Ever wonder why smoked meats have a pink smoke ring? I’ll explain.

Now that you’ve learned the difference between barbecue and smoking, let me tell you about the pink smoke ring. Once you’ve smoked a piece of meet, say a brisket or some ribs, you’ll notice a distinct pink ring around the outside of your meat. A smoke ring is proof that what you’re eating was slow cooked in some kind of smoker. In beef, the ring will be a reddish pink and in chicken, turkey, and pork it’ll be bright pink on color.

So why is there a smoke ring and why is it pink? It’s all has to do with the pigment in the muscle of the animal, called myoglobin. When the meat is cut, that myoglobin meets oxygen, it forms oxymyoglobin, which is a color that you’re used to seeing in fresh meat. Beef is bright red and pork is that pink color. What happens when you smoke meat is that the burning of the wood releases nitrogen which combines with the oxygen in the air to form nitrogen dioxide. This nitrogen dioxide is absorbed by the meat, reacts with the myoglobin to form nitrous acid, and this “soaks” into the meat creating the pink color.

So, the “smoke” isn’t what creates the pink color, it’s the nitrogen in that smoke. What this also means is that you can create a pink smoke ring without smoking by introducing heat and nitrogen, so a pink smoke ring isn’t a guarantee that the meat you’re eating has been smoked. It’s also possible that a smoke ring doesn’t form after smoking but that’s more unlikely than the first scenario.