Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

[bryan]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-gol ... 87719.html

[Syzygies]

This is prior work, published in 'Modernist Cuisine'

Here is the AmazingRibs blog entry:Understanding And Beating The Barbecue Stall, Bane Of All Barbecuers

It refers to this page by Greg Blonder, July 2011: BBQ stall explained

Here is an interview with Nathan Myhrvold, February 17, 2011: Modernist Cuisine's Nathan Myhrvold on Culinary Myth-Busting, Bacon, and Barbecue

We have a technique for what's called the "stall" in barbecue. So if you search for "barbecue temperature stall," you'll get like thousands of hits of people coming up with this phenomenon. And if you take a brisket, or a whole pork shoulder and you put it in a barbecue, the temperature will rise for a little while, and then it'll stall for many hours. And it'll start coming back up again after that. And tons of explanations over the years as to what's happening and we've found they're basically all wrong. We found out what actually is right, which is that it's due to evaporation. You're essentially drying or desiccating the meat. And so that explains the long standing history.

Modernist Cuisine was published in early 2011.

I wrote Greg Blonder to ask about priority. He's adding a footnote to his post. He claims that this idea was not original to Nathan Myhrvold, as many people including himself had made the connection years ago. He only wrote this up recently at the prodding of AmazingRibs.

See this thread: Bronze Behemoth Game On! 2

Meathead from amazing ribs has a physicist running some experiments with heat and meat and found that the plateau is from evaporation and not from a cooling effect from the breakdown of nasties..

This absolutely supports foiling when the meat hits 160º.

I just saw this the other day, but from a different source, which I suspect is the original:

Modernist Cuisine's Nathan Myhrvold on Culinary Myth-Busting, Bacon, and Barbecue

[mguerra]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

This explains why the hot fast brisket is so much juicier, less dried out than an unfoiled low and slow.

Vindication.

[bryan]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

Anyone on here own a copy of Modernist Cuisine?

[LATrapp]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

Wow, game changer!

I sure wish I had read this two days ago! I had a 6 hour stall on a large butt over the weekend. Thankfully the KK still kept things nice and moist)

[Keytickler]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

I read this article posted on another forum today, and was about to post it here. I'm glad that it's already been posted. This is excellent info, and so interesting!

Keytickler

[LarryR]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

This explains why the hot fast brisket is so much juicier, less dried out than an unfoiled low and slow.

Vindication.

Always been a big fan of high heat method on lower quality briskets. Based on this info I wonder how a Prime or Wagyu would turn out high heat . . .

[john noble]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

Well, this doesn't look like a "quick reply" but here goes.

Doesn't it seem that this discussion of "high temp, foiled brisket versus low n slow brisket" is based on a perhaps wrong assumption that the four hour "stall" is a bad thing?

I see those that read the scientist's article on water evaporation being the cause of the stall, as feeling "vindicated" that their high temp, foil method was preferable.

But it seems that we simply have two methods to create different results.

Assuming the research is right, and the stall is caused by an increase in water evaporation or sweating, until the heat being taken away from surface water evaporation, equals the heat being added by the fire below. This balance continues for say four hours during which time water, especially from the surface and perhaps some inches in from the surface, evaporates away.

During this time, the surface dries somewhat and the bark is created.

When water availability eventually decreases, then sweating decreases, the process of evaporation decreases, and as the heat from the fire remains the same, the heat now dominates again and the temperature of the meat now climbs the next thirty degrees to 190F where we remove the meat.

All the discussions of "stall" describe it in nightmarish terms. The carloads of dinner guests arriving, the wife impatiently tapping her feet, the cook tearing out his hair in stress and frustration, adding coals to no avail.

But let's look at the "stall" as a good thing. It is the bark building time. Yes, we want the meat to be as juicy as possible, and water content is central to that. But the wonderful thing about brisket is that mix of soft juicy inside meat, with the crispy dark spicy bark.

