While going for smoking and grilling food, a very important question which hits up everyone’s mind is that which wood should be used for cooking the food? A number of people are confused if they should use heavy massive logs of wood or they should either go with simples wooden sticks? Or they may prefer any type of wooden chips or wood pellets?
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Now, if they think they prefer the usage of wooden chips and wooden pellets, then here arises a very important question: which of them will be best for smoking and grilling the food? Before going to select any of them for cooking purposes, we should know the major and important differences between them.
Before selecting, we should know all the characteristics of each like to what wood chip and pellets are made up of, which of them is a perfect or better option for grilling than the other and which will go a bit longer than other for a long time cooking and grilling. Moreover, you should know that what differentiates wood pellets from wood chips so you can select that to cook for your family.
What are the necessary things one must know about wood pellets?
At the top of the list, a person should know about the existence of wood pellets. In other words, he should know from where the pellets come from that he is going to use for his cooking for better understanding. Compressed biomass of sawdust is used to manufacture wood pellets in small cylindrical shapes. Due to their small size, they are easy to store and do not cause storage issues. However, they are heavy on a purchaser’s pocket.
As they are entirely made up of sawdust biomass, a person who wants to use it in smoking should put up extra effort and struggle to find the pure wood pellets without any additives. We can use wood pellets in both, the grillers and the smokers. We can use them for both hot smoking as well as cold smoking. Many of you are familiar with hot smoking as it is the traditional way of smoking food in which the wood and heat are combined to produce smoke and add a smoky flavor to the food. On the other hand, cold smoking is much different from hot smoking. In cold smoking, the wood is used with artificial smoky flavors to add a smoky taste to the meats and nuts without using heat.
Now, there comes 2 important reasons that make wood pellets best for smoking and grilling food. Firstly, the reason is that they have the ability to burn even hotter than other materials. Secondly, they burn very slowly. That means they are good for cooking and smoking foods that demand a long cooking time. In this way, it allows a person to control the temperature of the smoker or griller. Controlling temperature is very important as it will let you know how fast your food is going to be cooked. It actually determines the cooking time which is the attention-paying thing.
Another important and worth-mentioned reason is that it allows you to use less fuel to maintain a particular temperature so you will be able to save your money over time. Anyone can appreciate this reason for sure. Wood pellets are able to produce constant smoke without producing the bulk of ashes. This will ease a person to stop worrying about the ash buildup and only focuses to cook the food evenly and properly. Many people worry about the ash buildup while using a smoker. So, this worry has been relieved by wood pellets. Such people can give preference to use wood pellets. Lastly, the wood pellets have all the required qualities a person is in search of. They last longer produce much heat, give less ash buildup, and burns slowly. Moreover, it gives a perfect smoky flavor to your food. So, if a person wants to smoke or cook food, he should go with wood pellets. Then he will be able to smoke his food efficiently with perfection.
Now, it’s our turn to discuss wood chips thoroughly as they are a completely different type of wood when the question comes to smoking and grilling the meat.
What is the thing one must know about the wood chips?
Wood chips are actually the pieces of hardwood that are passed through a wood chipper to make the small and tiny chips of the wood. Their journey from a wood chipper makes their edges literally very rough. However, this roughness around the edges does not have any impact on smoking and grilling. When a person goes to buy wood chips, he becomes confused about a variety of wood chips with different shapes and sizes. He does not understand which wood chips would be better for smoking and grilling.
Wood chips do not give the meats even smoky flavor as wood pellets provide. However, it induces bursts of smoky flavors inside the meat. The actual and original flavor of the smoke depends on the type and quality of the wood being used up by the user. As many fruit kinds of wood give a very subtle and muted smoky flavor. However, the woods of hickory and mesquite give a very strong and pronounced smoky flavor to the foods. You should use the wood chips carefully as you don’t want your food to be over-flavored.
Normally, they do not last long, as they burn quickly as compared to wood pellets. That is why they can not be given preference to be used in long cooking time foods. However, there are some ways which ensure to make them a bit longer-lasting. This can be done by soaking the chips in water so that they last a bit longer. Doing this can actually have an impact and do not give crispness to the wood chips as soon as they lighten up. Soaking the wood chips in water has also the advantage that its burning end up in producing steam which is very important to give enough moisture to the meat, rather than letting it dry and hard. If you want your meat to be juicy, you will definitely go to soak the wood chips in water. Never put the chips in the smoker, as it will give a bitter smoky flavor and you will definitely don’t want your meat to taste bitter.
Whereas, wood chips are the totally perfect fuel for grilling the meat if you are not using the gas griller. If you want to smoke your meat without investing lots of your time in your smoker, then you have a perfect option to go with wood chips.
