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Binder clips can be surprisingly helpful in bolting down a drafty lid on a Weber grill, and it’s even possible to convert a filing cabinet into a meat smoker. But for the greatest return on investment for your barbecue journey, all you need from your local office supply shop is a notebook. Smoking something large and tough like a whole brisket can be a drawn out and finicky multi-stage process that might have you tending the flames for up to 18 hours. If you’re skilled and lucky enough to have juicy, melt-in-your-mouth beef by the end of that process, don’t you want to be able to repeat that success next time? That’s why you need to keep notes of your barbecues.
To continue with the brisket example, there are many details that could be forgotten as the cooking process moseys throughout the day. To a barbecue novice, any big slab of meat could look like any other big slab of meat. But if you took note of the time you achieved a perfectly cooked protein after selecting the best brisket at the store, your next attempt won’t be stymied by accidentally drying out a leaner, but visually similar brisket flat cut instead. Beyond that, there’s the amount of salt for the brine, weather conditions, temperature, timing, and smoke flavor variations depending on which type of wood is used. All these little things add up, and if you journal along the way, deliciously consistent barbecue will be your reward.
Choosing the right notebook
Just like so many other cooking accessories, choosing the type of notebook you’d like to dedicate to your grill chronicles can get as simple or as complicated as you like. There are dozens of specialty notebooks like the BBQ Smoker’s Journal that feature barbecue-specific journal templates. The Pitmaster’s Log Book by Ainbinder and Hall also includes quick reference cheat sheets and charts on meat cuts and recommended wood pairings. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with a classic composition notebook or a Moleskine. Some on-theme scrapbooking stickers like these Barbecue Dimensional Stickers do make a basic notebook more fun though.
But if you’re the type of tech-savvy grill master already making use of Bluetooth-connected digital probe thermometers and a Wi-Fi-enabled pellet smoker, you may prefer to keep the paper for lighting your charcoal chimney and store notes on your phone. Software like Bear, Evernote, or Google Keep can sync and organize your notes across multiple devices, so you can write up recipes and save research on your desktop for easy reference, and edit on your phone while you’re stationed grill-side. However you decide to document your experiments like the mad barbecue scientist you are, don’t forget about these grill accessories that pit-masters agree every avid griller needs.
