[Sca-cooks] Re: smoking meat

[Terry Decker]

I was jesting slightly about the paper, which would burn at Bradbury book
tempterature, but I am mildly interested in the thermodynamics of the
smoking process.

When you burn wood, you don't get vapor release until the surface
temperature is 212 degrees to boil off the trapped water vapor, then you get
outgassing of volatiles at around 300 and flame at about 540 (IIRC, which is
why I asked Stefan if he had any any information on the smoking point of
wood).

A thermally efficient building would rise to just below the temperature of
the heat source (a thermal mass oven?).  As you point out, smokehouses
aren't thermally efficient.  The meat is hung at a distance above the heat
source so the surface temperature of the meat is probably a function of the
inverse square of the distance with a number of other variables tossed in.

Color me weird, but I think it would be fun to measure the temperature of
the heat source and the surface and internal temperature of the meat in a
smokehouse to study the process and check the various numbers that are out
there.

Bear


>Bear, the temperature at which wood burns is incidental- although if you
>think a minute, paper burns at 451 f. Now why would I expect you to know
>something embedded in the culture like that?
>
>;-)
>
>What happens with a cool smoker is that the smoky wood burns, yes, but
aside
>from and below the foods to be cool smoked. It's quite possible to enter
one
>and check on the foods- it's warm, but not terribly warm- just hold your
>breath. A properly set up smoker has the drafts set up so that the smoke
>cools before it contacts the foods being smoked. If the smoke ISN'T cooled,
>the whole thing would burn down, since most are made of cheap wood on a
>cinderblock base.
>
>Saint Phlip,