Burning wood

jfb1973

A lot of people in my neighborhood are putting out wood for the city's brush pickup. I was wondering if anyone uses wood in their egg? It seems like you could cut it up and burn it in the egg. Once it all burned down to coals seems like you could cook on it.

If this is a reasonable idea, are there types of wood to avoid? Obviously anything like Pine with a lot of oils would be bad.

Hoss

Be sure what you're getting.Usin that stuff for smokin wood would be OK as long as you know what type wood it is.

Mike in Abita

Burning wood into charcoal is not very good thing to do in the EGG. Raw wood in sufficient quantities produce a lot of creosote and other nasties you just do want in your EGG. These will permeate the ceramics and give you problems, from temp control, to creosote bleeding from your cooker. Here is a good write up on the subject. Below that is another link on how to make your own lump charcoal if you are so inclined.

By all means you can use that scrap wood to flavor your cooks, just don't make it your primary fuel source. Someone here once said "You can use any wood that produces fruit or nuts". I like that recommendation.

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/ceramicfaq.htm#burnwood

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/lumpfaq.htm#makemyown

Mr. & Mrs Potatohead

Darn good question…..
First off, I have to say that I haven’t done this with the Egg……………
But, I have cooked, grilled, stewed on the “embers bed” of an open fire many a time!
I have had only ONE major failure over the years, and I truly believe that was a direct result of the amount of “swill” that I had taken in!
As with anything we do with the Egg, methods are just that, methods.
Something “really deep, deep, down” tells me that my cooking on the open coals, should be able to be done “with in” the confines of the Egg also.
I’m thinking that the main focus would be to get a very nice coal bed going (BTW, this can take hours to establish) and move forward from there.
BTW, that really IS the nice part of a lump charcoal….NOT needing the time required to establish a REAL “coal bed”
Soooo, what do I think?
Give it a try!
Lets face it, we go round once!
It really is a win, win here! If it was wrong….We learned from it! If it was right…We learned from it!