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smoked flavor

squirreley
squirreley Posts: 2
edited January 2012 in EggHead Forum
please help! just bought an egg, tried chicken first, my wife nor i like a "smoked" taste. can you cook on the egg without the "smoke" taste?? thanks for some help!

Comments

  • reh111
    reh111 Posts: 196
    Sure - just don't smoke the meat - i.e., don't put chunks of wood on the fire and don't do an "indirect smoke" - whatever you want to cook, either do it direct without a place setter or, if you want to cook it slowly, cook it with the place setter but don't put anything on the fire that will produce smoke - what you're looking for is a grill that lets you cook with only a charcoal taste and the BGE will do that just fine - you actually have to work at it to make it a "smoker"
  • reh111
    reh111 Posts: 196
    So, I may have been too quick to make a suggestion - you cooked a chicken on the BGE and it had a "smoked" taste that you and your wife didn't like??? - if so, and you didn't try to smoke it, perhaps you guys just don't like the taste of charcoal grilled food - OTOH - what did you use for charcoal - maybe it had some sort of smoked wood in it - some of the charcoal has some other wood particles imbedded in it which could impart a "smoked" taste - don't know - 

    I really can't identify with this problem because I love smoked meat - however, I've grilled a lot of stuff on the BGE that I haven't "smoked" and, therefore, that doesn't have any "smoked" taste - just a great charcoal grilled taste - so it's hard for me to understand the problem 
  • Yes, don't add wood chunks or chips, just lump for fuel.  It will still have a "bar-b-q" flavor from drippings burning on stone if indirect or on coals if direct.
    My actuary says I'm dead.
  • stike
    stike Posts: 15,597
    before putting the meat on, smell the smoke.  if it smells good, it will taste good.  if you put it on too early, the smoke will taste like fuel.  there's good smoke and bad.  bad smoke will take a while to clear, 10 maybe 20 minutes after lighting (especially after filling with fresh lump).

    could be you just put it on too early.
    ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta -Dante
  • I always let egg run until the smoke is clear if I want no smoke flavor.  Ex: Pizza
    Large & MiniMax in Lexington, KY
  • wow! thanks guys! i used Cowboy wood chunk charcoal and from what i am hearing i may have not cooked it "down" enough. also i may have had way too much charcoal--is that possible?  thank yall!
  • You do not need a lot of charcoal for grilled chicken.  It doesnt take a lot.
    Large & MiniMax in Lexington, KY
  • stike
    stike Posts: 15,597
    the amount of charcoal in the grill is irrelevant.  the dampers control how much is burning.

    a 350 degree fire in a totally full egg is the same as one in an egg filled with only a few handfuls of lump.  'x' amount of charcoal is burning in each grill.  the rest isn't
    ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta -Dante
  • reh111
    reh111 Posts: 196
    IMHO Cowboy charcoal is a problem but not for the "smoked" reason you asked about - just that it has a lot of small pieces that seem to clog up the air holes and limit the ability to control the temp - I really agree with some of the above posts - once you have lighted the charcoal - close the lid w/o the daisy wheel on it, i.e., with it open, and wait until there's not smoke coming out - it will burn clear when the fire is ready - then grill - you should not have a "smoked" issue
  • Theophan
    Theophan Posts: 2,654
    Everything's relative, and we all have different tastes, and I do think that no matter what you do, there is a very mild smoky flavor to any chicken cooked on the Egg, and I consider that a plus!  I've never used any lump but BGE brand, so I don't know if it's different with other brands, but one of the things I LOVE about the BGE is that the food tastes like it was cooked over a wood fire, not broiled in an oven, or cooked on a gas grill.  If I cook very plain chicken, like a spatchcock chicken with just olive oil, salt and pepper, and I add NO wood chips to the lump, there will still be a mild smoky flavor just from the lump charcoal.  When I open the bag and stick my nose in it, the lump charcoal itself smells like a wood fire!  So far as I can see, there's not only no way to eliminate that completely, it's part of what I love about the Egg.

    If it's a strong, unpleasant smoky flavor, then as others have said, it's probably that you need to wait a little longer before putting the food in the Egg.  There's an unpleasant-tasting smoke that happens when the charcoal fire hasn't really gotten going well, yet, and if you put the chicken in before that went away, that could result in lousy-tasting chicken, and the solution is to watch the smoke coming out of the top vent.  Usually there's a thick white smoke that mostly goes away after 20 minutes, maybe, especially if you didn't add any wood chips.  If you didn't know about this and put the chicken in the Egg a lot sooner than 20 minutes after lighting it, that might be the problem.

    If that's not it, and the chicken had a mild flavor of wood smoke, then I think that's what food naturally tastes like when it's cooked over charcoal made from real wood, and it's part of the reason so many people love to cook over real lump charcoal.  Give it a chance, let yourselves get used to it a bit, and you may come to love it.  And I find that most noticeable with chicken because it has such a mile flavor on its own, so maybe experiment with beef and pork, etc. for a while.  My wife and I, and our family, all LOVE the food that comes out of the BGE!  Give it a chance, experiment with some different things.

    Theo
  • To add to Theophans post,Yes you are cooking with wood,So you will get some smokey flavor and the lower temp will not let the lump burn as well as the higher temps do. Smoke is a byproduct of incomplete combustion and the higher heat completes that combustion process.
    LET'S EAT
  • i had the same problems with chicken when i first got my egg.  Make sure you let the dome come up to temp, and the smoke is clear, and I like to let it burn another 10-20 minutes before putting on the chicken.  When cooking at 300 or higher, especially with chicken I leave the daisy wheel completely off and just control temp with the bottom vent,  I think this lets any chicken fat smoke exit the egg faster and keeps it from adversly flavoring the meat.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    XL   Walled Lake, MI

  • Another new comer here.  Speaking of the charcoal, I am not using bge coal and was wondering if the size of the pieces was an issue.  I had a fire go out on me while doing some ribs and wondered if the small pieces had blocked my air holes.  I have read many posts about excessive ash, wet wood, and building fires, but when I checked out my coal after it went out, the only problem I found was a lot of small pieces blocking my holes.  I had cooked several times and simply added coal after each use as nessessary.  Is there a time when you simply have to many small pieces and need a clean out?
    "I'm to drunk to taste this chicken!" - Colonel Sanders. Memphis, TN
  • ChokeOnSmoke
    ChokeOnSmoke Posts: 1,942
    You can certainly cook things on the egg without a "smoky" taste.  You have to be patient and wait for the smoke to be "clear" (it looks like what you'd see coming out of a jet engine).  I make cookies and pretzels on the egg without any smoke taste whatsoever.
    Packerland, Wisconsin

  • maitai
    maitai Posts: 1
    when you are cooking cookies and pretzels do you use the daisy wheel on top? 
  • stike
    stike Posts: 15,597
    Doesnt matter. You cant let out smoke faster by taking it off, because exhaust going out faster than coimng in isnt really possible. If the exhaust increases, so will the temp.
    ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta -Dante