Knock on Wood: BBQ Wood

Cooking BBQ can be enjoyed in many ways. It could be cooked indoors or outdoors. It may be done with metal stakes or with bamboo sticks, each giving a slight distinct flavor to the meat being skewered. Flavors are always the limelight of a good BBQ experience for diners. These are brought about by the spices and the type of meat itself, but another factor which is most often overlooked is the type of fuel that has been used to cook it.

There are many fuel types in cooking a BBQ, wherein some use synthetic fuel, and some utilize organic fuel types. There's gas, charcoal, or BBQ wood. Gas may be easy to obtain, contain, and utilize, but sometimes there is that slight twist in the taste, especially if the fuel has not been combusted fully, giving a pungent taste to the meat as it absorbs the unburned gas.

Charcoal is an organic fuel which uses carbonized briquettes to burn slowly and cooking the meat altogether. It may be a good solution, if not only to the dirt and mess it does to anything it touches – black soot.

BBQ wood is a good source of fuel for BBQ cooking. It is easy to gather BBQ wood as it could be any firewood type of fuel. However, the different and uncontrolled quality of low quality BBQ wood may result in the random taste from the smoke of the burning fuel. There are some high quality BBQ wood types, which when burned as cooking fuel, gives off a fragrant smell to be absorbed by the meat, adding to the overall taste.

Different Types of Wood to Enjoy BBQ

One of the most popular flavors of BBQ is brought about by a type of BBQ wood of a hickory tree. Usually, the nuts and extracts from this tree is the more popular flavoring for BBQ recipes, but the smoky and dense musky texture of cooked BBQ is brought about by the firewood itself. Hickory BBQ wood is not that abundantly available as the trees they have other uses other than just firewood.

Another high quality BBQ wood is the cinnamon type. As we know, cinnamon is from the powdered bark of the cinnamon tree and is used as a strong spicy flavoring in many dishes and drinks. The flavor of cinnamon is not only limited to the bark, but the wood itself has traces of the same flavor. When used as BBQ wood, it would also give off that same smoky and spicy tang for the meat to be absorbed.

There are too many types of wood to be enumerated one by one, but definitely, the quality of BBQ recipes also depends on the type of fuel used in cooking it. By far, the most organic and full lasting taste is brought about by using BBQ wood.