When it comes to cooking delicious food, there are many opportunities to consider. The ultimate goal in the kitchen is to create tasty savory food the whole family can enjoy. Many may not realize, but you can bring a distinct taste do your dishes when you cook on or with wood. This type of cooking has been around for years. Those who have attempted have made mistakes and oftentimes fail to get the true benefits out of cooking or grilling with wood. Here are a few things to know when it comes to using wood with your food in the kitchen or on the grill.
Avoid Soaking Wood Chips or Chunks
When you cook on outdoor equipment a good to maintain the temperature throughout the cooking process. This allows all pieces of your food to be cooked evenly and develop a distinct flavor from the entire process. Anytime you add wet wood to your coals you will get a cool down effect and fluctuate the temperature. Energy comes directly from the steam that’s on the water coming from the wood. This will allow the temperature to go up from the coals. Even if you add wood to a gas electric unit, you can still take up all the energy regarding temperature control. You want to always apply wood products in a dry state directly on the charcoal.
Don’t Use a Lot of Wood
This is one of the biggest mistakes people make. It’s best to look at wood as another ingredient to your dish. Smoke acts as a vapor which has small particles of compounds that have the flavoring imparted from the wood itself. You should always start with at least 6 to 8 oz of wood product and replenish when it’s reduced to 1/3. You only need to replenish to get a full amount of cooking time finished. It’s also yummy to be cooking on cherry wood.
Quantity of Smoke Is Not a Measure of Flavor
As stated before, smoke vapor particles attract to moist surfaces. There’s no need to add wood to your particular equipment because you don’t see any smoke. Most smoke vapors are visible to the naked eye and it will often have a blue tint. Don’t panic if you don’t see any smoke but be assured the wood is certainly doing its job. At some point you should be able to smell the aroma coming from the wood when it combusts.
Peeking
This can be a challenge when you’re grilling outside and preventing yourself from constantly opening the grill hood. Have a balance between the intake of air that being exhausted. This will ensure that everything that you are grilling we’ll have a wood fire taste to it. Cooking on a kettle style grill or even the charcoal smoker, there’s no need to check anything.
Cooking on wood can be a delicious experience. Once you learn how to effectively adjust your equipment, so you have proper air flow, you will find your dishes tasting a lot better. One thing you mostly want to avoid is consistently opening your grill hood because you don’t see smoke. It’s also important to use less wood as possible.