What woods are good for smoking?

Most all hardwoods can be used for smoking, from what I know. There may be a couple of exceptions, but they would be rare. Of course, some are more sought after than others. The big thing is to stay away from softwoods, such as pines, firs, etc. Their tars and saps create nasty, off flavors. Of course there are even exceptions to this rule and I have heard of (but never tried) some older smoking techniques using these.

You want to let your cut wood cure for about a year before you smoke with it. Otherwise it's too green and can taste off. I've seen a lot of oak used, even the local scrub oak (quercus gambeli). The temperate fruit and nut woods should all be fine. Once you go tropical I have no idea.

I'm told a lot of the Jerk flavor comes from the allspice wood they often cook over but I've not had that experience yet.

Any hardwood can be used for smoking. Some highly aromatic ones, such as mesquite, can actually flavor the foods. Most of the time this isn't so, however. The final flavor is a function of what brine (or dry rub) or other flavorings you use and the length of time the food spends in the smoke. The time-sequence of the smoke can also affect final flavor.

Many will argue that this isn't so. But I challenge them to take a blind taste test and then tell me which wood was used.

Your cherry wood is fine, as are all fruit woods. Hickory is traditional for smoked pork products. No reason not to use oak and other nut woods if you have a supply of them.

A less known source of great smoke is dried corn cobs. Another, seemingly little known approach, is to save the woody stems from herbaceous herbs such as rosemary, and drop them on the coals. Because they contain aromatic oils, they can add a unique flavor to the food.

With a few exceptions any tree that has nuts or fruit can be used to smoke. Cherry is good but use it in small quantities because it can be over powering and will turn the food very dark. My favorites are oak, hickory, apple, and pear. Walnut is another that can be over powering. Best bet is to burn a bit and smell the smoke, if it smells powerful it will put that same smell/flavor into the food.

Do NOT soak the wood, all that does is create steam and possibly creosote that will stick to the food leaving a very nasty bitter taste. A small clean burning fire is better than a large smokey fire. In this picture look closely at the left end of the pit. The smoke is barely visible coming out of the door above the steam table pan of beansand this was about 2 hours into the cook.

Cherry can darken the color of the meat and give it a sweet flavor. You can also prefer to use Hickory. Hickory wood is popular for making barbecue.

Any thoughts on Maple? I picked up a bag and haven't used it yet, because frankly it seems like an odd wood to use for smoking.

Maple-smoked bacon, to mention one meat, is widely esteemed.

The best barbecue I have ever eaten, made by "Uncle Will" - a black guy with a roadside stand in a dubious neighborhood in Houston, is smoked, according to Will, over a mixed fire of pecan and white oak. His products - ribs, brisket, hot links, shoulder - are sensational. His sauce, though thoroughly competent, is hardly needed - it's entirely middle of the road; not real sweet or real spicy, and doesn't distract attention from the meats.

My son was so enchanted by this discovery of pecan that he smoked a family Thanksgiving turkey with lots of pecan. He took one bite and threw it away. He said "it tasted like a tree!" So take it easy, pecan-wise.

Alder is de rigeur for salmon in the Northwest, and available from Luhr Jensen & Sons in Hood River, Oregon. I got a case of 10 1-3/4 pound packages about five years ago, and am still going strong.

Mesquite is also available in chunks for grilling. (not from Oregon, though :rolleyes:) Mesquite is also exquisite for furniture, but not available in very big pieces, as it's a small, knarly tree. Check with the Houston Hardwood Company if you would like to play with some - for small furniture, that is, not smoking.

I've read that traditional Vermont country hams are smoked over corncobs...:eek: never tried one. I'll stick with Missouri country hams and hickory.

Hoppy smokeeng! as Jacques might say.

Mike

Edited by MikeLM - 9/3/10 at 3:43pm

I've been playing with a stove-top smoker -- hot-smoking only, alas, but still pretty good for smoke cooking -- and have used alder (pretty traditional in the U.S. Pacific Northwest for salmon), pecan, oak, cherry, and still have to try maple, hickory, mesquite, corncobs (not wood, obviously, but usable for smoking as MikeLM points out; I suspect it will be on the sweet side), apple, and one more (sorry, I forget).