The bark is crucial. Foiling does jump us through the stall certainly, as the foil blocks the evaporative cooling process, but the problem is that the bark is not formed. Foiling recipes deal with this problem by having us unfoiling the joint and putting it back on the grill to form the bark. But during this secondary bark formation process, some water loss is happening anyway.

Water loss is the price we pay for the formation of bark.

And those terrifying images of the guests arriving while the meat is still at 160F? Well, the answer is to start the cook earlier. This stress can happen even apart from the "stall" if one starts the cook without enough safety room.

Foiling is a good rescue technique, when we realize that we're out of time and we have to hurry things along. But apart from that, if we have plenty of time, do we want to foil?

So the choice is to foil and have things juicier, but less emphasis on the bark. Or don't foil, accept the "stall" or what we should perhaps call "bark building time" and have slightly less water content, but a thicker, darker, more emphatic bark.

In a traditional machine like a weber wsm, with thin metal walls and no insulation, to keep a lively fire and maintain 235F despite heat loss, the air must rush through quickly. This rushing air will rapidly draw moisture out from the meat. It will still take many hours to cook and smoke the meat, and create the bark, so the moisture loss for an unfoiled cook will be pretty significant, will be a rather high price to pay. Not criticizing the wsm by the way, great machine, used it for years.

But it seems the KK is the best compromise for non foilers. Its insulation properties mean the fire can burn slow, and therefore air is only trickling past the meat rather than rushing past it. The meat is cooking just as much from hot stone walls radiating heat inward, as from hot air rising past it. Some moisture loss is still happening and bark is still being built, thank goodness, but the moisture loss is modest, is a modest price to pay for that necessary bark.

I'm still going to experiment with foil. I'm going to split a brisket in half and do one foiled, the other not. But I think with a KK I am going to view the "stall" as my friend, as a good thing. As the writer said, talking about the foiling method.

(Begin quote) "There is a problem with this approach for some cooks: The meat does not have a hard chewy bark on the exterior. Ball says that a hard bark is emblematic of overcooked meat. He wants a dark, flavorful, tender bark. But if you want a hard bark, the solution is to pull the meat out of the foil when it hits 180°F or so, and hit it with higher heat to dry the exterior and darken the rub. Or just skip the foil altogether, do things the old fashioned tried and true way, and just be patient. Either way, the results are superb" (endquote)

And I think that's correct. This isn't about saving time. Bbq is not about saving time. We can start our cooks the night before, or the day before, if we want.

No, both ways are superb. There is a spectrum here, with maximum moisture content at one end and crispiest, darkest bark at the other. Just like the toaster, how dark do we like to set it?

It's personal. For me, personally, a metal walled wsm would probably benefit from foil technique. But our insulated KKs, with their limited moisture losses, leads me to suspect that foiling is less necessary.

[Syzygies]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

Doesn't it seem that this discussion of "high temp' date=' foiled brisket versus low n slow brisket" is based on a perhaps wrong assumption that the four hour "stall" is a bad thing?[/quote']

!!! Great post.

("You say that like it's a bad thing!" is one of my favorite voices in my head.)

[bryan]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

For what it's worth I like and use the low and slow method. I posted the reference for those that want to know the 5 w's of grilling so as to better control their results.

Sorry if you thought I was justifying hot flashes or complaining about a shortage of processing time before guest arrival. I did not read anything about time pressure involving guest. Nor did I read about a preferred method.

What I think I read was about the well documented cause of the stall. Below is what I read on bark preferences.

K-K'ing is an individual sport where we like to share "Why, What For, and How To". IMHO

There is a problem with this approach for some cooks: The meat does not have a hard chewy bark on the exterior. Ball says that a hard bark is emblematic of overcooked meat. He wants a dark, flavorful, tender bark. But if you want a hard bark, the solution is to pull the meat out of the foil when it hits 180°F or so, and hit it with higher heat to dry the exterior and darken the rub. Or just skip the foil altogether, do things the old fashioned tried and true way, and just be patient. Either way, the results are superb.

