Need help with smoke flavor

EggHeadinFlorida · October 2016

I cant seem to get this smoke flavor down. Every time I throw in a wood chunk or some wood chips, I'm getting a bitter taste on my food. On my XL I may add 1-2 pieces of chunk or a handful of chips. on the mini max, its more like a small scoop of chips.

I wait until the bad dark smoke everyone mentions goes away before I add my food to the egg. usually about 15-20 minutes later. Ive tried soaking the chips and chunks in beer, water, apple juice. nothing seems to work. Im almost to the point where I don't want to add anymore smoke flavor because Im wasting the food.

Am I missing something here?

gdenby · October 2016

Does the smoke that is present at 15 - 20 minutes smell good? If it doesn't, neither the lump or the wood is ready to cook the food.

Soaking the wood doesn't do anything, except maybe make it take longer for the acrid smoke to burn off.

Different woods have different flavors. I avoid mesquite, and the few times I tried walnut, I greatly disliked it. Also, some of the "softer" hard woods, such as poplar,

JethroVA · October 2016

On your next short cook, don't use any wood just charcoal. If the bitterness is still there you're not preheating long enough. Go longer on the warm up phase to 30 minutes. Try mild wood such as fruit wood. Agree with above that wetting the chips doesn't serve any purpose.

lousubcap · October 2016

As above, different wood provides different flavor but the bottom-line is that if the smoke smells good then it is good. Before that, the smoke is not ready for the cook. Also different brands of lump have different natural smoke profiles.
Rockwood is more smoke neutral than Royal Oak or it's private branded offerings.
Start with a baseline cook without any added smoke wood and then go from there. FWIW-

xfire_ATX · October 2016

I have been struggling with this as of late-

I used to run a stick burner and after starting with a small amount of charcoal I ran mesquite splits. Now I am running either RO or Mesquite Lump.

I made some chickens last week and just thought I had no smoke flavor in the whole chickens. Not for this reason but I went ahead and let it burnout last week, fully cleaned out. Last night started with brand new Mesquite Lump (which was shockingly large pieces) and on the outside of the egg I could smell the smoke but the Salmon I was cooking had no smoke flavor.

Since I am at the end of the bag I am going back to RO to see what I come up with.

JethroVA · October 2016

I find Royal Oak charcoal to produce a smokier taste.

J-dubya · October 2016

I often wait up to an hour to add food (when smoking). I like to put my hand over the chimney then smell the smoke on my hand, I do this pretty often during warmup.

Need help with smoke flavor

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