What is good wood for smoking meat?

[Michaeljp86]

I have a smoker and want to try using green wood. I tried the stuff from the store and was told the best stuff is to cut it green and use it. I live in michigan and was wondering what kind of trees are here that I can use. I know there is 2 types of hickory trees but I dont know if these can be used or not.

Thanks alot

[solodan]

Well, I am not exactly sure what is readily available out your way, but I would guess you 've probably got some apple, and apple is real good for cooking on. Some people seem to like oak, but I find it a bit musty. I will assume you have no mesquite, but I would take manzanita over anything.
I have of course had hickory smoked stuff, but I don't know what kind it was or if that's what grows out your way. If you want some manzanita just pay a visit to any of the members in California or Oregon and I am sure any of us would be glad to sell it to you at a premium price of course

[gary]

I like to use maple  for my heat when I am smoking. Mesquite will give a sweet flavor.  I don't use oak much.  Just about any fruit tree will be good to use. 

[Tom]

Any of the hickories are good to cook with.   Most fruit woods, accepting citrus.  You best know what you are doing with citrus wood.  Definitely don't use any conifer.  Pines, cedar, cypress and the like, are full of pitch and will give food a very distasteful taste.

The bark of hickory is thick and makes good smoke and flavor too (so do the nut shells).  When I find a good smoking wood somewhere, I try to store it.  That's just to make sure that I have some when I want it.  I cook mainly on oak for heat and flavor with a "sweet" wood.

Don't mix up your sweet woods until you discover the tastes.  For example, I like Hickory on Beef, chicken and Pork, Cherry on Pork, Bay on Chicken and fish, Sweet gum on Chicken, Red Oak on Beef, White Oak on nothing (unless that's all I have), Blue Beech on chicken, Mangrove on fish....

You will be amazed at the subtle flavors from your local woods.  The biggest secret is not to overdue it.

[LeeB]

Did some 1 1/2" porkloins, pineapple, cob corn, and tomatoe halves on live oak and mesquite last night. Pure exctasy for the tongue. LeeB

[Pullinchips]

Don't use black cherry (prunus serrotina)  nasty smell to it!

-Nate

[beenthere]

Must be the 'rot' in serrotina that causes that.

[Tom]

...or it might be regional taste differences.  We cook on Cherry quite a bit.  Well, we are really not cooking on it, we are using it for its flavor.  I cook mostly on Oak as do my friends and acquaintances.  The Favored Oak is Black Jack, though I make no distinction and will use water oak just as quickly.   I burn the Oak to a small "green" fire.  It is quite hot and has lost most of its smutting characteristics by this time.   Yellow fires will blacken food with smut.

For flavor, I use small amounts of a sweet wood.  Usually these sticks are about the size of a hammer handle and their sole purpose is to flavor and sweeten meat.  My favorite is Hickory.  I also use Black Cherry frequently.  Cherry does a good job of flavoring food.  But, you must not use too much.  Black cherry fruits are so sweet that they are bitter and I think the wood must follow suite.  It only takes very small amounts of cherry to flavor a fire.  Too much and the "sweetness" turns to an almost unpleasant taste in meat.  I've discovered that it is OK to use small amounts for long periods of cooking but not to use large amounts for quick cooking, like steak.  When I use cherry, I split it into pieces about the size of a carpenter's flat pencil and use it discriminately at the end of the cooking process.

I've found that a cooking fire built of Cherry will work if it is burned almost to a coal.  When that flame gets to the "green rippling over the surface" stage, the flavors are milder and the fire hot.  To cook on a Cherry fire before it reaches this stage is tempting a strong and strange flavor in the meal.

Some people build thier cooking fire on, what I call, Sweet wood.  I have on occasion, but, would rather use an Oak.  The reason is that one must learn to control the heat of the fire to get good results.  If you stick with one species, you eventually learn what it's going to do.  Once you feel comfortable with your "cooking species", you can use sweet wood to control the flavor and take the "oak bite" from the smoke.

While you are burning the wood down for the meat or other foods laid on a grill, the fire can be used to make coffee, tea, beans and things in pots.  It's not like the "yellow" fire must be wasted.  If you have a lot of use for a hot yellow fire, two fires can be used.  Build the yellow fire for the pot meals and then move the "coals" to the meat side when they are ready.  This allows several meals to be prepared or for a very long cooking to be accomplished while drinks and side dishes (Brunswick stew) are prepared on a hotter fire.