And according to a forthcoming book from the CIA, contrary to what KYH said upthread, any smoke does add flavor, provided the particles of smoke can cling to the surface of the food. Which is why the surface of the food should be dry, preferable with a pellicle (a skin formed by the drying of the brine or marinade). Anyway, that's what a chef-instructor at Culinary said. :p

white and red oak are excellent BBQ smoking woods and really good for a steak over hardwood coals. I have 1/2 cord or so that I was using in the old BBQ pit.

IMHPO So many woods are good.

Personally.......

I like a mix of Oak and Hickory maybe 60/40 respectively for most of my standard stuff.....Ribs, Brisket, Butt even veggies and cheeses. However and this is just personal preferance.....I started finishing things with apple. It really made a nice over-tone for the meats (pork) and the cheese. Not a big fan of apple with beef and for chicken I will go straight apple.

Pecan works well for some seafoods like scallops and salmon as well as some game birds like Pheasant. I have also done an apple/pecan mix for Pheasant.

Cherry is good, small amount of alder thrown into the mix with oak and hickory. Mesquite stands alone mainly for beef.

I have used maple in many cases....again in a mix wih a small amount of Oak (white). Black oak is great too.

Lamb I use strictly cedar and not in a hot or full smoke. Basically it's a half, cold smoke and then roast in the oven to Rare

>And according to a forthcoming book from the CIA, contrary to what KYH said upthread, any smoke does add flavor, provided the particles of smoke can cling to the surface of the food.<

That's not quite what I said, Suzanne. Of course the smoke adds flavor, otherwise why bother?

What I said was that, with the exception of a very few aromatic woods, that the smoke flavor imparted is indistiguishable, one wood to another, if everything else is help constant.

I've been playing with smoke---both for smoke cooking and smoke curing--- for about 40 years and stand by my statement. I've met many people, professionals and just plain folks, who are very contentious about the choice of wood and how it flavors the food. In each case where I could convince them to take a blind taste test they could not tell which sample was cooked by which wood, because they tasted the same.

In short, as so often happens with culinary matters, conventional wisdom and in-the-mouth testing yield totally different conclusions.

The problem is, often, that different dishes are cooked using different woods. For instance, a lightly seasoned fish might be smoked with apple wood. Then a heavily spice-rubbed brisket is smoked using hickory. And the conclusion is that the radically different tastes are from the wood. But it's just not so. Or, in a similar vein, two dishes might be prepped the same, but one dish is lightly smoked, the other deep smoked. And, again, the type of wood is said to be the cause.

Another aspect is the age of the wood. Relatively green mesquite, alder, and the stems from herbacious herbs will add their flavors to the food as their aromatic oils volitize then recondense on the food. But even those woods, when well aged, contribute little if anything because their oils already have evaporated.

> Which is why the surface of the food should be dry, preferable with a pellicle (a skin formed by the drying of the brine or marinade).<

Absolutely correct. Without the pellicle you're pretty much spinning your wheels. Although there's more involved in the formation of a pellicle then just drying the brine or marinade.

It's also why dry rubs are so preferred over brines, nowadays. It takes considerably less time for the pellicle to form with a dry rub. If you're interested in why, I'll be happy to explain.

Still another aspect, btw, is the time-shedule of the smoking. Much has been made about how the food can only absorb X hours of smoke. Just this week one of the celebrity chefs made a big deal about there being no use smoking for more than two hours because that's all the smoke the meat he was making (a pork shoulder, for pulled pork) could absorb.

In one sense that's correct. At the start, two hours of smoking is about max (it varies, naturally, based on factors like the type of protein, seasoning used, strength of the pellicle, etc.). However, if you then let the food rest with no smoke for a half hour, then start smoking again, it will happily absorb more. The more you alternate smoke/no smoke on a 30 minute alternation the smokier the food will taste, and the deeper the smoke ring will extend into the food.

To be sure, scheduling of smoke is more a concern with smoke-curing than with smoke cooking. But it's another instance of "experts" making categorical statements that are not borne out by the facts.

NO CONIFERS unles you want your meat to taste like Retsina wine or that chinese tea that aged in pine barrels.

EDIT: Mostly use fruit and nut woods as well as a few others like maple and misquite. And apple wood I hear is the best all around wood for smoking.

Only use fruit and nut woods .......

Hmmmmmmm? Mesquite is neither. Maple is neither. Alder, larch, boxwood, locust and ash are neither. Corncobs are neither. Etc. Etc. Etc.

