BBQ's Greatest Flaw

Anybody that knows me knows that I love barbecue. They also know that I like to pull things apart, point out the negatives, etc. This doesn't mean that I don't like you, or that I think something is crap. It means that I am simply willing to acknowledge that nothing is perfect. I also firmly believe that you cannot fix a problem until you know what the problem is.

So it is with no shame, nor any diminishment in my love of barbecue, that I can acknowledge that there is a flaw with the cuisine. It struck me a couple of weeks ago as we were doing a nice chuck roast in the crock pot with some potatoes and other veggies on the side. When done, the roast came out in chunks because it couldn't stay together. There was a pile of potatoes swimming in a delicous brown pool of flavor given up by the meat. The potatoes were fished out with a kitchen spider. It was at this point, eyeing the pool of delicious liquid, practically drooling, contemplating the gravy I was about to make and then cover my meal with that a bittersweet thought hit me.

If I had smoked this hunk of beef, THERE WOULD BE NO GRAVY!!

This horrific thought may prompt you to immediately google for "barbecue gravy". Go ahead. I'll be here when you get back.

See? You get recipes where you use barbecue sauce in place of, or mixed with, some sort of stock. Maybe that's barbecue gravy. To me it sounds like just another version of barbecue sauce. Or a way to flavor chicken gravy.

Pondering this conundrum has given me no solution. There are two problems which arise directly from the cooking method. The first is that there is no vessel the food cooks in that will collect the drippings from the meat. The food usually rests on a grate over an open fire. This problem isn't terrible, as you can probably rig up a drip pan below the meat to catch drippings. You will lose a good bit of the crusty bark that a lot of barbecue connoisseurs love, but this is a trade off I would gladly make.

The second problem has to do with all that smoke filling up the cooking chamber. While I love a good hunk of smokey meat, the thought of doing a shot of liquid smoke is vile to me. This is what you would essentially get with any pan of drippings that has been sitting in a smokey chamber for 8 or more hours. If this sounds tasty to you, go ahead. I won't stop you. I certainly won't join you, either.

I'm not looking for a solution here. I don't think it is a problem worth solving. It's just a thought I had as I was plating up my dinner the other night.