British BBQ Society Forums

In my quest to get everything sorted for when my new WSM arrives tomorrow i have rang around a few local carpenters and have found a chap that is willing to swap me lots of oak offcuts or/and shavings/sawdust for beer happy days. However when talking to him he said that while he was happy for me to have the oak offcuts (which are untreated) they are very dry and would burn very quickly.

So my questions really are as followed ... is this a problem? would it be better to soak the oak in water for a bit first? and would doing this affect the flavour?

Also would i be better using oak shavings/ sawdust instead of chunks of oak?

Thanks again

Mike

IMO I would go with the wood chunks, and place them on the fire once your temps have settled and meat has been in for a little while.

As long as it is clean wood and as you say untreated I would be happy to use use it. Don't forget you control burn speeds by the amount of air to give the fire. You may be surprised and find it smoulders rather than burns.

Give it a go when you season the Pit (Season is a burn through with plenty of smoke and no meats) off cuts from your meats can be used to season the grates during the stage.

Some people season some don't. I always season mine.

Don't forget the pics.

thanks for the reply i wasnt aware i should season the Q but i will now. By season do you just mean bringing the WSM up to a high temp with it being a new unit to burn off any manufacturing things ?

Essentially Yes, get it to a nice high temp that will kill off any nasties, give it a fair amount of smoke too, have a play with your vents, and I would take of the thermometer and see how far out it is. That way you will know what the actual reading.

Cup of boiling water and an accurate digi probe should do it. You will know that when it's reading 250 it's actually at 220 etc.

Hope this makes sense.

Cheers

Adie

Thanks Adie i will do this as soon as it gets here as i want to cook some chicken on the beast tomorrow night thinking about beer can chicken is this a good starting point?

If i'm being upfront I have never normally cooked a Beer Can Chicken on my smokers usually because Ilike to do them on the Weber Kettle. That's not say you can't, I think you will want to cook it above the usual temps for smoking.

If I were to do a BCC I would probably open all the vents, have no water in the pan and cook it quite quick. I like crispy skin on my BCC. I did do chicken halves for my inaugural smoke.

It's all about playing with your first few smokes, I know on reflection and looking at my photo's from my first smoke that I do so many things differently now. Does that mean what I did back then was wrong??? I would say no, we enjoyed the food, it fed my appetite to smoke more and I had a damn good dinner.

I would definitely keep a photo library going of your first few cooks. It make's interesting viewing in years to come.

Just uploading my first fire pics to photobucket for you to mooch through. http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk17 ... st%20Fire/

thank you very much for your detailed comments what would people reccomend as i first relativly easy thing to cook low n slow then ?

I would suggest Spare Ribs.

Adie

Those pics of your first smoke are good - it was interesting to see how you set up your charcoal and wood - it looked like you used about 6 chunks of wood - do you still do that or does it vary on what you are cooking

Cheers
Clair

Thanks Clare,

I tend to use wood chips now or chunks of whiskey barrel staves. My set up has changed quite a bit from that first smoke now. I am no longer using water, I only minion with Restaurant lump and back then I had no thermometers I worked off the vents being have open.

Now I use the clay saucer and have access to some very accurate thermometers, and I don't consider the redder the coals the better LOL. The wood had then was Weber firespice and I soaked it for quite some time. Now I don't even bother soacking the wood.

Next time I do one on my WSM I might take some pictures to record the differences between then and now. Although I'm hoping that my next smoke will be on the Jambo!