I don't know what got me into this.  Y'all probably already know it.  I just like to talk about food and cooking, I guess. 

[beenthere]

Sure makin' me hungry 

[Jeff]

We are having the end of the school year bus driver picnic here today and we will be cooking over a naturally occurring mixture of hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon gases found in porous geological formations beneath the earth’s surface.    MMMMMmmm!

[Michaeljp86]

Ive had some very good smoked meat and never could get a good flavor from that wood from the store. So I would like to find some trees and chop them up. I probably shouldnt though, I should loose weight instead of wanting to cook more food . Thats all I need is to cook food that I cant get enough of. I seen a smoker in farm show that some guy made out of a old refrigerator. I would like to build a big smoker like that some time.

I heard rail road ties give good flavor. Just joking, That would probably be one of the nastiest things to cook on and may put you in the hospital. Yum tastes like asphult

[SwampDonkey]

I wonder what yellow birch would be like for flavor. Unburned it has a mint taste under the bark like black birch. I've had maple flavored bacon, but I beleive it's the syrup, not the smoke. I've always heard hickory has a good taste, but all I've eaten of hickory was artificial flavorings. 

[scsmith42]

Pecan gives steaks a wonderful flavor.  However, the coals do not last long. 

[Michaeljp86]

What about maple? sugar maple would be a good one I think. My mom said grape vines give flavor.

[sprucebunny]

I use alder to add smoke and 'all natural charcoal'. It's easy to add too much but there aren't many other traditional smoking woods available to me.

[treecyclers]

My personal preferences are mesquite and pecan.
Which, of course, are fairly readily availabble locally.
I have tons of mesquite, in fact, the bed of my truck is currently half full of it!
Almond and pecan are nice, and I use them for slow smoking exclusively.
The mesquite I use on the charcoal grill for quick smoking, and in moderate amounts.
It's VERY strong, and easily can be overdone. Been there, done that.
Apple is rare here, but on occasion I do come across some, and it's really nice too.
SD

[Paul_H]

We are having the end of the school year bus driver picnic here today and we will be cooking over a naturally occurring mixture of hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon gases found in porous geological formations beneath the earth’s surface.    MMMMMmmm!

Carefull,we don't want no propane language used here.This is a family site   

[Jeff]

Its about time I was corrected for that!

[UNCLEBUCK]

I use burners for heat and not too much wood because a little smoke goes a long way but I just by a bag of cherry sawdust at the store and soak it overnight with water . My neighbor cold smokes with oak or any hardwood . One neighbor smokes his sucker fish with corn cobs . Probe and get your internal temps up so you dont get bocholism and use a cure and be sure to show pictures of something yummy ! 

[Daren]

Mulberry is my favorite. Hickory is good for BBQ chicken wings, but it gives me killer heartburn. Tom's right different wood is good for different foods though, it takes some experimenting. I regularly use cherry,apple,pear... Mulberry has an almost sweet smoke, it kinda smells like a cake baking, by far my favorite.

[gary]

What kind of smoker do you have? Propane,electric or charcoal? Is it a water smoker? The reason I ask is it will make a differnce in how much wood you use. I have had good results using bags of wood I buy at the store. I will soak store bought wood for 24 hours before using it.

[Paschale]

What about using old raspberry canes?  I've been thinking of cutting last year's down and trying that, maybe for some chicken.   

[Michaeljp86]

UNCLE BUCK, I never heard of corn cobbs. Did you ever eat any cobb smoked fish? is it good?

My neighbor cold smokes with oak or any hardwood . One neighbor smokes his sucker fish with corn cobs

[UNCLEBUCK]

With smoking fish the overnight brine gives the flavor in the meat and the smoke is just for color and let me tell you that those sucker fish smoked with corn cobs tasted just like lake trout . The men who did this corn cob smoking were 2 norwegian bachelor brothers and they lived to be 90 .

They churned their own butter ,baked bread and pies and smoked all their fish with corn cobs    They lived just a mile up the road and I would take my dirt bike up there often .  They sprayed the weeds out of their carrots in the garden with cleaning solvent . 

