Troubleshooting Smokehouse Problems

Figuring out your smokehouse is one of the most important steps you can take in making sure you make the most out of your smoked meat. Whether it is sausage, bacon, pork butts or brisket you need to know your smokers hot and cold spots, air flow direction, strengths and weaknesses to be able to make something that will have your family wishing you smoked meat every day!

We are going to go over some common issues, and some easy steps you can take to prevent this from happening to you in the future. The best weapon against bad smoked meat is knowledge and experience, we are ALL going to get bitten once or twice with some subpar meat products, not repeating those mistakes is what will make you a smoked meat legend!

Common causes of this are Hot/Cold spots within the smoker, Poor airflow, Inconsistent fuel source, Opening the door too often, Incorrect stacking. The problems can affect the texture, flavor, appearance and safety of the meat. The good news is there are some simple fixes for these issues.

• Rotate your meat throughout the cook cycle from hot to cool zones (this requires lots of experience with your smoker to know what zone is hotter or colder)
• Use a water pan in your smoker to regulate the temperature and to add moisture to the air to prevent drying.
• Use a high-quality ambient temperature thermometer to monitor the zones within your smoker. This will also make sure the smoke is drawn across more of the meat you are trying to smoke.
• Learn to use your vents to control airflow. Depending on your smoker a closed top or bottom vent can either alleviate or exacerbate the issue
• Use low and slow cooking methods, this will help prevent your hot spots from becoming scorching spots

Believe it or not this is ofttimes done on purpose. If you have an electric smoker without any aftermarket modifications your smoker almost certainly works on a wave pattern where it will go about 20 degrees above your set temperature, then turn off and let it drop to 20 degrees below your set temperature. The goal is to keep the average temperature at your set point.

This is why we say it is vital to start smoked sausage at around 120° F. If your smoker starts at 150°F it could easily be cooking it as hot as 170°F!

Some easy fixes or mitigations for this are:

• Keep the lid or door closed as much as possible
• Use a smoker with good insulation or use an insulated smoker blanket
• Use an ambient probe to monitor the internal temperature of your smoker

Whether you are smoking sausage or pork butts the surface of your meat will have a huge effect on the speed of your smoke and the quality of the finished product. Whether or not you are using a casing you run the risk of causing "case hardening" which is when the outside of your product cooks too quickly and then has trouble passing heat into the sausage, or letting moisture escape the center of the sausage.

Luckily, this is easy to avoid with a few simple steps:

• Step up the heat slowly in your smoker. We want to start the temperature at around 120°F
• Use humidity to your advantage. A Smoker Soaker Towel or even just an oversized water pan in your smoker can help eliminate this issue
• For sausage make sure your casings were prepared/soaked correctly

There are two very common causes of this issue; starting out with a product that does not have enough fat, either cooking it too high, or cooking it at too high a heat.  

Neither of these are difficult to fix:

• Know what whole muscle or sausage product you are working with. A trimmed-up pork tenderloin needs to be smoked very slowly and very lowly as it has less fat than a chicken breast! When we smoke things like a pork butt we have a lot of collagen and fat to melt, this is going to make it juicy and moist as we melt that fat and collagen. If we don't have enough of those products in our meat, all we will do is cook the moisture out of the meat!
• We have said it numerous times already but make sure your smoker is capable of starting at lower temperatures. These smokers are often slightly more expensive but you will find that this is well with the investment!

If you have spent the required time to become an experienced meat smoker you have almost certainly pulled some sausage or whole muscle BBQ out of your smoker and been disappointed by the smoke flavor in your meat. It might taste like a campfire or maybe it has only the vaguest smoke flavor, understanding what causes this is the key to making sure you nail your smoke schedule.

• Smoke only adheres to meat up to about 130°F, after that the "smoke ring" is set and not real flavor will be imparted.  
• The outside of the casing has to have the correct level of moisture, too wet and it will be streaky, too dry and the smoke will basically "bounce" off of the meat. A 15-30-minute drying phase (with the top and bottom vents wide open) at the beginning of each smoke schedule will help condition the outside of your meat and make the smoke flavor adhere!
• Make sure you close-down those vents eventually. If you run your entire smoke schedule with the vents open all the way, the smoke is going to get pulled through so quickly that it wont have time to work on the meat.