Are You Using this Toxic Product on Your Smoker?

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue I'm Jeremy Yoder and today we're going to be talking about how to season your smoker and some chemicals you probably want to avoid when doing so once I got noticed in barbecue is that a lot of times there's a new way of doing something or a technique that somebody's adopted and then everyone else adopts it uncritically without questioning if it's the best call and one of those things I've noticed is the use of boiled linseed oil I think somebody did this maybe somebody's used to working with wood and they use boiled linseed oil on the outside of their smoker and they saw hey this works pretty well and then everyone else adopted it so I've seen lots of smoker manufacturers talk about they use boiled linseed oil and it's really in my opinion not the best thing to use now when it comes to which manufacturers have been using boiled linseed oil I'm not going to name any names but you're probably best off calling and asking what they use to season the outside of their smokers because boiled linseed oil isn't just boiled linseed oil as a matter of fact there's other stuff in there and it's the other stuff that I'm actually concerned about so let's briefly talk about what boiled linseed oil actually is linseed oil also the same as flax oil linim is just the genus for the species of flax that we use for say flax meal or to create linen that's why we have the name linen by the way so linseed oil and flaxseed oil are the same thing now boiled linseed oil is different because they add things called sicatives that's a drying agent basically you can think of it as adding metal salts to the heated linseed oil that makes it polymerize more easily so the polymerization process when you put this on wood basically those salts will help the linseed oil react with oxygen in the air and polymerize to form a dry coating on the outside of the wood with a smoker the idea is the same thing except with a smoker we don't need to do it that way because we have something at our disposal that we can't really use with wood and that is heat heat is what we're going to use to polymerize any kind of oil coating on the outside of our smoker rather than sickitive so metal salts that you really don't want to have near things that cook your food at least in my opinion granted people are putting the stuff on the outside of their smokers not on the inside at least I hope they're not putting it on the inside and so theoretically you should be okay but I'd rather not do it at all because I don't want things that I don't want near food near my food food additionally whenever you coat the outside with oil some always drips onto the stuff inside because this isn't an airtight seal some of that oil is going to get in and hit a couple spots of the grate are you going to be fine probably but do I want to take that risk not really and then finally if you have a flat top or some cooking surface on the outside of your smoker that you're going to be using to cook food you definitely don't want to be using boiled linseed oil because you don't want those metal secretives to be getting into your food and here's why so if we take a look at the bottle of boiled linseed oil you can find this pretty much anywhere any Home Depot Lowe's any hardware store let's take a look at what it says so it says if swallowed call a physician immediately call your poison control center at 1-800-22-122 or Hospital emergency room for instructions in case of eye contact immediately flush with water in case of skin contact immediately washed with soap and water if irritation persists get medical attention so that seems like it's something you probably don't want to eat or have near your food whereas if we use my preferred method to season your smoker we don't have those issues this is Pam as a matter of fact I don't usually prefer Pam I usually like to get the industrial size things of cooking spray from a restaurant supply store because they're cheap and it's going on the outside of the smoker it doesn't have to be the world's greatest quality oil but if I look at this the warnings are it can catch fire so it's flammable of course any kind of aerosol you got to be worried about that but if you swallow some of this guess what you don't need to call the Poison Control Center you don't have to call the hospital you don't have to consult your physician you don't have to rinse with water and soap for 15 minutes and then see if the irritation persists why because this is just cooking oil totally safe I'm not worried about it at all also it has the convenience of being in a spray container so I can spray it all over the outside of the smoker and it will form an even coating I don't have to worry about getting Rags all oily and covering the outside and if I'm cooking on a flat top like this smoker has I don't have to be worried about this coming into contact with food that I put on that flat top later lastly let's talk about polymerization and smoke point oils have smoke points associated with them so the higher the smoke point the higher you can cook with that oil before it starts to break down and smoke one side effect of heating up oil is you start to form double bonds and those double bonds can eventually lead the oil to polymerize which is actually what we want here so one of the reasons people use linseed oil or flaxseed oil when seasoning a smoker if it's raw is because flaxseed oil has a low smoke point something like 225 degrees Fahrenheit whereas other cooking oils can be 400 Degrees plus what does that mean for seasoning a smoker what it means is it will polymerize at a lower temperature than other oils so if you have pure flaxseed oil or pure linseed oil same thing it will polymerize at a lower temperature than say something like canola oil now here's why I don't prefer to use the flaxseed oil or linseed oil even though it will polymerize at a lower temperature a lot of times I want something that's going to be more durable and