

Texas' Best PitMaster Shares His Tips for the Perfect Barbecued Meat

Aaron Franklin hacks your backyard smoker.

Wyatt McSpadden, Courtesy of Ten Speed Press

Aaron Franklin wasn't always the most recognizable face in Texas barbecue. The pitmaster and owner of Austin's Franklin Barbecue got his start on a backyard cooker just like yours. "I bought a really cheap, offset cooker from a sporting goods store and fell in love with it," he says. "I could only cook two briskets on it at a time. So we got a second small one, and then before I knew it I was borrowing little backyard cookers from friends and was running three or four at once."

Franklin realized he wanted to cook barbecue professionally and upgraded his rig to a 500-gallon cooker, which he modified extensively to make it more efficient and help the meat cook more evenly. "As you learn how to cook, your needs and wants change," he says. "The more you work with a smoker, the more you'll understand it. That's when you might get the hankering to modify one you've bought."

But not everyone is ready to commit to a 500-gallon backyard behemoth—or has the welding skills to build one from scratch. So Franklin shared with Esquire his simple tricks for modifying a cheap, store-bought smoker at home, which he outlines in more detail in his book, Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto.

Elizabeth Stromberg, Courtesy of Ten Speed Press

Buy any cooker you want to get started:

Franklin doesn't recommend any specific brand of off-the-shelf cookers. "There aren't a whole lot of things out there that have what I consider a good design," he says. "Everybody has their personal preferences. I might be a little more opinionated than some. If you want something done a certain way, you have to build it yourself." That's why Franklin, who describes himself as a "tinkerer by nature," is currently designing his own retail-line of barbecue cookers, which will go on sale next year.

Get the fire going outside the smoker:

Light your fire using a chimney charcoal starter filled with all-natural charcoal. Then start throwing wood chunks on. But first, cut your firewood into small pieces and give them a jumpstart burning on another grill or in an open fire-pit. "Big pieces of wood take forever to catch, and this helps the temperature not fluctuate as much," Franklin says. "You'll lessen the peaks and valleys, heat-wise. Get the logs burning, pick them up with some tongs, and then add them to the back of the firebox."

Make sure the thermometer is doing its job:

Many store-bought smokers have cheap thermometers built-in at the top. But heat rises, so they are useless in measuring the heat down by the grate, where the meat sits. "Knowing your cooking temperature and keeping it consistent are two of the most important factors in barbecue," Franklin says.

Buy a quality temperature gauge and install it on the lid near meat-level. (See "A" on the diagram.) Look for a stainless steel one with a long stem and shatter-proof glass. Franklin recommends the Tel-Tru Barbecue Thermometer BQ300, which costs about $45. Measure the size of your thermometer and then drill a properly sized hole, with a hole-saw attachment, for the gauge to fit snugly.

Upgrade the smokestack for better airflow:

When cooking, smoke should billow out of your chimney quickly and forcefully. "Extend the smokestack upward, which will increase the draw," Franklin says. "You may be able to create enough draw that you could actually pull that heat straight across the meat and make your cooker a whole lot more efficient."

Depending on your model—where the heat is coming from and where you want it to go—you'll need to either make the smokestack longer or cut it off and make it wider. To make it longer, you can wrap a rigid A/C duct around the outside of the stack and affix it with screws. Franklin is known to cut the bottoms off empty soup cans and pinch them to the smokestack for a short-term solution. You will also want to extend the smokestack downward, inside the cooker, to grate-level. (See "B" on the diagram.) "I like to position the smokestack to leave from the midpoint of the back of the cook chamber, not the top, because it pulls the heat more evenly across the surface of the meat," Franklin says.


Add a buffer so the meat cooks evenly:

Getting heat evenly from the firebox to the other side of the cooker is a challenge, especially when meat is in there, blocking airflow. This leads to uneven cook times. "One solution to this problem is to install a baffle or buffer plate above the opening to the firebox, extending at a downward angle into the cooking chamber," Franklin says. (See "C" on the diagram.) You can buy a small piece of tin for this job or, if your cooker is large enough, use an old license plate.

Keep humidity in mind:

Add a small steam pan, filled with water, to the inside of the cooker. Keep it on the grate near the firebox and constantly add water to it while cooking. (See "D" on the diagram.) "It adds humidity, which is constantly being whisked out by convection, to the cooking environment," Franklin says. "It helps hasten the cooking process while slowing the drying process of the meat."

And finally, clean up:

Keep your cooker clean so it lasts longer. Scrub the grates with a wire brush and shovel out the ashes after each use.

So whatever happened to all those little cookers—relics in Texas barbecue history—Franklin used at home? He gave them all away on Craigslist. "The guy who has my first one, I gave him to him on one condition: that he can't get rid of it unless he gives it back to me," Franklin says. "Although it's probably got a hole rusted through the bottom of it by now."

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