If what you want is classic BBQ, then you need plenty of smoke, and the best way to get it is to burn wood chips over a charcoal fire. You also need a way to keep the heat of the fire that’s creating all your smoke from cooking your meat too quickly.

The best gear for classic BBQ is a smoker designed specifically for the purpose. Lane Wright, a serious Texas-style BBQ chef whose smoked brisket will be found at BBQ competitions all over the state, built his own rig on a trailer frame that he tows from event to event.

Lane's features a large firebox on one end where he burns cured hardwood, a rack underneath the rig where he stores his wood (a little hickory, a little mesquite, some apple wood if he can find it), and a large covered smoking area where the actual cooking gets done. He just burns chunks of wood and doesn’t bother with charcoal at all.

The smoke from Lane’s firebox is directed through a flue into an immense covered cooking area. (It would be a simple matter to smoke twenty turkeys at once or two whole hogs on this monster.) Inside the smoking area proper, the temperature never rises much above 230 or maybe 250 degrees.

He’ll smoke anything in that rig when he’s towed it up to our family reunions in Indiana, but when he’s moseying around Texas looking for a BBQ contest, it’s brisket he’s looking to cook.

Give Charcoal or Gas a Try
Of course, you don’t need a Texas-sized smoker rig to produce something respectably close to classic BBQ. You can achieve much the same effect with either a charcoal or gas grill.

Many high-end propane grills today have a little smoker box built right in. This is a metal box off to the side of the main cooking area but connected via ductwork so that smoke created inside the box can drift through the cooking area and smoke the contents.

All you do is soak a batch of wood chips in water, then toss ’em in the box, fire up the burner beneath the box -- but none of the other burners -- put your food down at the other end of the grill, then pop open a beer, sit back, and let the smoke do its work.

• How do these smokers compare to standalone smokers? If anyone knows please post it here.

You can create pretty much the same effect on your charcoal-fired Weber. Build a charcoal fire on one side of the grill. Make a little container out of double-thick aluminum foil, fill it with pre-soaked wood chips, and put it right on top of your charcoal fire. Then plop on the cooking grate and place the food you are trying to smoke as far from the fire’s heat as you can.

Put on the grill lid, positioning the vent at the top directly over the food (or as close to the food as you can) so the vent draws smoke from the fire towards the food. As above, indulge in a cold one (or a cold several) while the smoke and heat work their wonders. Voila, classic BBQ in a matter of hours.

The key to true BBQ using any sort of backyard grill is to create plenty of smoke but keep the food you’re barbecuing as far from the heat of the fire as possible. The propane rigs have the advantage that you rarely run out of fuel -- all you need to do is replenish the smoke box with some more wood chips from time to time.

Classic BBQ on a charcoal pot will often require that you add some more charcoal (and wood) to the fire, and this works best if your cooking grate has little fold-up flaps that you can open to add fuel easily. Otherwise, you have to remove the food, remove the cooking grate, pour in some more charcoal, replenish the smoke source, put the grate back on, put the food back on…then wait for an hour or two for the fuel to burn out, at which point you can go through the whole process again.

See also:

• Buying A Grill
• Charcoal or Gas?
• History of BBQ
• Recipes
• Rubs
• Sauces
• Styles of BBQ
• What is BBQ?