[Michaeljp86]

Was it cobs from feild corn or sweet corn?

[crtreedude]

I kid you not - Cocobolo. 

They used to cut it up to burn with it was so full of oils. Now, cocobolo (rose wood) goes for 40 dollars a lb.

[UNCLEBUCK]

It was just regular field corn cobs.  After the corn is picked from the field in the fall and put in the corn crib these bachelors had a corn cob sheller and you toss the cobs in the machine with the kernels on and out the other side comes a shelled corn cob with no kernels , the kernels fall down into a bucket and if you do this for 10 minutes you get a big pile of corn cobs and that is what they used in the smokehouse .  They made whiskey with the corn kernels 

[Woody Woodwrecker]

      Here in Florida my favorite wood is oak. Now there are all sorts of oak trees and I think the one I use and like the best is called live oak. I is what is naturally growing among the palmettos and pines here. When fresh cut it has a sort of reddish or even purplish color in the heart which goes away after a few days. I always use a small bed of charcoal (best is hardwood) and put the small logs on top of that. The vent on my smoker has rusted in the perfect position to give me a nice 225 deg temperature when the heat evens out. When this oak burns it has a very sweet smell.  My usually method is to start smoking before the hot fire has settled down to set up the outside of the meat and hold the juices in. One secret I'll pass on is in my experience with oak, hickory, and almond is to debark the wood if at all possible. Sometimes I am lazy and don't do it, but the bark can give a bitter taste. I've always had my best results with the bark off. I've tried all sorts of rubs, seasonings, etc, but with the sweet oak I now usually put nothing at all on the meat. In California I've used almond but it does not burn as well and the taste is nowhere near as good as sweet oak. Hickory is okay but has a stronger flavor. Mesquite burns to hot for true barbeque and would be bitter if you left meat in mesquite smoke for hours. Of course Alder has a very delicate flavor and is used for smoking salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
           Some more of my smoking tips follow: Be careful using fruit trees- if the wood came from an orchard the trees may have been sprayed with insecticide. If you are serious about smoking meat invest in a good quality meat slicer. A good one will last forever and slicing meat very thin has the effect of releasing more flavor, making it appear more tender, and making it go further i.e. feed more people. When you are done slicing there will be a lot of crumbs, mix these in with low fat or no fat cream cheese for a very good dip. The flavor is so good you won't miss the fat. By the way, fat in meet is like a magnet for smoke, that more fat in you meat the more smoke it will collect. Try smoking some ground beef with high fat content on a screen or grid. Most of the fat will drain off but what is left will have a great smoke flavor. Now use that meat in your favorite chili recipe and you will be amazed.
If you want to smoke a large turkey and like moist breast meat the best way is to probably remove the breast when they are done and put the rest of the turkey back on to finish cooking. Try smoking with an apple or two in the cavity.
Get your kids involved. My kids love to take cubes of Swiss cheese and put them on skewers. Then they hold them over the smoke stack for a few minutes to get a nice smoky flavor. You can smoke many types of cheeses easily. One favorite at parties is smoked mozzarella tendrils. Elevate the cheese on something like a brick or beer can, etc. As the mozzarella melts it will have tendrils come down which your guests can pluck off and enjoy. Hmmmm, mozzarella reminds me of pizza which is great in the smoker. Build a hot fire in you smoke box. Cook your pizza on the cheap unglazed Mexican tiles. Don’t waste money on a store bought pizza stone, they will crack if direct flame hits them. The Mexican pavers do sometimes, but they are only 99 cents!
One last tip because this is getting pretty long and has strayed from the original question- don’t by your meat from Wal-Mart! The only meat Wal-Mart sells now that I would consider using is pork loin. If you try cooking Wal-Mart steak the way a steak should be cooked (on a very hot charcoal and oak fire directly above the coals)  and cook it say med rare, you will be disgusted when you slice it open and see that it is gray or black on the inside and have a very unappetizing texture and taste.  It’s because of the preserving and packaging system Wal-Mart uses now. I actually spoke to someone at Wal-Mart headquarters about this and they admitted the steaks will come out gray. I won’t get into why Wal-Mart does this and what it means for the community in this thread, (which I turned into a book) but the point is find yourself a good meat market.
   

