Longer cooking time for tough meat?

[cc0112453]

I think I'm getting the hang of this BBQ stuff. I have been doing it for a
year now and have had some pretty good results and a couple of failures.
One failure was because I let the smoker get too cool and the creosote taste
ruined the meat. Another near failure was because I had a cheap cut of meat
that was still tough after four hours of smoking. I'm still a little shaky
on the science end of this type of cooking. I have the low and slow
temperature thing but can some one explain to me what it is with long
cooking times (over five hours). I know some folks cook a brisket overnight
and it comes out juicy and tender. I'm just slightly confused. I cook a
roast for four hours and it is done (internal temp is 165). I wouldn't want
to cook it any longer because it would then be over cooked. I know this is
a stupid question but please bear with me. So what I am assuming is that
the extra cooking time is to tenderize the tougher cuts of meat? Is that
right? So do you cook the better cuts of meat for less time and the tougher
cuts of meat longer? I'm just afraid of over cooking the meat. Maybe the
idea is to over cook it. Thanks for any in put.

Doug

dougfollett at bigfoot dot com

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Post by cc0112453
I think I'm getting the hang of this BBQ stuff. I have been doing it for a
year now and have had some pretty good results and a couple of failures.
One failure was because I let the smoker get too cool and the creosote taste
ruined the meat. Another near failure was because I had a cheap cut of meat
that was still tough after four hours of smoking. I'm still a little shaky
on the science end of this type of cooking.

So, you want to learn the secret of barbecue!

Why is meat tough? The muscles that do the most work in the animal are the
toughest. Brisket is the breast of a steer and works the front end of the
animal. The loin and tenerloin is the least worked and makes good steaks.
Shoulders in a hog are tough for the same reason, but the little used hams
are far more tender. Dark meat in fowl. Note that ducks (they really fly)
are dark while oversized turkey breast are white and tender.

What makes the meat tough? Collagen. It holds the fibers together. It
must be eliminated. So, we have to cook it tender. You mention a
temperature of 160. At that point, the meat is cooked, but it is not
barbecue. When it hits 160, the collagen is starting to break down. It
will change form when heated and turn to water and is driven off. What is
left is tender meat. It may take hours for this to take place. If you
monitor the temperature, it will linger at 160 as the collagen is actually
helping to cool the meat like an evaporator. Once the temperature starts to
rise, the meat is tender and now you have barbecue.

Now if you cut that meat into thin slices and try this method, it will just
dry out anyway. You need the thickness and the fat for it all to work.
Ed
***@snet.net
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome

[Douglas Barber]

Post by Edwin Pawlowski
So, you want to learn the secret of barbecue!
Why is meat tough? The muscles that do the most work in the animal are the
toughest. Brisket is the breast of a steer and works the front end of the
animal. The loin and tenerloin is the least worked and makes good steaks.
Shoulders in a hog are tough for the same reason, but the little used hams
are far more tender. Dark meat in fowl. Note that ducks (they really fly)
are dark while oversized turkey breast are white and tender.
What makes the meat tough? Collagen. It holds the fibers together. It
must be eliminated. So, we have to cook it tender. You mention a
temperature of 160. At that point, the meat is cooked, but it is not
barbecue. When it hits 160, the collagen is starting to break down. It
will change form when heated and turn to water and is driven off. What is
left is tender meat. It may take hours for this to take place. If you
monitor the temperature, it will linger at 160 as the collagen is actually
helping to cool the meat like an evaporator. Once the temperature starts to
rise, the meat is tender and now you have barbecue.
Now if you cut that meat into thin slices and try this method, it will just
dry out anyway. You need the thickness and the fat for it all to work.
Ed
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome

If I'd known Ed was going to answer this I'd have been reading instead
of typing. Safe bet that Ed was making barbecue better than my best back
when I thought "barbecue" was the technical term for a grill.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Post by Douglas Barber
If I'd known Ed was going to answer this I'd have been reading instead
of typing. Safe bet that Ed was making barbecue better than my best back
when I thought "barbecue" was the technical term for a grill.

Thank you. It is always good to see another prospective though, and to
hear of another method as many combinations will work.

