Take a tip from the experts: use BBQ wood chips to spice up your grilling. Connoisseurs know that good barbeque takes a lot more than just slapping some meat on a grill. Renowned experts in the field such as Bobby Flay, Dave Foley, Butch Lupinetti and many others swear by BBQ wood chips. With the summer grilling season upon us, here are some tips on how to introduce BBQ wood chips into your grilling and start cooking like the pros.
Wood chips are used in your grill in addition to charcoal or gas. They may be sprinkled atop coals or placed within a small smoker box in a gas or electric grill, and the smoke they create lends a distinctive aroma and appealing taste to all of your grilled meats.
Whether you use a charcoal, gas or electric grill, wood chips will give you authentic barbecue flavor. You can also buy a special smoker box to place in your gas or charcoal grill so that you can get that "wood smoke" flavor. Read the instructions for your particular grill before you try doing this.
Make sure that your wood chips do not end up burning like a campfire; the resulting heavy smoke will spoil your food with an acrid taste. Expert grillers advise that wood chips be soaked briefly prior to use, about fifteen minutes or so, and then allowed to drip dry for just a few minutes more. Ideally, your wood chips will be damp but not saturated.
If you're using a smoker in your grill, it's probably not necessary to soak the wood chips before you use them. Soaking wood chips will let them burn longer, but if you're cooking a steak, you probably don't want a long, slow grilling.
Wood chips are available in a large range of varieties that cater to all tastes; your local vendor should be able to advise you on pairing a wood chip with a particular meat.
In general, if your meat is lighter, you'll need a milder wood chip flavor. You can also try "heavier" flavors with lighter meats, though, such as using mesquite with chicken. If you're going to do this, try using a few wood chips instead of a lot to see what this does to your flavor.
With its more delicate aroma, alder wood chips best accompany lighter meats like fish and poultry. The flavorful fruitwoods, including apple, cherry, peach and plum, go best with veal, poultry and pork, and they also lend an interesting taste to grilled vegetables.
Mesquite BBQ wood chips, perhaps the most famous variety, go best with heavier meats like beef, lamb and duck. Also extremely popular, the resonant aroma of hickory goes best with beef and pork.
Just remember that BBQ wood chips are a flavor enhancer and not the meal itself, so don't skimp on your meats! Make sure you have a good cut that is fresh and well prepared. Otherwise, your fancy wood chips will just be going to waste on an inferior piece of meat that no amount of grilling expertise can retrieve.
Using BBQ wood chips takes us back to that glorious time when all good cooking was done on an open wood fire. Don't settle for just a plain old grilled steak or bland chicken breast cooked on bare coals. Cook like a pro and enjoy the vibrant aromas and flavors that come from cooking with BBQ wood chips.
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