Traditions

I think families need traditions. I believe tradition is the mortar that bonds the bricks of family generations together into a structure that grows and lasts.

I’ve tried to establish a few traditions in our new family from the beginning, with mixed success. My intentions are great, but my plans are half-baked at best.

Memorial Day embraces one of those traditions, the annual beef “barbecue”. Cooking meat outdoors using fire. The very idea just reeks of dad-ish-ness. What better way to create a great memory for my kids, than to have them recall dear ol’ dad out there cooking beef every year, smoke curling around the backyard and the delectable aroma filling the air?

I’ve had good barbecue before. There are several places around here that serve authentic barbecue. There’s a place up in Bellevue, Washington that has famous barbecue, and a hot sauce that will either make your throat melt or make you hallucinate. Anyway… the meat’s really good. Tender, moist, smoky, pulls apart, melts in the mouth. Mmmm.

So I want to do that. I learned that the way to cook meat this way is by indirect heat, and lots of smoke.

So I decided to build a smoker.

In 2006, I tried this for the first time. I used a little Smoky Joe table top barbecue grill. I figured that if I let the coals burn way down and then put mesquite wood on top of that, it’d produce a nice smoky heat that would cook it just right. I sealed up a beef brisket in foil, put it on the grill and let it cook all day. Mmmm, it sure smelled good! For a while, anyway… At some point we went off to a local cemetery to visit and decorate the graves of some fallen soldiers. In this way, we would observe Memorial Day in a way that made sense.

When we returned, the smoking continued… but the meat didn’t smell as yummy as before.

I peeled back the foil to check it, and instead of seeing a nice slab of slowly roasted beef, I gazed down at a charred husk. A meaty charcoal briquette.

So we had pizza instead.

In 2007, I upped the ante. I used the same tabletop grill, but instead I put a hotplate in it and set a pan of dampened mesquite chips on that. This provided a source of smoke and low heat. I also added a long chimney made of rolled sheet metal tied shut with copper wire, put the meat on the grill on top of that, and capped it with the grill’s lid. I wrapped the whole thing in foil to keep the smoke in.

I let the brisket cook all day.

At dinner time we ended up with a tough, dry slab of flesh that resisted all efforts to cut through it. While this result was not inedible, the kids didn’t beg me for seconds. They did prove how polite and respectful they could be to their father, though. “Thanks, dad! It was really good. Boy are we stuffed.” And then they scattered to the four winds.

For 2008 I decided to get real and actually buy a smoker, though I didn’t actually get one until the day before Memorial Day, when we took our trip to Seattle. During one particular east side venture I made a wrong turn and ended up in the parking lot of (GI) Joe’s. Michael’s Mommy smartly suggested that we take advantage of the situation and get the smoker there. We picked up a Little Chief smoker and three bags of wood chips.

Monday morning, I read through the instructions, of which about 25% settled into my brain. Again I went off half-cocked and set the thing up with the corned beef brisket that I’d bought a couple of days before.

The instructions said something about brining. Brining? Nah, don’t need to worry about that. It’s already basted in its own juices. Cook time? Hmmm… instructions say something about 20 minutes per pound… sounds a little low to me. I’d better cook it a lot longer.

Being extra safe, I stuck a digital thermometer in the meat. I was not going to be thwarted this time!

The garage was the only place on our property where I could set it up on a non-wooden outdoor surface that’s protected from the rain, so that’s where it went. Five minutes after starting it up, it was smoking away. Hurray!

Pretty soon the garage was filled with smoke. “Better open the side door and one of the roll-up doors,” I thought.

Half an hour later, it was still pretty smoky. I set up a box fan to exhaust the smoke out the side window. Nearly asphyxiated in the process. Now I understand why people get treated for smoke inhalation, even if they’re only in a burning building for a few seconds.

Then I realized that my wife’s car windows were down. Whoops. She’s probably going to complain about craving beef jerky every time she gets in her car for the next month. I got in and rolled them up.

Later, during another check I noticed the smoke stopped coming out of the unit. That’s odd, I thought, I just replaced the chips fifteen minutes ago.

The side of the smoker was cool. The meat’s temperature was down from the last measurement. What the heck?

I checked the outlet. No power.

Probably the GFCI; it’s always tripping for one reason or another. Sure enough, my teenage daughter had been using the hair dryer in the kid’s bathroom (which is on the same circuit), and tripped the breaker. She didn’t think to mention to anyone the fact that the hair dryer suddenly quit.

I’d been shooting for having dinner at 5:30. Since it was now past 6:00 and the thermometer led me to understand that I’d need three more hours to cook it through, I figured my smoking attempt was a bust. Time to go with plan B.

After an hour’s worth of time in a 375 degree oven, we were finally eating at 7:30 PM. We were treated to a wonderful potato salad and a beautiful Jell-O dessert made by Michael’s Mommy (red, white and blue layers and shaped like an American flag), and a hunk o’ smoky, spongy, lifeless meat sliced up in quarter inch planks. Slightly better than last year, but would have made any seasoned barbecue expert recoil with horror and revulsion. The kids picked at it a little.

Obviously, I’m doing something wrong.

Fast forward to this last Monday. Home on her day off, my wife called me at work to announce that she’d started on making barbecue beef ribs for dinner. Sounds good to me.

I sat down to dinner that night and nearly wept. The meat was moist, tender, tangy, full of flavor, and fell apart with a fork. It had a perfect barbecue crust on top.

With no fanfare, she had nailed what I’d been trying to accomplish for three years.

So in 2009, we’re going to alter the Memorial Day tradition a bit: She’s going to barbecue, and I’m going to drink beer.