The collagen thing is the big one. Once you realize what is happening, you
can take control. I played around with photography for a while trying to
take better photos. Once I understood "depth of field" and controlled it, my
work improved.
Ed

[Douglas Barber]

<snip> I'm still a little shaky
on the science end of this type of cooking. I have the low and slow
temperature thing but can some one explain to me what it is with long
cooking times (over five hours). I know some folks cook a brisket overnight
and it comes out juicy and tender. I'm just slightly confused. I cook a
roast for four hours and it is done (internal temp is 165).

Even in a "water smoker", you're basically cooking with dry heat,
whereas with the brisket in the oven or any such pot roast you keep some
liquid in the pan, cover the pan, and the higher heat breaks down the
tough stuff faster while the liquid and steam keeps the meat from drying
out. As far as a "cooking challenge" goes, it's harder to make good
barbecue than it is to make good pot roast, because you can't have that
steam thing working for you at the same time that you're trying to
impart a gentle wood smoke flavor - and that's the fun of it - like the
difference between walking back and forth through a large shopping mall
for the health benefit of the exercise, and hiking to the bottom of the
Grand Canyon or the top of Yosemite Upper Falls.

I wouldn't want

to cook it any longer because it would then be over cooked.

If you were making barbecue at the same temp that you make pot roast the
cooking time would be more similar to the cooking time on a pot roast,
which is to say shorter than typical times you hear about for making
barbecue, but controlling the effect of dry heat on tough cuts of meat
at temps above 250 is a special art of its own which might be thought of
as a corner of the barbecue universe, not the place to learn the
fundamentals.

I know this is

a stupid question but please bear with me. So what I am assuming is that
the extra cooking time is to tenderize the tougher cuts of meat? Is that
right? So do you cook the better cuts of meat for less time and the tougher
cuts of meat longer? I'm just afraid of over cooking the meat. Maybe the
idea is to over cook it. Thanks for any in put.

The classic cuts to be turned into barbecue are not just tough, the way
a perfectly lean, unstreaked chuck roast might be. They're covered or
larded with fat, and they're full of collagen - a gristly type thing
which gets broken down, for example, in cheap stew meat, in the course
of 3 hours of boiling in liquid. Now the fat not unique to tough cuts
for barbecue, it's what makes a nicely marbled t-bone as tender as it
is, but the *collagen* is characteristic of the cheaper cuts, and it,
like fat, when rendered, can actually help keep what would be a dry
piece of meat moist and palatable. I think the business of rendering
collagen with dry heat is probably close to the answer to the things
you're asking, and it should be added that collagen alone won't do, for
the best barbecue, you need the rendering fat to heighten the meat
flavor the way it will in ribs, in pork butts or picnics with the rind
trimmed off, and in brisket.

To take an example which is sort of opposite barbecue, you won't get a
product rivalling a t-bone by grilling an eye round steak, and yet you
can't make a lot of headway treating an eye round roast as traditional
barbecue. Don't get me wrong, an eye round smoked to an internal 135 or
140 f can be a real treat, but to treat it like a pork butt, ribs or
brisket and take it up between 160 and 205 would just make no sense -
and the reason is because it has neither collagen nor fat spread
throughout the meat, and in their absence, the long cooking process
would just be a drying-out process.

[bbq]

Post by cc0112453
I think I'm getting the hang of this BBQ stuff. I have been doing it for a
year now and have had some pretty good results and a couple of failures.
One failure was because I let the smoker get too cool and the creosote taste
ruined the meat. Another near failure was because I had a cheap cut of meat
that was still tough after four hours of smoking. I'm still a little shaky
on the science end of this type of cooking. I have the low and slow
temperature thing but can some one explain to me what it is with long
cooking times (over five hours). I know some folks cook a brisket overnight
and it comes out juicy and tender. I'm just slightly confused. I cook a
roast for four hours and it is done (internal temp is 165). I wouldn't want
to cook it any longer because it would then be over cooked. I know this is
a stupid question but please bear with me. So what I am assuming is that
the extra cooking time is to tenderize the tougher cuts of meat? Is that
right? So do you cook the better cuts of meat for less time and the tougher
cuts of meat longer? I'm just afraid of over cooking the meat. Maybe the
idea is to over cook it. Thanks for any in put.
Doug
dougfollett at bigfoot dot com

I think you have answered your questions very well. As I understand it,
yes, tender cuts take less time to cook. Touger cuts, like brisket,
take hours to cook. Some meats are good cooked to 140° and some, like
brisket, need to be cooked to 190 or higher

Happy Q'en,
BBQ