isn't going to break down the same way that flaxseed oil or linseed oil would because it starts to decompose at a lower temperature so if I use something like canola oil which is the primary ingredient in Pam yes I have to heat it to a higher temperature before polymerizes but also in my experience this is just anecdotal in my experience it lasts longer than using flax oil also it doesn't have the same smell as you heat any oil that's on the outside surface of your smoker it's going to go through a number of steps first it will be wet and then as you continue to heat it it will get sticky this tells you that it's starting to polymerize and it's starting to have some cross-linking we don't want to get lost in the organic chemistry here but basically you can think of heating it and you're forming double bonds and eventually you're forming something like an organic plastic that's going to cover the outside that's when it stops being sticky and it forms kind of a harder resistant coating if you continue to heat it and heat it strongly it will turn black and form kind of a carbon coating on the outside of your smoker now the last two are totally fine if you have a carbon coating or you have that kind of organic plastic coating of the oil that's polymerized on the outside of your smoker you're good you're going to protect it from oxygen you're going to prevent rust the smoker behind me I'm going to show you how I'm going to deal with it today it's very simple anybody can do this and the first step is get some pan second step is maybe get a scraper or a metal brush if you need to knock off any of the rust that's already present and as spring is coming up you're probably going to be doing this soon that's why I'm doing it with this smoker and I'm going to start cooking these are the two tools that I'm going to use I have my scraper here and I have this metal brush now be careful using a metal brush on the inside of a smoker because these wires can come off and they can get lodged in your gums that's another issue for another day one other reason I'm going to re-season the smoker today is because when they built a structure around me here there's a lot of sawdust and a lot of it fell on the smoker here I want to get that off and get this thing looking and cooking great as the weather improves and I can start getting out here and being more comfortable and barbecuing [Music] [Music] um [Music] foreign foreign [Music] benefit of using something like Pam or another cooking spray is that you can use it on the outside and the inside of the smoker indiscriminately so I can put it on the grates I can put it all over the inside surface and it does the same thing that it does on the outside it seals it from water and oxygen hopefully preventing rust [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when you got the outside sufficiently cleaned up you're going to spray the outside with an even coating of ham while the smoker is still cold and the reason we're doing it while it's cold is because if we wait till it's hot then the oil kind of runs in streams you get a bunch of streaks on it when it's cold you apply it it's an even coating and as it gradually heats up it begins to polymerize and what you have is a more even sheen on the outside rather than streaks where the oil was immediately heated and then became less viscous and started running down the side of the smoker doing it this way gives you a better result in the end foreign [Music] [Music] first because some of the extra oil is going to fall down on the bottom rack meaning you're gonna have to do less work later [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] so probably we want the cook chamber to be around 400 Degrees which means the Firebox is going to be a lot hotter than that and then the stack is going to be a little bit cooler but what we want is an even coating that's not sticky if the coating that you have is sticky you haven't gone hot enough for long enough so go hotter go longer until you get a smooth non-sticky coating then you should be set for Many Cooks in the future it's time to build a fire let me gauge some length here [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] that's basically it we let it run for a couple of hours and if anything needs a little bit of extra help if you have a wee burner torch you can just heat it up a little bit extra so maybe on the outside body of the cook chamber itself or like this fold out rack I just heated it up with the weed burner sprayed it with a little bit of the pan heated a little bit more and have an even coating so just do this a couple times a year and you're going to be set don't worry about any toxic chemicals if you're just using cooking spray good luck and good cooking this spring and summer as your outside barbecuing I know I'll be and I'm going to have a good looking pit while doing it if you guys want more content you can follow me over on patreon because there we're doing things like Zoom calls doing monthly contests where we give away things like smokers aprons thermapens to really make it worthwhile you can have direct messages with me you can also contribute to the Discord form so you can talk to other barbecue nerds who love barbecue just as much as you do and collectively we have probably thousands of years of experience in that Discord server so be sure to go over there and check that out I'll see you guys next time foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 132,722

Keywords: smoking, boiled linseed oil, how to use boiled linseed oil, boiled linseed oil on wood, linseed oil, toxic, offset smoker, season smoker, yoder smokers, fatstack smoker, yoder smoker, fat stack, how to season smoker, seasoning a smoker, how to season your smoker, how to season a smoker, smoker seasoning, new smoker, barbecue, bbq, texas barbecue, pam, canola oil, canola oil seasoning, seasoning cast iron, how to season cast iron, cast iron seasoning, outdoor cooking, blo

Id: C_e5MTW1dh8

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2023