honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, September 17, 2008

TASTE
Slow, smokin' barbecue

 •  New culinary 'Dictionary' is laughing matter
 •  A chance to sample beef raised in the Islands
 •  A whole lot of flavors going on at barbecue fest
 •  Rely on tasty herb blends for quick shrimp kebabs
 •  Culinary calendar
 •  Whip up a flavorful chicken dish
 •  Indulge in food, wine, music at Friday street festival
 •  A lightened up chicken Florentine

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Dixie Grill's pulled- pork sandwich is offered either on a bun or, as it's preferred in Mississippi and Tennessee, with white bread and coleslaw IN the sandwich.

Photos by GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Cold smoked salmon with street corn (corn with mayo and Parmesan cheese) and dirty rice is also served at Dixie Grill in 'Aiea.

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Jimmy Balignat stacks pork ribs in a state-of-the-art Cookshack electric smoker at Ed Wary’s Dixie Grill in ‘Aiea.

spacer spacer

Listen up, y'all out there in hibachi-land. Throwing a piece of meat on a Weber full of lighter fluid-soaked briquettes is NOT barbecue. It's grilling.

Neither is a technique used by an Islander who shall remain nameless. Her idea of barbecue was boiling great slabs of ribs until they were ragged gray strands of fiber clinging to bone, then slathering them with tomato sauce spiked with (shudder) Liquid Smoke before (gasp!) baking them.

There are some Southern states where you could get hauled in front of a judge for calling that barbecue.

No, says restaurateur Ed Wary of Dixie Grill in 'Aiea, barbecue is smokin'.

"No smoke, no barbecue," said Wary, who tends to spell it Bar-b-Que.

Think about the difference between teriyaki on the hibachi versus pig from an imu, the Hawaiians' pit-smoking method.

The teri sticks are grilled, caramelized, quickly cooked. The pig is barbecued for a full day or night, flavored by smoke from the long, hot fire that is used to heat the stones that actually do the cooking, and from the banana stumps and ti leaves used in the preparation, Wary said.

So, to go all Webster on you, here is the definition of barbecue, according to the Book of Ed:

  • Long, slow, moist cooking at a low temperature in which the food is surrounded by wood smoke.

  • A little dry rub of spices or chilies and such beforehand is fine. As is marinating the meat first.

  • Mopping the meat with some form of flavoring during cooking is acceptable (usually a technique used with very large cuts).

  • Whether to use wood chunks or wood chips is your choice. So is the type of wood, though hard fruitwoods or our own kiawe (known elsewhere as mesquite) is widely popular and readily available and affordable. "Any wood with a fruit you would want to eat will work," said Wary.

  • What you barbecue is up to you, but the classics are beef brisket, beef or pork ribs and pork roasts (usually the fattier, tougher cuts).

  • Barbecue is never, never, never (did we mention never?) cooked in sauce. For one thing, most barbecue sauces are full of sugar and they'll burn, as Scarlett O'Hara would say, "sure as gun's iron." The sauce comes after, drizzled on or dunked in.

  • And whether you pull a pork butt apart and tuck it into a bun, or sandwich the shreds between white bread, serve it with coleslaw or corn on the cob or just grab a hank of ribs and get sauce all over your face, well, hey! It's a free country.

    Just don't call it barbecue if it's not.

    The key, said Wary, is that the meat doesn't cook rapidly over the heat source, as in grilling. It sits above or alongside smoldering wood, or, in many cases, encased in a self-contained covered smoker into which smoke is channeled from a separate burning source.

    Wary's got a refrigerator-size smoker out back, the state-of-the-art Cookshack electric smoker, which can hold racks and racks of ribs or whatever and has a low-burning electrical element at the bottom that keeps a small pile of chips doing the work of 10 men. A drip pan is suspended under the meat to prevent fires. It's got a thermostat to control the heat, and it's practically foolproof (www.cookshack.com; they make home models).

    "This thing is so effective it's illegal to use one at the Memphis in May world championship barbecue cooking contest," Wary said. "It's considered cheating."

    It's the jerry-rigged contraption out the back door of the restaurant that gave us hope that we could try smoking at home. You wouldn't believe this silly-looking thing: It's an ordinary cooler, one of those big, white party-size things; not Styrofoam, of course.

    There's about a 1 1/4-inch puka in one end and they've fitted a rack loosely inside. Into the hole is plugged a hose, which channels smoke to the food.

    It has to be a flexible, nontoxic, food-safe type of hose. This one was articulated, so it bent easily without breaking. Find the right thing in the plumbing department.

    The smoke comes from smoldering wood chips in — of all things — an ordinary terra cotta planter. You need two. Start the fire in one (use some old newspaper, a little kindling and the wood chips; NO fire starter, please). When it's smoldering nicely (takes minutes), up-end a second planter pot of the same size over the top, stick the opposite end of the hose into the drain hole, wrap some foil and duct tape around the rims of the two vases to prevent precious smoke from escaping, and stand back. (Need we say you should do this outdoors, on concrete?)

    If all this sounds like too much trouble, home smokers are all over the Internet and come in small box sizes easy for individuals to use.

    Get this: To cold-smoke things like salmon and other fish, you can just add a thickish layer of ice to the cooler and put the rack of fish sides or fillets over it. The fish is done in just minutes; you don't want to oversmoke it and overpower the taste. Of course, the seafood is not cooked; you still need to grill or fry it. (As a comparison, pulled pork might be smoked slowly 17 hours; a side of salmon should be out of the cold smoker in 20 minutes.)

    You can add a light layer of smoky flavor to delicate food this way — oysters in the shell, crab, cheese and even nuts, for example.

    Wary says he's open to smoking just about any food: He's working on getting the right chicory flavorings for coffee beans, for example.

    We can just hear Jim Carrey now:

    "SSSSSSSSmo-kin'!"

    Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.