Re: MS BBQ Thread
[quote=toasty;481228]"seasoned" wood just refers to it being allowed to sit out and completely dry out for a season before using it. If you just chop down a tree and start smoking with it, there is still a lot of moisture in the wood that prevents it from burning well and can impact an unpleasant flavor.
People use charcoal because it imparts a nice wood-smoke flavor to food, but there's nothing that adds true smoke flavor like building a regular fire with real wood. It's really only practical when you have a smoker with an offset firebox or a grill that is a meter or more over the flame so your food isn't directly over the heat source where it could get nipped by the stray flame.
Different wood imparts different flavors to the meat, and some are better than others. I use cherry (which, is, like it sounds, the wood from a cherry tree) because it has a great, slightly sweet flavor that is subtle enough to allow you to smoke something all day without the smoke flavor becoming overpowering. Oak works well, too, as does hickory, although using hickory for too long can impart too much smoke flavor, IMO -- sometimes I'll do cherry for the whole thing and then finish it with hickory for the last 1-2 hours. Mesquite is a popular smoking wood, too, but I'd never use it for anything that would be in the smoker more than 2 hours, because it has a really strong flavor and it's easy to overdo it.
If you don't want to slow smoke something all day, try throwing some hardwood chips on your charcoal. Soak 'em in water for about a half an hour, then throw them on the charcoal, preferably somewhere not directly under the meat. Adds some great flavor!![/quote]
Looks like someone did his homework.
[quote=beanzncheez;481237]Meat shouldn't be sweet unless you stuff it in a vagina before you eat it.[/quote]
I love sweet meat or the combination of meat and sweet sauces or fruit, so good.