Grill Tips for Smoking Meat

This is from Erik (@iamdoon@mspsocial.net) in the fediverse. I am in deep gratitude for his toot-elege. 

Notes after my first try: REMEMBER to do step 4! I forgot about it until I’d gotten it up to temperature. 

Additional note from Erik: once meat is done and off the grill, close all vents. After fully cooled, remove unburned charcoal and reuse. 

Introduction

1. Your smoker is charcoal-powered. 

2. You have some means of monitoring the temperature of the smoker. 

3. You have some sort of smoke wood chunks (not chips) to add to the charcoal. I'd recommend Oak or Apple, as those won't typically overpower the food. With those out of the way, some pointers for a ceramic smoker like you and I have. 

Pointers

1. Start your coals early - like as much as 90 minutes before you want the food to go in. 

2. Light only a small number of charcoal lumps, then nestle them among un-lit charcoal and your smoke wood chunks. 

3. Let the coals burn for maybe 5 minutes only with the lid open, just to get going and then add whatever additional charcoal and smoke wood you want. 

4. Fully-assemble the rest of the smoker - add your ceramic plates and the grill grate. 

5. Shut the lid, open the top vent fully and close the bottom vent way down - you're going to use the bottom vent to control oxygen and thus, temperature. On my BGE for a ~230 degree smoke, which is what I target for most things, the bottom vent is open maybe 2-3 mm. Hardly open at all. 

6. Let the temperature come up *slowly*. Really slowly. Start closing the vent down as you approach your target temp. As mentioned earlier, you really don't want to over-shoot the temp. These ceramic smokers hold heat so well it may take another hour for things to cool down if you over-shoot. So, just take it really slow. 

7. Once temp has stabilized where you want it, add your food. For things that require low, slow, long smokes (ribs, brisket, pork shoulder, etc.) you generally don't want to worry too much about the temperature of the meat. It's not temperature alone that makes it tender - it's *time* spent at a certain temperature. For most of the things I smoke, I don't even bother with a meat thermometer. There's no harm in using one as a general guide, but don't rely on it to know when things are done. Doneness is all feel in BBQ. For any specific type of meat, over time you'll generally get a feel for what temp you need to cook them at and for how much time. For instance, I know I can reliably cook pork back ribs in about 5 hours at 230 degrees. Likewise, a pork shoulder will be ~12 hours at the same temp. Smoked chicken is much less - it doesn't have tons of connective tissue that needs to be broken down. So, these are all very general statements. Frustratingly, BBQ is much more of an art than a science. It takes a lot of experience and "feel". 

 Fortunately there are a ton of great resources online to help you get started. The site I used as a key reference when I was learning is here, and is targeted at owners of a specific Weber smoker, but the techniques are very easily transferrable to your Kamodo. There are some great beginner recipes and techniques there - I'd recommend exploring to find something that looks interesting and trying it out. One really great introduction thing to cook is smoked chicken. Cooking a whole chicken is fairly forgiving, it doesn't take long, and is not expensive (so you may not be so worried about messing up an expensive piece of meat). 

Kamodo has what looks like a great recipe for chicken. The steps of the recipe are fairly simple - I'd even skip the #3 step unless you want to do that. I never do with my chickens. The top vent stays the same though the whole cook, pretty much all the way open. The bottom vent is used to control temp. And no, once you’ve stabilized at a certain temp, don’t adjust it even when adding meat. It’ll get itself back to temp on its own. 

If you adjust, you’ll end up over-compensating and getting too hot. The key is very slow, very small, infrequent adjustments of the air flow. It’s normal for the heat to float up and down by maybe 15-20 degrees. Don’t sweat that - only make adjustments if you see a persistent trend that will end up too hot or too cool. You don’t want to end up having to “chase” the temp up and down to keep it perfect. 

Sidenote: try to minimize the amount of time the lid is open. If it’s open too long, the coal will really heat up and could end up too hot. If this happens, there’s not much to do other than just let it be. Don’t close the vents to try and get it to cool down - doing so will suffocate the fire and could cause some bitter off flavors. And soot. You don’t want soot on your food.