A lot of this discussion reminds me of my days in the Boy Scouts, when "what is the best wood to use for cooking" was a passionate discussion. Fact is, you used what was available, and, depending where you were camping, might have very little choice.

Same thing for smoking food. You use what is available, with the exception that softwoods are out. Any hardwood will work, as will some alternatives such as corncobs.

Years back, before smoking became an "in" thing, I lived near an apple orchard. In those days the farmer would just about pay you to haul away the pruning trimmings and fallen branches. So I used apple wood. Nowadays they charge a second mortgage for their scrap wood. Instead, I use random hardwoods, harvested from my own property. And there's not a whit of flavor difference in the final products.

Post edited.

In the deep south and elsewhere, it's whatever non-conifer that's on hand. Here it's hickory, oak and pecan woods. Those trees are all over the place. In Jamaica, it's pimento (aka allspice) wood that's the smokewood of choice, in Japan cherrywood, out west mesquite.

Yep. Smokewood choices can be culinary or regional. But I'm going to disagree with kokopuffs a little because he oversimplified, did disservice to the role hickory plays in the south, and ran some regions together. For instance mesquite is most popular in Texas and the Southwest. In the California part of the Pacific west, the woods of choice are red oak, live oak and citrus; but its alder and fruitwoods -- especially apple -- as you move up the coast into the Northwest.

But in koko's defense -- what's a quibble without a nuance? -- mesquite is moving in because it's cheap (comes from Mexico), sustainable, and available. It makes a great hardwood lump charcoal too, because it's so strong it brings some flavor even as a charcoal, burns hot, and (again) is cheap, sustainable and available.

Each wood has its own character, and more of it if you burn and use it "just right." If you over or under smoke, burn it too hot or too wet, the varietal characters of the wood start to fade. So, to some extent I'm going to take issue with KY; but on the other hand a lot of the distinctions are so darm subtle with the milder woods they get lost in the combination of generic smokiness, plus whatever's going on with whatever natural flavor the food has, plus the spice it carries.

There are some excellent lists of wood along with discussions of how they taste and their appropriate uses on the net. One of them is on the Barbeque FAQ, which everyone interested in 'q should read anyway. Here's a link: Table of Contents. See FAQ 8 for the discussion on smokewoods.

So far, I've yet to see anything very complete here on CT. It's pretty much been "I like to use this," without much of a discussion of "for what," or "why I don't like to use these other woods;" the kind of information you need to make an intelligent decision. There are a few posts from some of the more active smokers that buck that trend; but as I said, nothing that combines breadth with depth.

BDL

Pretty much any hardwood.

What does this mean?

If someone went into a store which offered a choice of a dozen different hardwoods, you'd say "it doesn't matter, choose whatever's cheapest?"

Would you use walnut and alder interchangably?

BDL

There is a web site, askthemeatman.com, that has a good guide as to what woods go well with various meats.

askthemeatman.com/woods_to_use_for_smoking_art_updated_9300.htm

I'm not sure if this would be a different topic but has anybody tried smoking not with wood but with things like tea, rosemary, or cinnamon sticks? If so, how did it turn out? Did the flavor of the item used come through on the food? Obviously this is more suited to smoking smaller items like poultry breasts or fish filets and not a rack of ribs.

I've tried smoking with rosemary and Turkish bay leaves twice and really didn't notice any flavors being imparted to the meat that was smoked.

Hi, I tried smoking chicken breast with tea, uncooked rice grains and sugar, it did the job, but tasted of tea, ugh!!!!

Not as a primary but I have used cinnamon sticks mixed with my wood chips for venison.

The best smokewoods are,in my book,Apple,Hickory and Pecan.For all you Texans out there,Mesquite is good,too,but it can overpower a food very quickly.These are just my own favorites,but I do run my smoker at least once a week.

Mesquite is not a wood that gets used a lot even in Texas for smoking unless you count the peoples republic of Austin. The rest of the state seems to focus far more on hickory, oak and pecan for smoke but mesquite for grilling.
Cherry and apple rate pretty darn on my list in addition to those.

Smoking Salmon

Alder-smoked salmon is popular in the Pacific Northwest. You can use fruit wood as well, but usually fruit trees have a history of many pesticide sprays which are applied each year.