Wood Chunks vs Lump

ShaneF

When you see these professional sized trailer smokers the cooks are usually using 100% wood and really letting the smoke penetrate their meat.  I know that for low and slows on the egg, you pile your lump charcoal with wood chunks scattered throughout.  My question is would you benefit from using mostly wood chunks with only a couple charcoal pieces scattered throughout.  It would seem that this would give you a very smokey/authentic BBQ flavor.  Has anyone tried this, or have any reasons not to?

Thanks!

The Cen-Tex Smoker

I've cooked over logs plenty on large offset smokers. It is smoky but really what you cook over is the coal bed with whole logs thrown on for smoke (and to burn down to more coals). I'm not sure what the diff would be in an egg. I've just always done what i was told and used lump with chunks. Works fine for me and if it were any smokier, I'm not sure I could handle it. 

Mickey

Would think more ash and Creosote being two reasons not to go 100% (where the hell is stike when you need him).

gdenby

IMHO, the standard use of the BGE, lump with some wood chunks, easily gives as intense  a smoke flavor as as standard offset.  There are BGE based competition teams that do just fine. I offered some ribs side by side with a friend who had an offset burning oak logs. I won for smoke flavor.

If there was enough airflow in an Egg to actually burn wood, the temperature would be so hot that the food would be carbon.

I don't believe anyone has tried to use a small lump fire to heat a pile of wood, and cook with it. I suspect the results would not be good. Traditional BBQ smoke, as far as I know, comes from coals that already burnt white. A bunch of wood just smoldering? Not the right recipe, I think.

stike

smoke doesn't penetrate meat...

and the egg is airtight, if you throttle back in such a small chamber in order to hold 250, your wood will smolder like a dying campfire.

those big rigs are usually offset.  bigger fire allows the wood to burn properly, but the cooler (and separated) smoke box allows the smoke to cool a bit before hitting the meat

The Cen-Tex Smoker

And they certainly are not airtight.

The Cen-Tex Smoker

*the offsets are not airtight.

brianwdmn

Which is why I gave mine away. Wasted too much lump.

The Cen-Tex Smoker

Same here and way too hard to control temp. My night of waking up in the middle of the night to feed the beast are long past.

ShaneF

Thanks everyone, great answers, and extremely quick responses!  Less airflow and a tighter seal definitely seem like good answers to me.

The Naked Whiz

I actually have tried cooking with wood chunks and can recommend against it.  I found one of two things happened.  If you tried to keep the temp low for smoking, you got unbelievable amounts of smoke.  If you tried to raise the temp, the wood would ignite and you'd end up with a roaring fire and very high temps.  I also found that when I was done, my daisy wheel was firmly creosoted (I just make that verb up) to the top of the egg.  Top wouldn't spin and I couldn't get it off the egg.   I did manage to get it off and then thanked my luck stars since I didn't expect BGE was gonna replace my top under warranty.

No, if you want to "cook over wood" you need to burn the wood down to coals in another open vessel, then transfer the coals to the Egg.

stike

and those coals won't burn as hot as charcoal, believe it or not.  there's a reason they make lump after all, people
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