[SwampDonkey]

I've heard from friends that they wouldn't buy meat from Wal-Mart either. Walmart in Canada doesn't sell meat in my area, unless it's bacon or hotdogs.

[gary]

Thanks for the heads up about walmart. I was going too buy a couple t-bones there.

[sprucebunny]

The big supermarkets , here, sell WATER ADDED pork by Smithfield. Don't buy it !!!! First, you are paying more per pound for WATER and SALT . Second , it will drown your fire, and third, it dosen't taste real.

JMHO

[Norm]

They also add a food coloring to make it look red. First time I bought wal mart meat I thought how nice bright red it was. Cut through it and it was brown on the inside. Yuck!

[DanG]

I like to use a combination of woods to smoke meat.  My primary fire will be oak, and I'll add chunks of pecan and cherry.

I don't buy meat at Wal-mart, either.  I was there a few days ago and noticed they had some big bags of frozen crawfish on sale.  The front of the bag said they were from some outfit in Lousiana.  On the back, in tiny little letters, it said "Product of China."

[dundee]

In New Zealand there are not a lot of species to chose from to smoke fish, I have finaly finished my cold smoke house which I gave it a trial run to check for any smoke leakage. I normally use a species called MANUKA commonly called Ti tree, I had a whack of wulnut shells which I thought I would try--the result was that the smell of the shells was OK, has anyone tried wulnut shells for smoking?, I'm gonna have a try and smoke a trout then offer it to my neighbour first 

Very interesting posts you fella's have put up suggesting different woods for smoking----the grape prunings sound OK as well

Richard

[Drew]

Dundee,
We will use the hard shell of a nut, the bark or the wood.  Leaves don't work too good.

It's handy to remove the bark of a hickory and split it into fairly narrow pieces that will curl as it dries.  It stores easily and isn't as heavy as the wood. 

[dundee]

Drew, are you saying that you use "any nut shell" for smoking?, never thought of that

Thanks
Richard

[CALSAW]

I think that apple and manzanita are the best, but then thats what I got.
Around here they are cutting down thousands of acres of beautiful apple orchards and putting in ugly vineyards. Mostly they just pile them up with a cat and burn them.
I was born and raised in an apple orchard so it makes me real sad to see the waste.
BTW I would recomend that people buy NOTHING at Walmart.

[treecyclers]

All that apple makes good smoking wood, and even better lumber!
It loves to twist, split, and check, but it's fantastic for jewelry boxes and little things!

Have chainsaw, will travel!
SD

[SwampDonkey]

The government here gave money to alot of would be apple growers. As soon as the reality of work and marketing started the orchard got abandoned after $millions were spent. We only have a couple viable orchards in the area. The most northern one was in Centreville. Orchards north of here, just didn't do good. The better maintained orchards were from Woodstock southward. The new dwarf varieties aren't as good as the old homestead varieties. I got apples ready now in the yard and they rot on the tree in no time, lotsa railroad worm to.  If I gotta spray'm, I can't be bothered. Wish they didn't come along this summer and shove my good homestead apple tree over.

[CALSAW]

Orchard crops are alot of hard work and uncertainty. My area used to be famous for Gravenstien apples, we had a few big canneries and dryers all over. Railroad spur to the canneries. Land and labor were cheap. All gone now. A few old timers hang on, and a few are trying organic, but you can't compete with the $ from wine grapes. I want to try grafting some of my dads old Gravenstien onto dwarf rootstock, any comments?

[Daren]

  On the back, in tiny little letters, it said "Product of China."

Funny ain't it. Most "Amish" furniture around here has the same sticker. I am typing on a "made in China" computer. I bought the chair I am setting in...if I fell out of it and looked underneath I bet there would be one of those stickers. I HAVE A NEW IDEA !!! I am going to start a factory that prints little stickers that say "made in China" , oh wait I can just buy them cheaper from China. I would buy label stickers from China, but I would for sure stay away from the Chinese crawfish

[SwampDonkey]

We buy Gravenstien here at the local orchards in the fall. Good apple to foam and froth in the sauce pan. I still miss the old New Brunswicker variety, nothing comes close. We bought some that were suppose to be grafted onto dwarf stock. They ain't nothing like the old ones we had in the orchard. These new ones are hard and small and lack the red venation in the flesh.  We got took.