UT Dallas professor teaches the chemistry of barbecue

Here's a pretty fun article about a "smoking" professor: 

Outside Ten50 BBQ in Richardson, the smell of smoked meats hung in the air on a hot day in June. Dozens were lined up during the lunch hour to order heaping trays of smoked brisket, turkey, and pork before heading inside.

A few weeks ago, UT Dallas professor Jeremiah Gassensmith brought his students to Ten50 for a tasting for a class called the History and Science of Barbecue.

Gassensmith usually keeps himself busy with an impressive day job. He runs the Gassensmith Lab at the university, where his research focuses on how virus particles interact with organic and solid-state chemistry. One of his lab’s most recent research projects involves delivering vaccines through a puff of gas...

...Gassensmith says he was determined to “appropriate” the state’s barbecue culture when he got to Texas with his wife. He bought the cheapest smoker he could find, so cheap that he had to wrap it in thermal insulation to keep the heat inside. He took advantage of what he could and used it as a way to teach himself how to smoke meat.

Chemistry and barbecue have always gone hand-in-hand, Gassensmith says, but he didn’t fully appreciate the link until after he started smoking. Unlike cooking on a stovetop, which is essentially heating food on top of something hot, barbecue involves closely monitoring thermodynamics and reactions.

“It was advanced chemistry,” he says. “It was the sort of thing that makes sophomores really upset when they have to learn it.”

Read the whole thing - it's pretty interesting.