Foil or No Foil - That is the Question
 

This:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/423160-bbq-lesson-master.html

made me think - why use foil when you BBQ (or for the technically inclined... smoke/cook in a wood fired oven)??

BBQ's are responsible for climate change.

I thought you were designing a hat.

Previous bbq thread was correct, not this one.

I like to mark the ribs on a hot grill, then wrap to finish on low heat, keeps them moist. Plenty

flames should not tuch my meat!SmileWavy

Then you should buy (if do not own one already) Charboil's Infrafred. I just bought one last week and no flareups.

I did not vote as when I do the ribs, I let the get meat get the grill-mark; then, I wrap the ribs with foil, low heat, and voila..........meat falls off the bone.

I hate it when flamers try to touch my meat.

If you want to get scientific about it, the smoke flavor is imparted into the meat in the first hour or so of cooking. After that the outer layers of meat are cooked and seal the interior from further smoke penetration.

Thus, the meat will taste the same whether you finish in the smoker or in an oven. The outer crust gets a bit more of a char to it in the smoker, but other than that you are simply adding heat.

In the case of ribs, I foil mine for about 1 1/2 hours, enough time to steam them a bit and soften the meat, but not enough to make any difference in the smoke flavor, since that is imparted during the first 2 hours of cooking.

When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was going to be about foil... hats! :D


KT

I like to smoke for 3 hrs, then use foil only if I'm going to do an apple cider bath for the ribs. To me, foil defeats the purpose of adding smoke flavor....unless you are using foil to keep in the "Liquid Smoke". So, I guess foil works well with Liquid Smoke, but not with real smoke.

Ditto with Nathans Dad.

I did a rack of Baby Backs on the Big Green Egg with out foil, and they turned out the same as the ones with foil on the the Klose Smoker.

The meat is just a bit tenderer with the foil than without. Also one has to consider that today the Pork is much leaner and thus less juicy and less tender. I used to do Pork Roasts on a 35 gallon drum BBQ for 4 hours that would just fall apart. Today I just can't duplicate those roasts, unless I foil.

Foil.....I never go without my hat.

Foil.....I never go without my hat.