How to Smoke Meat
Get hearty campfire flavor in your own backyard

By Douglas Brown

Learning the basics of cooking in the oven, on the stove or over hot coals takes some work, but let's face it: Grilling a bunch of burgers for a Saturday cook-out doesn't demand a wealth of knowledge and experience. You don't need a decade of practice to get the hang of smoking, either, but it's a bit more demanding than a round of grilled cheeses for the kids.

First of all, there’s the heat: How do you not only maintain a low temperature, but keep the embers glowing for hours and hours? And then there’s the smoke. Chuck a few dry chips of oak on a bed of hot coals and you'll get smoke — for 10 or 15 minutes. But you're going to want smoke for two hours, six hours, maybe even 12 hours. Or more.

• Keeping the heat steady and shy takes work. Assuming you are working with a standard kettle charcoal grill, you'll want a chimney-starter full of charcoal. Hardwood charcoal burns with an intense, clean heat, but doesn't last long. Briquets, on the other hand, burns at a medium heat for a longer time. Often a combination of the two is optimal. Once the mountain of charcoal is covered in gray ash and no longer distributing flames, push it all to one side of the grill. In barbecuing, you do not want your meat hanging directly over a mass of hot coals; you desire indirect heat. The meat will sit on the part of the grill that is beside, rather than atop, the pile of coals.

• Keep a supply of charcoal handy. Periodically, while you smoke your pork ribs or turkey leg, you'll want to add fresh coals to keep that heat huffing along.

Now for the smoke. Smoked foods demand hardwood, like oak, apple, mesquite, pecan and, of course, hickory. You can use old hunks of applewood from your yard, for example, or large chunks of oak that come in a bag, or processed alderwood or mesquite chips. Whatever style of wood you select, it's important that you drop it into a bowl of water for at least 60 minutes prior to introducing the wood to the flame. The wet wood smolders and smokes for hours, instead of igniting and flaming to a crisp in 20 minutes. If you're using chips, it's also a good idea to wrap the sopping wood in tin foil that you've punctured with holes. This keeps the little chips smoking for longer.

While you can smoke meats using gas grills, doing it over charcoal works best. You can use an inexpensive kettle-style grill; a ceramic Japanese-style grill that is really more of an outdoor oven; a cylindrical device called a "water smoker;" or a pit smoker a big, rectangular contraption with a chimney, a fire box and a separate cooking chamber.

In addition to hardwood and charcoal, you'll also want:

• a culinary brush used to swab meat with sauce
  
• a different tool used to apply mop — and with its loose skein of cotton yarn or strips, it often looks like a miniature mop
  
• a rib rack (if you plan on smoking ribs) — a cheap metal appliance that holds your rib racks up on their sides, rather than flat on the grill — is invaluable

The barbecue industry offers a wide range of products revolving around barbecue, and many of them come in handy. But if you're just getting started, you don't need much more than time and patience.