or two that smelled like a burning 2x4, but I never tried to smell the meat in the smoke.
Chris

Trumpstylz said:

What smell are you looking for?

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LOL, you'll know when you smell it.

Sniff palm. It'll do one of two things. It'll smell like heaven, or it'll smell like a bunch of railroad ties smoldering.

As I said above, you'll know in a heartbeat.

I use lots of pecan apple, and cherry. When the exhaust is sniffed, it smells like heaven for sure. The whole neighborhood gets the same smell.

When my UDS is really cooking, there isn't really any visible smoke coming from it at all. I may occasionally see a very thin blue smoke, but mostly there is no visible smoke at all. But, the flavor is out of this world. Probably, one of the better compliments that I have received was from a bar owner friend that said my pulled pork and brisket were so good because the smoke didn't overpower the flavor of the meat. :bow:

I watched a youtube vid the other day, 2 guys smoking a turkey, and man, they were loving that thick, white, billowing smoke!

When a respondent suggested they aim for TBS, they blasted him. Lol.