The different types of wood Chunks. Wood chunks from golf ball to fist size are fairly easy to find in hardware stores. Chunks burn slowly, and often a chunk or two about the size of an egg weighing 2-4 ounces is all that is necessary for a load of food. Because they are slow, steady sources of smoke, they are in many ways, the most desirable. When you use chunks, you can add one or two at the start of the cooking cycle and you don't need to keep opening the unit and mess with the equilibrium in the cooking chambers atmosphere. Chips. About the size of coins, chips are also common and easy to find. They burn quickly and you may find that you need to add them more than once during the cooking cycle. Chips are fine for short cooks, but for long cooks, chunks are better. Pellets. Pellets are made by compressing wet sawdust and extruding it in long pencil thick rods. They are broken into small bits about 1/2" long. Food grade pellets contain no binders, glue or adhesives, and when they get wet they revert to sawdust immediately. Pellets were originally developed for household heaters. These pellets should not be used for cooking because they might have pine and binders. Some cookers use pellets as the main fuel, for both flavor and heat and pellet cookers do very very well in competition. Because they can be fed into the fire in a very controlled manner, usually by an auger, pellet cookers can be regulated with a thermostat, making them very controllable. Food grade pellets can be a good concentrated source of smoke flavor on grills and smokers, and a handful or two is usually all that is necessary for ribs or fowl. Pellets used as fuel to fire pellet grills are mostly oak, a stable burning wood. If they say they are hickory, they are usually less than half hickory, a fact that does not always appear on the label. They usually come in 10-40 pound bags. BBQr's Delight makes 12 flavors of pellets in small 1/10 pound or 1 pound bags that are 100% flavor wood including alder, apple, cherry, hickory, orange, pecan, and others. Their Jack Daniel's pellets are a mix of oak and charcoal from oak whiskey barrels, and their Savory Herb is oak with herbs in the blend. I love using these products because they are easy to measure and control. They only burn for about 20 minutes at 225F, so you must get your meat on before the wood. Bisquettes. Bisquettes are another variation on the compressed sawdust idea. They look like small brown hockey pucks. They can be used for flavor, and one smoker, the Bradley, uses it for both smoke and heat. Sawdust. Sawdust can also be used for flavor, but it burns quickly and is rarely used. There are even a few small smokers, like the Camerons, that use smoldering sawdust.

Meathead's smoke bombs. This method is ideal for both gas and charcoal cookers when you have a long cook and getting under the grate will be tricky, like when there's a full packer brisket on board. Get two disposable aluminum loaf pans. Add dry wood to both. Pour enough water in one to cover the wood. The dry pan will start to smoke quickly. About 15 minutes after it is all consumed, the other pan will have dried out and begun smoking. Getting the correct amounts of wood and water may take you a few cooks to perfect, but you will figure it out. I can tell that much about you.

Cedar planking I asked my friend Ron Shewchuk why nobody burns cedar for smoking. He's the author of Planking Secrets: How to Grill with Wooden Planks for Unbeatable Barbecue Flavor. Via email he said "It's funny, Craig, I would never use cedar chunks or chips in my grill or smoker, and yet I cook food on cedar planks all the time. Plank cooking is just another way of getting wood smoke flavor into a piece of meat. You soak an untreated western red cedar plank in water for a while, then the plank on your grill, let it heat until it starts to crackle, and then put your salmon or whatever on the plank. It steams and smokes. "But cedar's astringent vapors don't go well with everything. They're great with pretty much all seafood, especially salmon, and they're amazing with tree fruits like peaches, pears and grapefruits. They also add an interesting edge to brie and pork, even leg of lamb and prime rib of beef take on new meaning when cooked on a cedar plank, but it's not for everyone. I personally find that cedar doesn't go as well with chicken, but I can claim to have successfully cooked almost everything that one would grill on a cedar plank, including tomatoes, stuffed potatoes, bananas and even pear crisp! "Still, if I am smoking a side of salmon I choose alder or hickory."

The Zen of Wood

Originally all barbecue was done with logs as the fuel source. Wood smoke penetrated the meat and imparted a distinctive seductive scent that is the essence of barbecue. But it is difficult to control the heat and flavor when cooking with logs, so today, only a few diehards cook with logs only. If handled improperly, logs can infuse the meat with creosote, not a pleasant flavor.

Today, most barbecues use charcoal, gas, or electricity, and get their smoke flavor by the addition of measured amounts of chips, chunks, bisquettes, logs, and sawdust. Click here for a good buying guide to smokers.

But wood giveth and taketh. You can ruin a batch of meat pretty durn easy by oversmoking. Oversmoked meat can be inedible. That is the most common error of the beginner. So start with only a little wood and as you get the hang of your cooker and your tastes, you can gradually add more each time you cook.

