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BBQ Wood Chips & Chunks
Wipe the sawdust off those old memories of wood shop classes and childhood trips to your dad’s favorite home improvement store… As it turns out, certain types of hardwood are right at home in your BBQ smoker! Using wood chips for grilling is an excellent opportunity to infuse a unique flavor that no kitchen can quite match. Various species of BBQ wood chunks and chips carry distinct palate profiles that can put you laps ahead in your local grill game — especially if you really learn the tastes and start blending complementary flavors together.
Now, none of this may strike you as news if you happen to hail from your very own neighborhood barbecue dynasty (or are simply one of the lucky ones to learn these tricks early on). But do you really know how to wring the most out of them? Heads up: no matter what many a book will say, it nearly never involves soaking them. Beyond the simple fact that water can't penetrate wood — something that helped a certain everyone sail the ocean blue for centuries — wet wood inevitably cools your coals, hampers blue smoke, and makes temperature control that much harder. Speaking of smoke, dark smoke is your arch nemesis. You’re aiming for nearly invisible streams of blue smoke for truly unparalleled flavor. Barring that gold standard, an excellent taste is extremely possible with clean streams of white smoke, layering your food with truly outstanding aromas. You’ll need good ventilation for this, and keeping your food from dripping juices straight into the fire is a must (hint, hint: BBQ drip pans are your friend).
"That's great and all," you ask, flipping one of our All-American Homemade Hot Dogs. "But what’s the big difference between BBQ wood chips and chunks?"
Anybody who can separate their chips from chunks (spoiler alert, the longer word is the bigger one) understands that smaller pieces burn faster: a handful or two of BBQ wood chips to more delicate cookouts offer a quickfire window of delicious smoke. Even with their rapid, flash-in-the-pan nature, this can really go a long way for your mid-day cookout. Smoking wood chunks, on the other hand, will better suit those low-and-slow cooks. They’ll take longer to fully ignite, but that just means they’ll bring you moderate and even smoke over much longer periods. Just be sure to not overdo them — too much wood for smoking meat can turn your food bitter in a snap. Generally speaking, a few chunks at a time on the fire? That’s probably all you need to bring the palate (or plate) of your latest smoked meal to roaring life.
