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Cherry wood vs. hickory
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Sooner Egg
Posts: 578
I've been seeing alot of posts where people opt for cherry wood, I've always used and liked hickory, now I'm wondering what the attraction to cherry is.....is it milder, sweeter, is it better for certain meats as opposed to hickory or is it just personal preference?
Comments
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Fruit wood tends to be much milder as well as sweeter. Others will chime in about type o wood = type of meat. I use Apple for everything
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cherry seems to really add some color. i use 2/3 cherry to 1/3 hickory, or guava, or pecan on most low and slows with pork. its got a nice smokey but not to overpowering flavor to me, i dont know if i would say sweet like all the writeups say on fruit woods. sometimes with too much hickory i get a bitter taste and the cherry added to it seems to tone it downfukahwee maineyou can lead a fish to water but you can not make him drink it
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All of the above. I like to mix it with a little hickory and/or pecan for pork, with oak for beef, and by itself on chicken.
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Michael, we like to use cherry when cooking chicken. I tend to get a little heavy-handed with the smoke if I use hickory. On ribs we use a mix of hickory and cherry with very good results. It seems, at least to us, that you can get a lot more smoke from cherry before you cross over into the "hey, this is kind of bitter!" condition. If I used anything but hickory on steaks my wife would throw a hissy.
Vance
also from Edmond, Oklahoma -
I'm the same as Vance but use mesquite on beef
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I am definitely one of the depends-on-the-type-of-meat guys. Generally I like stronger smoke for beef, milder for poultry or fish. Here are my preferences:
Steak/hamburgers - hickory or mesquite
poultry - pecan and apple mixture
ribs - hickory and apple mixture
fish - alder
ham - apple
vegetables/breads/pizza - cherry
desserts - maple
Freddie
League City, TX -
Hickory reminds me of going to Plimouth Plantation and watching the pretend Pilgrims cooking in their mud-and-wattle hovels. Cherry reminds me of going into my grandfather's near-boston second-level-down farmhouse basement where he lit up his pipe filled with cherry tobacco. I like them both but the cherry is more sophisticated . . . its what the Pilgrims became three hundred years later when they actually had a place they could hide from their wives.
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I absolutely love the smell and taste of cherry. I call it my "base wood" and will mix other types (hickory, apple etc.) depending on what I am cooking. It adds a nice colour to the meat as well. I like the taste "finish" I get from Cherry. Someone said it is more "sophisticated" and I believe that as well. Sweet and not too overpowering...with a nice lingering finish. Kinda hard to explain taste though
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I know you didn't ask about other woods ... But experiment! My friend at tri-county in Waldorf, MD suggested grape chips for pork and I've been a big fan ever since!
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I know you didn't ask about other woods ... But experiment! My friend at tri-county in Waldorf, MD suggested grape chips for pork and I've been a big fan ever since!
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