[mguerra]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

For myself, I don't care about the stall. It's an interesting phenomenon, but nothing more.I just find the hot, fast, foil trick makes a juicier, less dried out flat. As a secondary benefit, you can get it done faster if that suits your time needs. I suggest everyone try it both ways. You can get a partial bark by extending the pre-foil cook using something less than 300 degrees for that part of the cook. A really juicy tender flat more than makes up for any partial bark!

[john noble]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

I think what is so good about understanding the stall, is that it gives us choices. Now that we understand the underlying process behind the stall, we might choose sometimes to go for maximum bark and to hell with the loss of moisture and juiciness. At other times we may choose to foil and make it as moist and juicy as we can. As Michael says, do it both ways. And then there is the compromise, foiling briefly.

I'm interested in the idea of temporarily foiling when the meat hits 160F, to interrupt what would become the evaporative cooling effect, and speed the meat through the stall zone. But then once I'm on the other side of the stall zone, at 170 or 180, to remove the foil. Would this maximize both juiciness and bark? Must find out.

[Syzygies]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

Of late I've been fervently (fermently?) studying sourdough bread. There's quite a literature. Tartine Bread is the single best and most effective reference. (Yes I have Hamelman, Reinhart x N, Beranbaum, Wood, ...) One could imagine a similar literature for brisket, if there was enough interest. In fact, it's an oral history we're recreating here.

Bread reminds me of scientific research. One imagines research is technical, but it's in fact intently pyschological and philosophical. One needs the temperament to go around inside one's own head swinging a 2x4 wildly, to kill off intellectual conceits, and then one might see the truth. People bring all sorts of dogma and expectations to the table, and we can really never, never completely see how we're fish in water. Moreover we believe in simple explanations and single right answers. That built us the bomb, right?

Reality is messy, with more than one right answer. That's why an amazing number of the best bread bakers in this country are self-taught. Commercial bread baking is impossibly long hours of time spent alone with the problem, away from all of our dogma and intellectual conceits, and bread bakers aren't prone to intellectual conceits in the first place. They'd make excellent researchers.

Brisket is the same. There's no one right answer, and bad technique in attentive hands is good technique. Trying to classify technique as good or bad is blinding oneself with dogma, trying to take pictures with the lens cap on.

Cooking is seeing.

[john noble]

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery"

There's something amazing that happens whenever yeast meets grain.

And it's all about external digestion, perhaps the one thing that separates home sapiens from the rest. We use enzymes to break down hard grains so we can digest them with our single stomachs. We use fermenting yeasts to further break down long carbohydrate chains. We use fungi to break down long cellulose chains in compost heaps to make black soil to nourish our crops. And we use enzymes in meat to break down collagen.

In all cases we provide a little bit of heat. The brewer cooking his mash, the baker warming his pans, the farmer keeping his steaming compost under warm cover, and the chef adding just a touch of coal to his fire.

And wasn't it the chef who was the source for all our technology? The chef who moved from cooking over an open fire, to enclosing the fire with stones, to accidentally firing the clay lining around the fire so that it lifted out in one piece and magically, held water. To melting glazes to cover the clay, to melting copper for decoration, then melting iron ore, then accidentally mixing charcoal with the iron to create carbon steel. To heating water in the strong steel pots and seeing that the sudden expansion of steam would turn a wheel. And seeing that these spinning wheels, when spinning a magnetic lodestone, would create a magical flow of electricity. And away we go.

Cooking meat over a fire. It all comes from there.

So yes, I agree with Sysygies. Bad technique in attentive hands is good technique. The person who did brisket "wrong" with high heat and foiling, created something wonderful. When I play piano and hit a wrong note, it's a wrong note. But if I hit it twice and with attention, hey, it's jazz.