wood chunks vs chips

Comments

• bluegrasstiger Posts: 145

  January 2012

  I use a couple of chunks for long and slow butts, say 10-12 hours and they give smoke a long time.
  
  Others use chips mixed in with the lump in various methods, and that has worked for me as well, although I mostly use chips for shorter cooks.
  
  Either will work.
  

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• tfoutch Posts: 76

  January 2012

  Either is fine.  Using chuncks now since that's what I have.  You will love this thing low and slow, and be amazed at how little lump you use.  You'll do fine, but "Good Luck" andway.

  TFOUTCH Algood, Tennessee

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• stike Posts: 15,597

  January 2012 edited January 2012

  often you hear "chunks are better" because they last longer.  well, it's true.  a chunk is bigger than a chip, and will last longer.
  
  but i look at it this way.  give me a single half pound chunk, or a half pound of chips.  which can i get more smoke from, and for longer. 
  
  for me, it's chips.  actually, it's small bits of wood, chips, twigs, whatever.  i do have chunks, and use them, but i just use them differently.  i mix a lot of small bits of wood into he lump where the fire is going to be.  and that's it.
  
  a single chip might be gone sooner, but there's another chip near it and more mixed in and around it. 
  
  they don't ignite and burn any faster than chunks, because the BGE restricts the fire.  you don't get open burning flames. a chip smolders just like a chunk.  in a gasser, the chip would burst into flame and be spent inside three minutes.  like littlesteven
  
  use whatever you have.  the wood doesn't care what shape it is in, and the fire neither
  

  ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta -Dante
  

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• boatbum Posts: 1,273

  January 2012

  I like a really smoky taste, I use both.  

  So far -- big caveat still learning - I start the egg, let it stabilize for 30-45 minutes, then put my smoking wood in, plate setter, etc - load the meat.

  In my mind ( and I may be wrong ) the chips give me immediate smoke, the chunks give me long lasting smoke.

  Open to ideas about what I am missing.

   

  Cookin in Texas

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