Franklin Barbecue book

I'm just ribbing you @cazzy

I succumbed to the hype.  Just ordered me a hard cover. 

Dammit, my wallet thins again. I'm about to order in 3, 2, 1...

It's a great book but before everyone gets carried away, this is really a book about building a clean fire. It's not about cooking on your egg- which by its nature is a dirty fire.  You will not come away hugging your egg after reading this book. The recipes are very simple (and not how he cooks) but there are some good tilps. That being said, unless you are planning on building and cooking on an offset smoker, this might not be the book for you. 

I have read about 3/4ths of the book and I have to say that this man knows his stuff. I have learned things and I am looking forward to trying things that are in the book.
That being said, I also agree 100 percent with Cen-tex. This is definitely not a book about cooking on the egg. But it is a very good read. There is only two things holding me back from selling my egg and going to an off- set smoker.
  The first thing is I am way too lazy to work that hard! I can load up my egg with fresh lump and a few chunks of oak, set up my Pit Minder Nano Q, light the fire and bring up the egg to temp, slap a brisket on and forget it.
  The second thing is, I can't afford prime or wagu brisket. If it wasn't for select grade brisket I would get no brisket at all. If I screw up a select brisket, which I have more than once, I give it away or throw it away and learn from my mistakes. If I had a $200 dollar piece of meat on the egg I would be a nervous wreck!
  I do have an off set smoker and I am going to try pork ribs or chicken Franklin's way but that's about it for me. As for brisket it will be cooking cheap meat in dirty smoke while I drink beer. 

Lit said:

You all with off sets is the food really that different? Since reading this thread I have kinda been checking them out. Anyone ever use a Lang? How much work are we talking on using an offset?

I don't own one, but I have cooked on one, although I didn't manage the fire.  I have had a ton of foods off of them though.

Yes...it is that different.  The smoke flavor you get from them is in a completely different league than what we get from our eggs.  You cook with a draft so the cook can be much more even if you run a consistent fire.  With pretty much anything low & slow, and clean fire and consistent temp will produce better results.

For a good offset with decent wall thickness and insulated firebox, you prolly will be adding a log and stoking your fire every hour.  Too many variables to list that could affect how efficient and how hungry an offset is for wood.  A lot more work but the results are worth once you learn how to manage a good fire.

@SGH likely will chime in about the Lang.

cazzy said:

Lit said:

You all with off sets is the food really that different? 

@SGH likely will chime in about the Lang.

@Lit-
Cazzy has already given a good answer above to the question: "is the food really that different?". The only thing that I will add is; yes it is. Especially on the large primals. The amount of "depth" that comes from a true live fire cannot be matched or even seriously rivaled by anything else. Now on smaller cuts, other units can close the gap a little, but still lag behind to the astute or trained tongue. The reason is obvious and needs no farther discussion here.
As to the Lang smokers. They are top tier pits but be warned, they are reverse flow. I haven't looked at the newer model Langs, but at one time they were all reverse flow, not direct fired from firebox to chamber. Aaron Frankliin uses a direct fired, mid mount exhaust. What this means is the exhaust drafts from grate level, not the top of the cooking chamber. If you are wanting to emulate Aaron's smoker, then reverse flow is not the one that you are looking for. That said, I like reverse flow. It certainly has its advantages. As with all things, it has a few disadvantages as well. Lang was the first commercial manufacturer of reverse flow offsets. The concept was to compete directly with high end, finely tuned direct fired offsets like Jambo but without some of the hassle. This they do and do well. Just a different setup. The preset baffle in a reverse flow takes all of tuning out of the equation. The only down fall to this is: It is what it is. No adjustments. This is not a bad thing once you learn your smoker. You can regulate temp from end to end by raising or lowering the front of the unit. However you have no up or down draft control on a reverse flow. A friendly piece of advice. The direct fired units like Aaron uses takes a little more skill to run properly. Why? Being direct fired, the draft is certainly affected by how it is loaded with meat. This is where a Pitmasters true skills start to really show. Knowing what piece of meat to move where to get the unit drafting perfect without starting to pull hard through the firebox. These are things that will only come with practice. But back to the Lang. If you like reverse flow, Lang is certainly one of the top units on the market. Again I have not looked lately to see if they still only manufacture reverse flow pits or not. But not so long ago that is all that they manufactured. 

DMW said:

@SGH Since we are on the topic of offsets, what do you think of Meadow Creek? I've cooked on their PR pig roasters, which seem to work great, any input on their offset TS line?

I hear good things about them. But to be honest I have never personally had hands on one of their offsets. I usually can give first hand info on pits but Meadow Creek is one of the few that I have never got run. Sorry man. Maybe someone on here has saw them first hand and can help. 

nolaegghead said:

 Are you real?

Certainly not. In just a figment of cazzys imagination. Nothing more 

Peter Creasey said:

Cooking brisket with fat side down just makes no intuitive sense in my mind.

I want the juices from the fat dripping _down_ through the meat thereby increasing moisture content.

. . . . .  Pete

I tend to agree although the explanation mentioned earlier about putting the fat down when the heat is coming from below makes some sense.  I took it to mean that when one sets up an egg for an indirect brisket cook, if you want to cook it with the fat side up, it is crucial that you make sure that the heat flow is extremely well-blocked in the outline/shadow of the meat and get the meat high in the dome.  I'm cooking a brisket as we speak with the fat side up on the raised grid @dstearn showed earlier.  In addition to the platesetter, I have a drip pan (aluminum foil) on the standard grid blocking any potentially semi-direct heat flow to the brisket.  I put some water in the pan - not because the egg needs moisture, but just to accentuate the heat-blocking.  The best brisket I've ever tasted (haven't had Franklin's) was cooked with this set-up on a friend's kamado.

Peter Creasey said:

Cooking brisket with fat side down just makes no intuitive sense in my mind.

I want the juices from the fat dripping _down_ through the meat thereby increasing moisture content.

. . . . .  Pete

Fat doesn't drip through the meat, it drips around it.

"What kind of meat? How did he season it?

Remember heat reflection off the dome, which comes more into play when you cook above the felt line.

Do I think fat cap up bastes through the meat? No...if there is any penetration...it's negligible. If that were the case and proven, why would anyone cook fat down?"

@Cazzy, it was a prime brisket from Bolner's (over $9.00/lb), seasoned with Bolner's Brisket Rub.  I helped him with the cook and what I described above is what we came up with.  He is an experienced and excellent brisket cook on his offset smoker, but we were doing one on a CharGriller Akorn. 

I just finished one a couple of hours ago (since my last post on this thread) on my egg and it was just as good.  It wasn't prime, but it was also from Bolner's, listed as being "Upper 2/3 of Choice".

nolaegghead said:

what about reverse flow vertical?

I sure hope so!  I will be in the lab in 2 weeks and I definitely will report back.