A Short Discourse on Preburning Wood

[flash]

Well, I will just save that stuff for my charcoal smokes........NOW, what do I do about my propane smokes??

 

[walking dude]

rich.......i have a turkey fryer burner also........could you go abit more indepth on how you preburn..........i will be using my NEW sfb horz. for the first time either this weekend or next...........and was wondering how i was going to get coals first.........like what type of setup would i need to preburn........your turkey fryer option is interesting.........

 

[richtee]

Same thing as described. Like I mentioned you'll use more wood, but you'll like the flavor better. If ya use 2-3 chunks, toast up 5-6 and into the pan/pot/whatever.

Hmm I wonder if you can leave them a bit less "done" for gas... the high heat right around the pan may be helping the cause. I dunno... hmmm.

 

[richtee]

Dude, I use small splits about 6" long and chop them to about 1" square. Stack 10-12 or so right over the flame on a spare grate, then let 'em cook down till flame is almost gone. This is the point that needs experimentin' still..see the propane post I just made. How far down to take them.

 

[richtee]

Sooo who's gonna try this that does not already? Illini? C'mon... what's to lose?

 

[smokinit]

Nice Info I will be trying it with my Backwoods this weekend I have a weedburner that I will use to preburn the wood. Better Q is the name of the game.

 

[bb53chevpro]

I will test this weekend on Saturday or Sunday by using preburnt chunks in my gosm BB. Want to cold smoke bacon. This is my plan.

Heat up the cast iron chip box with propane, light turkey burner with cast iron frying pan on it, lay in some cherry and hickory chunks. While these are flaming, put a few pieces of charcol in the chip bin. When chunks are ready, shut off propane, leave door open a minute to cool inside, place in chunks and see what happens.

Maybe a good idea if I did this for a few hours before I put in bacon.
Andy.

P.S. this will all depend on how my father-in-law is. (had heart-attach again today)

Andy.

 

[richtee]

Jeez... in my prayers tonight.

 

[bb53chevpro]

Thnx Rich,
You think this will work????

 

[richtee]

You mean the prayers? I KNOW it will help. The wood idea? Can't hurt eh? :{)

 

[devolutionist]

OK, I'm in the propane smoker's union, and after reading through this I too am left wondering how this will apply to what I do. My primary issue seems to be I have to use chips - not chunks - which don't really lend themselves to preburning imho. They'd just go up too quick. Chunks just won't fit into my smoke box, which is only about 2in deep.

Probaby 8 times out of 10, the wood chips I use (which are soaked for an hour or two) don't ash. At the end of the smoke I'm left with mostly charred up little black bits. I haven't figured out yet what makes them ash sometimes - although it's gotta be either higher heat or less water soaked into the chips.

Perhaps I could try preburning chunks, and then not putting the lid on my smokebox? I dunno - for some reason the little voice in my head says that's a bad idea.

I've got a big smoke coming up in two weeks for my cub scout pack so maybe I'll try a dry run tomorrow and just see how it burns. I'm willing to give it a try, but I'm a little nerveous about deviating from my "known good" when I'm cooking for a crowd of 150 or so. I'll try to take some pics and post some results.

 

[richtee]

I could ask no more than that... and no...trials are not for parties.

"Hey..I have 25 people coming over for ribs in 6 hours..how do I smoke them?"
Toss gasoline all over the place and light a match?

 

[richtee]

Didja give it a run Andy?

 

[teeotee]

I tried this out on Sunday. The chimney got the chunks going good with only two sheets of newpaper.
I'd like to try again using some larger chunks. All i had was a bag of chunks from wally world. Some are a decent size, the majority were fairly small, 1" x 3" x 1/2". Also i may of let them burn a little long. I did have a decent, not too thick stream of smoke coming out the smoker. And the boston butt tasted excellent (thanks to meowy for that sticky post).

There is a place about an hours drive that sells all kinds of smoking wood by the pound. May have a trip that way soon and pick up a variety of woods to experiment with.

 

[richtee]

I appreciate the effort! Any emperical data I can gather either for or against is my aim. This is based on my experience/thought/research, and I wanna know if I went askew somewhere or not. Just my nature.

Thanks! POINTS!

 

[walking dude]

TOT.........as has been posted here alot........if you can SMELL smoke......you are fine

i had a uncle transplanted from merry ol.
but he has passed.......LOVED his accent.....but when he got excited.....couldn't understand a single word he said......heheeh, but he was a H*LL of a pinochle player.......

 

[ron50]

Well Rich, my apologies for not adding to this earlier, didn't see the post.

I tried Rich's idea of preburning. If you want to read about it in detail, here is the post http://smokingmeatforums.com/forums/...threadid=15057

To summarize:

You will use more wood, you lose alot during the preburn. I would recommend using big chunks, the smaller ones are just going to get consumed during the preburn.

I wouldn't wait till the entire fire is out. It's hard to judge but when I feel the wood isn't smoking heavy anymore, I toss the chimney full out into my smoke pit and separate them so the fire goes out quicker. This worked well for me.

The results were good. Easier keeping the smoke thin and blue, great flavor, good smoke ring, although the lump of hardwood charcoal I added to the wood tray may have helped as well.

 

[richtee]

Thank YOU Ron... Points for the testing! Er... tomarrow...<grumble>

 

[navionjim]

Obviously you make some strong points here Rich for which I will gladly provide your rateings with another for your research and insight. All this conjecture being a wonderful thing, in another life I used to make my own charcoal for a completely different hobby of which you are well aware. And while I will surely try your pre-burning methods on my next smoke, I have to wonder; at what point in the conflagration of my rare and sought after smoking wood have I ceased to be smoking meat with wood and will have changed over to simply cooking with charcoal?

That is, if I drive off all those "nasty volatiles" in a fire, aren't I just making charcoal? And wastefully little of that even because I'm losing so much mass of the original wood by doing this outside of a retort in an oxygen rich environment? In a way it seems as if I'll just end up cooking with charcoal while enjoying an expensive and rare wood fed campfire.
Jimbo

 

[walking dude]

thank you jim.............i was afraid of stepping foward...........this last weekend.......i just put splits in the fire......i had nice TBS all smoke........NO BILLOWING WHITE SMOKE AT ALL...........i am wondering if the billowing white smoke is from green/wet wood..........

i was QUITE surprised with the thin blue i got..........with just raw wood