Technique #66: Make Smoked Barbecue in Your Oven

There is a way to make deeply smoked pulled pork indoors, sans smoker.

We know, the phrase “indoor barbecue” is usually code for “cooked in a slow cooker with bottled barbecue sauce”—a method that can result in mushy meat with a uniformly soft texture and little smoke flavor.

But our technique achieves shreddable, smoky meat with a dark, richly seasoned bark, or crust. 

Barbecue temperatures generally hover in the vicinity of 250 to 300 degrees, easy enough to achieve in the oven. But there’s a crucial difference between genuine smoked barbecue and oven barbecue. In a smoker or on a grill, as moisture escapes from damp wood chips and steaming meat, it’s trapped underneath the lid, creating a moist environment. 

To create extra steam, some cooks place a pan of water beside the coals. An oven, by contrast, is ventilated to remove any moisture that builds up. Since moist air transfers heat more effectively than dry air, an oven is less efficient than either a smoker or a grill. Our solution? Raise the oven temperature slightly and cover the pork for part of the time to keep it moist; uncovering it for the remainder helps the meat develop its signature crust.

To achieve barbecue’s trademark smoky flavor, wood chips aren’t a smart idea in an indoor oven (smoke alarm, anyone?). We use smoky Lapsang souchong tea to impart flavor to Oven-Barbecued Spareribs, but those ribs are exposed to smoke for just 30 minutes. After 41⁄2 hours of tea smoke, a pork butt tastes strongly of, well, tea. 

The most successful option turns out to be liquid smoke, an all-natural product. Since it’s very concentrated, just a small amount in the brine infuses plenty of smoky flavor throughout the meat. And including liquid smoke in the wet rub as well reinforces the true smoky flavor.