A Guide to Grilling With Wood and Smoke

Grilling with wood is one of the greatest advantages to cooking food, providing the unique opportunity to add a flavor that just can’t be accomplished to the same degree inside a kitchen. This is one that will require a bit more experimenting on your part though, since more variables are in play and taste for smoke is incredibly subjective.

Slow smoked chicken, ribs, and brisket are mouth-watering as it sounds. The deep smoky flavors and fall-off-the-bone tenderness are hallmarks of the low-and-slow cooking technique. Originally, open pit fires were used for the slow cooking process at low temperatures, but now, a backyard chef can achieve the smoky flavor with a smoker box, wood chips, and a gas barbecue.

Kinds of wood

First, let us tackle the business on choosing the right size of wood from three basic options: chips, chunks, and logs. Chips are scraps and shavings of wood that ignite quickly, but also burn out pretty fast. The biggest advantage to these are they’re more readily available in a wide variety in stores. Other than that, I find the short burn time a reason to skip them unless totally necessary. Chunks are usually about fist-size pieces of wood. They take longer to fully ignite than chips, but burn for a good hour in a grill, and hours in a smoker. For city dwellers, who may not have a natural supply of wood to forage from, chunks are sold pretty inexpensively all over the Internet. Logs are full pieces of wood, like one would use to build a campfire. These are best reserved for barbecuing in a pit or with an offset smoker, but we’re talking grilling, and I logs serve much of a use in it. They take a long time to get to the point where you cook over them and produce more smoke than you’ll probably ever need when grilling.

Kinds and types of wood (Image credit: www.seriouseats.com)

Types of wood

Next, let’s look at the types of woods: Common types of wood used for grilling (which steak houses in states across Us especially know of) are oak, apple, cherry, hickory and mesquite. The smokiness in fruitwoods like apple and cherry tend to be mild, with hints of a fruitiness or sweetness. These pair best with more delicate meats like chicken and fish, where a little smoke goes a long way. Medium woods such as oak and hickory are the workhorses of medium woods. Oak is my go-to wood for almost anything, imparting that distinct smoke flavor without being overpowering. Hickory is heavier than oak, with a stronger flavor that’s good for larger cuts of meat and just about any barbecue. Both of these work great with pork and beef—meats that can withstand stronger smokes. Heavy woods on the other hand, like mesquite, is the strongest of all the smoke woods. This is the wood of choice for Texas barbecue, because brisket, duck and lamb are some of the few things that can stand up against the hefty flavor imparted from mesquite.

Tips on grilling

• Wood chips should be soaked in water for at least an hour before using. Drain them and add them to a stainless steel or cast iron smoker box.

• Fill the smoker box two-thirds with chips and place the box on either the heat plate above the burner or on the cooking grids.

• Add wood chips 5 – 10 minutes before putting your meat on the grill. Raw meats take on smoky flavors much better than even slightly cooked meats. Having a smoky environment to start will enhance and deepen flavors.

• Smoked meats will have a deep pink ring on the outside – this indicates how deep the smoke has penetrated your meat. When cooking with smoke, especially for long times, a chemical reaction happens between the smoke and meat. When nitrogen dioxide from wood combustion mixes with the natural moisture in the meat, it forms nitric acid, causing the pink smoke ring.

Source: www.newscanada.com

Photo above: in-montgomery.com