Soaking wood chips has been proven to be a useless exercise, there is no difference between dry and wet chips. You want thin blue smoke for cooking and adding a bunch of wet wood to hot coals gets you the opposite. They need to be directly on the coals, dry and then wait for your cooker to start puffing thin sweet blue smoke.
I can get firewood easily enough but its Jarrah (common Australian hardwood) and I have no idea what its like to smoke with in terms of the flavors it would impart, there wasn't much online about it either... maybe ill try it out on a small piece of meat to see how it goes before doing something like an 8 pound shoulder. Finding apple, cherry, hickory etc in anything larger than chips seems nigh on impossible EDIT: Just to add smoking is not very popular here (although its staring to gain some ground) hence my troubles and lack of knowledge etc appreciate all the advice!
Chunk wood is available online to you, I have no idea the shipping cost or where this is if local pick-up is offered but I found it in less than a minute on Google. You want chunks of wood ideally, they seem to sell a decent selection. http://store.aussiebbqsmoke.com/t/smokerchunks
Well dont i feel like a muppet! Cheers mate, shipping is quite reasonable actually and ive just ordered a few kilos each of apple and cherry
I would not be afraid to try a local hardwood, either. If you're concerned about putting undesirable flavors on the meat, take the bark off. Bark will impart some bitterness, allegedly. Truth is, some of the more common lump charcoals are made from South American hardwoods. YMMV. Edit to add- apparently there are pecan growers in Australia. Pecan wood is very good for smoking. And pecan pie with BBQ is arguably one of the best pairings in the world. A pecan grower may be able to provide you with smoking wood as well. And as discussed, most fruit woods work for smoking, too.
Making about 40 lbs of homemade bacon in the Masterbuilt electric today. 3 full bellies with a coffee & molasses cure and 1 that we split into a red pepper spicy style bacon and a more savory sage breakfast style bacon. I'll try and snap some photos later once I pull them off the racks.
Crazy idea: Has anyone tried making bread in their smoker? I love making french loaf, and it requires the low, consistent temps (for long periods of time) I can get out of my smoker.
I make a dead easy bread in my UDS, I actually just made a batch of dough today. 1 TBS Yeast (Fleischmann's or Red Star) 6 & 1/2 cups Bread Flour (I like King Arthur Brand-available at Wal-Mart), you can use all purpose flour decrease water by 1/3 cup 3 & 1/3 cups lukewarm water 1 TBS Kosher salt All you need is a big Tupperware container that can hold 6 quarts, wooden spoon and measuring cup. Mix water, salt and yeast in tub and blend. Add Flour and mix with spoon. Let stand at room temp for 2 hours It'll make you around 4 pounds of dough, you can keep in the fridge for 2 weeks. Bake @ 450 for 30-45 minutes, let rest for 15 minutes and brush with a good extra virgin olive oil.
I just got a charcoal grill that I would like to use for smoking. Could someone explain this snake method to me? I'd like to smoke some wings this weekend
Here's a pretty good primer on it. Basically, instead of dumping out a whole bunch of coals into an offset area in your brill, you create a slow-burning fuse like setup that maintains a lower, slower temperature needed for barbecue with your charcoal. And on top of the charcoal you periodically add chunks of wood that burn off and give you that smoke flavor.
Some guys have that method down do a science and can hold temps with ease. I've only ever used it for doing a pork loin or other small cuts of meat and it worked great, makes me miss my Weber. I am eyeing a 26.75 to have for this summer though.
I used to use it for beer can chicken before I built my drum smoker. It took a minute to get it to work correctly.
That snake method is intriguing. I'm happy with the delicious end product I can get with my Weber kettle grill but the biggest hassle to me is maintaining the temp over longer stretches. I have to give it a try. Any tips for smoking in colder weather, or just grilling in general when temps go below freezing? It can be a pain in the ass.
I've had a Large BGE for years and love it. The Woman had a gas grill when we met and I enjoy the ease of just hitting a button and having heat but when I really want to *cook* something, I fire up the Egg. I've posted pictures in the food thread of bacon explosions, pulled pork, prime rib etc I use to sell outdoor cooking equipment, from BGE's to $5000 DCS/Wolf/Viking's etc and I'd take my Egg over those in a heartbeat. katokoch- There are lots of pictures of people using ceramic cookers when it's snowing. Once the ceramic gets hot, it will retain temps easily.