Wood, chips, and sawdust all generate smoke

The preferred method to handle wood chips or sawdust is to place them in a stainless steel pan, about 8 -10” in diameter and leaving it on a hot plate, hot coals, gas burner or barbecue starter until sawdust starts to smoke. An additional amount of sawdust or wood chips should be added once in a while to maintain smoke generation.

If smoking stops, the barbecue starter or hot plate is reconnected again. If thr sawdust bursts into flames, any common spray bottle can bring it under control. The wood chips should be kept together in a conical pile so that they will smolder and not burn. The moment they spread, they make contact with more air and are more inclined to burn. The same applies when adding wood chips directly on hot coals or ashes, keep them in a pile and if the flames start to grow bigger, add more wood chips to cut off the supply of fresh air. After a while a natural rhythm of adding sawdust will be established and the whole process will go on smoothly.

All small and medium size factory made smokers use these methods to generate smoke. The bigger models employ a free standing smoke generation unit that is connected with the smoker by a short pipe. Draft control plays no role here since an electrical blower blows the smoke into the smoker. Industrial smokehouses choose still different methods of smoke generation but that does not necessarily mean that the quality is better. One method involves pressing blocks of pressed sawdust against rotating wheels. That resistance creates high temperatures and the block of wood starts to smoke. It’s like cutting a piece of wood with a dull saw blade; it starts to smoke because of the heat generated.

Dry or wet wood

Here is another question that never seems to go out of fashion: “what’s better, wet or dry”. Almost every book advocates using wet chips or sawdust, most likely because when wet they seem to produce more smoke. This is simply not true; the extra amount of smoke is nothing else but water vapor (steam) mixed with smoke. This does make a difference when hot smoking at 105° – 140° F and the smoke times are rather short. That extra moisture prevents the sausage casings from drying out during smoking. Besides, wet chips are not going to be wet for very long; the heat will dry them out anyhow. Wood chips produce good smoke when wet and they decrease temperatures, but the moment they become dry, they burst into flames and the temperature shoots up. The grease from the sausage drops down on the little flames, the temperature goes up, and the once little flames are now big flames and in one minute we have a raging fire inside of the smoker.

When your smoker has a separate standing fire pit, you don't care much about flames because they will never make it inside the smoker. Now you can use dry wood or put some wood chips over hot embers and your meats will have a more pronounced smoky flavor.

As you already know, we don’t use wet wood for cold smoking because we want to eliminate moisture, not bring it in. Cold smoke warms the surface of the meat up very finely, just enough to allow the moisture to evaporate. Creating smoke for two days with wet wood will never dry out the meat. When hot smoking, the smoke along with the air is drying out the casings, which develop a harder surface. The surface of the meat will become drier, too. This creates the barrier for successful smoke penetration inside the piece, and also prevents moisture from escaping outside.

By using wet wood when hot smoking, we moisten the surface of the product, aiding the smoking.

The type of wood used will largely depend on the smoker used, and the location of the fire pit.

The above pictures are provided to make a point that smoking is often done with regular pieces of wood and not just chips or sawdust. Of course it is much easier accomplished when a smoker has a free standing fire pit, like in the pictures on the left.

Burning wood inside of small one-unit smokers creates the danger of fire erupting. We have to use wood chips or sawdust with a safety baffle above to prevent flames from reaching upwards. This would also prevent fat from dripping down on the wood chips and starting a big fire.

When smoking in a home made barrel smoker with a fire pit in the bottom part of the drum, it is much easier to control the smoking process by using dry chips. These smolder and burn in a more predictable manner. Wet chips are just soaked in water on the outside, even when placed in a bucket overnight. The only way to make them really wet is to cover them with boiling water and leave them in it. Hot water penetrates wood all the way through.

When preparing sawdust, do not throw it into water, but place it in a bucket and then moisten it using a spray bottle. Mix sawdust with by hand until it feels moist. This sawdust will burn longer and at lower temperatures than other woods and will be the material of choice for smoke creation in small electrical smokers.

As previously mentioned, the smoke production method is not as important as other factors. What makes most of the difference is meat selection, its curing, and the temperatures during smoking and cooking.


Home