I finally did it. I made real barbecue.

After finally managing to wrestle some money out of the hands of my erstwhile employer, I broke down and bought an electric smoker.

Well, technically, I bought two. My initial intent was to build my own, inspired by Alton Brown's hotplate and pie pan technique, but after my second store and a total failure to find any suitable materials that would actually fit together, I broke down and bought an electric water smoker on sale at Lowe's, a Brinkmann.

Unfortunately, it was a piece of garbage. The smoker body came in three sections, a base, a center section with a side door, and a lid. The problem was, the center section was completely bent out of shape, so badly in fact that initially the center wouldn't even fit properly on the base, and even after an attempt at evening it out, the lid wouldn't actually fit right on the top. there were huge gaps all around the lid, essentially ruining it's utility as a smoker.

So I went back, returned the thing, and went out again hunting for suitable body and grill bits to try again at building my own. After a considerable amoutn of running around, I again gave up, went back to Home Depot, and bought the Char-Broil electric smoker I'd seen the day before. I was immediately impressed with it. It was simply a more well constructed thing, and more well equipped. The design was actually closer to Alton's designs, and could be used for both dry and water smoking, it had an integrated thermometer in the lid, and the electric element was actually mounted to the body, and included an adjustable thermostat.

My smoker finally acquired after two days hunting, I got it put together the night prior, in preparation for my intention to smoke some beef spareribs I'd acquired on Friday.

Come game day, I hemmed and hawed a bit over when to start the whole process, and wound up starting a bit too late. But not for the reasons one would necessarily expect, but rather due to the fact that it turned out that no one had told me the fact that the fridge I had chosen to store the ribs in, didn't actually work. So I got to soaking the hickory chips, and about an hour or so later, I broke out the ribs to prep for smoking, only to find they weren't any good.

The result of course was that I had to run to town to get more ribs, which took a considerable amount of time given that I'd planned on some very tight timing, perhaps a bit unrealistically. As a result, my wood chips smoked too long, which ended up making the smoker much slower to heat up to the right temp for ribs.

I prepared the ribs with the same dry rub base I used for the oven baked ribs I'd made previously, with the sole addition of some cinnamon, and got those in the smoker, and fired it up. It got up to about 180 degrees, but seemed to halt there, which was a problem because I was shooting for at least 200 to about 220. I wound up solving the problem by tossing a small handful of dry, unsoaked chips into the smoker, after which it quickly got up to where I wanted it at.

The sauce was a pretty traditional recipe, with a few of my own tweaks and a touch of a local ingredient: fresh juniper berries. Adds a nice touch that goes wonderfully in a barbecue sauce, gives it a nice peppery note that's just fantastic. If anything I think I did not use enough, which is wonderful, because I had my doubts at first.

I added the sauce in the last half hour of cooking, a relatively light basting, just enough to jazz up the flavor.

In the end, the ribs were not perfect. I discovered that the smoker cooks rather unevenly between the two racks. The top rack seems to be a bit cooler, so the ribs up there came out a bit on the tough side. The bottom rack was hotter, and came out much better. The meat had pulled away from the bone the way it should, the meat was incredibly tender, the fat on the underside had actually crisped up a bit, creating this delicious crust on the underside, infused with the rub.

It was not perfect. I clearly need more practice, and more time to work out the peculiarities of my smoker. Next time I think I'll try using the water basin for the liquid, and but the chips in the base by the element, either dry or only lightly soaked. I'm not sure how it will turn out with the addition of the water vapor exactly. Alton Brown made a toss off reference in "Q", about how the water vapor from propane burning can inhibit smoke penetration, which would seem to be even more of a problem with an entire basin full of liquid. At the same time though, I do know some smoker designs I've seen in competitions do use water reservoirs. One thing I do thing is that the water vapor and the basin itself may help to hold more heat in the smoker, which would certainly not be unwelcome.

We shall see. I have a great desire to master the art of barbecue. I envy the Southern states their preponderance of delicious smoky goodness, and I harbor certain dreams of trying to create a new regional variation of barbecue right here in Central Oregon. In addition to the juniper berries, I'd really like to get hold of some manzanita, for another nice local flair.

And weirdly, I'm even finding myself almost instinctively wanting to take on that weird sense of secrecy that surrounds so many barbecue recipes. I actually found myself questioning whether to make this post, and just how much info to share. I wonder what it is about this particular culinary art that leads to such secrecy, in such stark contrast to the foodie movements, the Iron Chefs, and the trendier restaurants, which seem to revel in bragging about every last detail.

It's a curious thing really.