Ask Steve
A tribute chatbot grounded in the real Cook & Hold model. Not actually Steve Gow.
An open-source model (Llama, picked above) answers your questions, run server-side on Cloudflare Workers AI via a small proxy function in this same project — no API key in the browser, and no multi-hundred-MB download before you can chat. The trade-off: unlike a fully in-browser model, your messages do leave your device and are processed by Cloudflare to generate a reply. Numeric questions (rendering rates, hold times, percent done) are answered using a real deterministic calculator under the hood first, not the model's own guesswork.
About this tribute
Every fact this chatbot is grounded in — the rendering-rate table, the texture bands, the confirmed cook methods — is transcribed directly from Steve Gow's own Brisket Holding Masterclass (And Tenderness Model) article and the spreadsheet he published alongside it. Nothing here is invented, and if you want the original interactive calculator, it's already on his site — this project is just the chatbot.
Steve built the model from real experiments: rendering beef tendons (nearly pure collagen) at controlled temperatures until tender, fitting the results to an Arrhenius-style first-order reaction curve, then validating it against dozens of real brisket cooks. The core idea — collagen rendering is exponential with temperature, and the hold is part of the cook, not just a rest — is entirely his.
Where to find the real thing:
- Smoke Trails BBQ — Steve's website, recipes, and rubs
- The original article — full write-up, the live comment thread, and the downloadable spreadsheet/calculator
- "The Science of Brisket Tenderness (And Perfect Hold Time)" — Steve's video walkthrough of the model
- Smoke Trails BBQ on YouTube
This project is an unofficial, non-commercial fan tribute and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Steve Gow or Smoke Trails BBQ. Please support the original with a visit to the site above.