Here are some rules of thumb. The rules will vary from cooker to cooker, but start here with your experiments:

No need to soak. Here's a myth busted: It is conventional wisdom that you should soak wood before using it to slow their burning. I strongly disagree. In separate batches, I took wood chips and wood chunks labeled "apple", and soaked them 12 hours in room temp water. I weighed them on a fairly precise digital postage scale before soaking. After soaking I patted the exterior lightly with paper towels and weighed them to see just how much was actually absorbed. Chunks gained about 3% by weight and chips about 6%. I cut the chunks in half and penetration was only about 1/16". DOH! That must be why they make boats out of wood! Wood doesn't absorb much water! I suspect that if you toss wet wood on hot coals, the small amount of water just below the surface will evaporate rapidly, negating any effect of soaking, and the wet wood could have the deleterious effect of cooling off the coals when the goal is to hold the coals at a steady temp. For charcoal grills, put the wood right on the coals. No need for foil packets or metal containers. For gas grills, scroll down.

Which wood? Each wood has a unique aroma and flavor. Hardwoods with low sap are the best for barbecue, especially fruit and nut woods such as apple, cherry, peach, grape, hickory, alder, mesquite, maple, and oak. They all have slightly different flavors, but it is almost impossible to describe them. Fruit woods tend to impart a sweetness. I avoid mesquite. It can be harsh, bitter, and pungent. Hickory is the tried and true mate for pork, but some people find it too strong and occasionally it can taste bitter. In addition, there are different kinds of woods such as hickory. There's shagbark, scrub, and red hickory, for example. Each will have a slightly different flavor. Furthermore, the climate it is grown in can impact flavor.

Bad wood. Whatever you do, never use wood from conifers such as pine, fir, cyprus, spruce, redwood, or cedar. They contain too much sap and they can make the meat taste funny. Some have been known to make people sick. Yes, I know that cedar planks are popular for cooking salmon on, but I don't know anyone who burns cedar as a smoke wood. I have also heard that elm, eucalyptus, sassafras, sycamore, and liquid amber trees impart a bad flavor. Never use lumber scraps. Some lumber is treated with chemicals that are poisonous. Never use wood that has been painted. Never use wood that is moldy.

Fresh or dried. Green woods have more sap, burn irregularly, and impart different flavors than dried wood. Some cooks prefer green wood, some dried. I stick with dried wood.

Bark or no bark? Some wood has more bark than others and that can impact the flavor. Some folks say you should remove the bark. I have not noticed a major difference.

What does Meathead prefer? If I was on a dessert island I would want a bag of apple chunks and a bag of small apple chips or pellets. I would use the chunks for steady slow release smoke, and the chips or pellets for quick smoke.

Add wood early. Meat seems to soak up more wood flavor at the start of the cook, and the colder the meat the more smoke it absorbs.

How much is enough? Make sure to weigh the amount of wood you use so you can increase or decrease it as you wish in future cooks. The amount you need will vary depending on your preferences, your cooker and how tight it is, the thickness of the meat, and if you use chunks, chips, or pellets. Here's where to start your experiments: Use four ounces of wood for ribs. Use eight ounces for pulled pork and brisket. Two ounces for chicken, turkey, and fish. Add it in doses. Put on about two ounces when you put on the meat and add another two ounces every hour, or when you can no longer see smoke.

Where to get it? There are a number of barbecue specialty stores opening around the country and there may be one near you. Most hardware stores carry only hickory or mesquite, but a few carry expanded barbecue supplies and a selection of woods. Watch the newspaper for ads from stores promoting a lot of grills. Then give them a call. Also there are a number of places to buy wood on the net. Another option is to go to an orchard and ask if you can have some dead limbs.

For gas grills

Getting smoke on gas grills is sometimes tricky. You need to experiment when you are not cooking food. Here are some things to try.

Use chunks, not chips. Wood chunks are best for gas grills because chips and pellets often fall through. But sometimes they just won't smolder. A reader, Nei Ng of UC Irvine found a solution: "The first thing to do is to wrap the wood in foil like the wood chip pouches. Make a small pile of charcoal on the flavor bars [or heat dispersers]. [They will ignite, but] the pile isn't hot enough to really change the overall temperature, and the wood should be lit by the time the grill has gotten to 225F. Place the wood chunks wrapped in foil over the hot charcoal and they should start smoking within a few minutes."

The foil pouch for chips. Put your wood chips in a foil pouch (right) or make a smoke bomb (above). For a pouch, use heavy duty foil or two or three layers or regular foil. Poke holes in the top so the smoke can escape. Place the pouch as close to the heat as possible. Reader Jeff Hale has this tip: "Make up a bunch of pouches in advance. When one is burnt up... throw another one on." You will know when to add a new pouch when the smoke stops. Another option is to use a small aluminum pan with holes poked in the bottom.

If you are having problems getting the wood in a pouch to smoke, before you put the meat on, turn the burner on high, put the foil packet on and wait for the chips to begin smoking. Then dial the burner down so you can get the oven to 225F. Or try Nei Ng's technique of using charcoal (above).

If the wood burns. It is possible that your wood might just catch on fire and not smoulder. If it doesn't, you need to be creative. Try moving the wood so it is not in direct contact with the flame. Try putting the wood in a small cast-iron frying pan or a flattened steel can. Finally, you could soak the chips for a few hours, although the water will evaporate quickly and you likely will have the same prob once the water evaporates. Be creative! Outsmart the flame!

This page was revised 6/28/2009