Smmmmoookinn?

[soundman]

I know that in the US hickory is accepted as the standard smokin' wood of choice.
It's so universally accepted that you can buy little bags of hickory chips in the shops for that purpose.

However
For those who are interested in smokin' meat, fish or whatever what are suitable and favoured woods common here in AUS.

I have heard of sheoak needles being used with fish.

anybody got any ideas?

What are desirable characteristics of a ssmmmoookin' wood?

cheers

[journeyman Mick]

Soundman,
I reckon the number one requirement would be that you were 100% certain the the timber had not undergone any treatment whatsoever. With most timber sold for building purposes this is impossible. I've thrown chunks of Northern Silky Oak in my barbie (soaked in water first so it smokes more) because it came off logs that I'd retrieved and had milled so I could be sure there weren't any nasties in it. Other than that, you'd want to be sure that the timber didn't have any naturally occuring nasties in it like Black Bean (castanospermum Australis (I think)) and that it imparted a good flavour/aroma. The last I guess would come down to trial and error. I've also thrown large chunks of damp Rosemary into the barbie just before it was done when I was roasting a leg of lamb which was pretty nice.

Mick

[watson]

G'day soundman,
Down here, because of the large number of vineyards in our area, I use vine prunings.
They dry quickly.
You can wack them through a mulcher if you want fine chips
After 6 months in a pile they just smoke/smoke/smoke.
There is the added wank factor of "cabernet smoked", "chardonnay smoked", "shiraz smoked" etc ad nauseum.
As a footnote, all the different vine varieties smell & taste the same!!
They are after all....grape vines.
But fun.
Regards,
Noel

[Munga]

I process all my own smoked ham, chooks, venison, bacon etc and after lots of trial and error I came back to a mixture of hoop pine and hardwood saw dust about 35/65 % hoop pine is used to keep the hard wood burning and as it is the only pine available to me that has no resin (like crapiata) I also make sure that it is chemical free hard wood.

Cheers Arch

[Doughboy]

Mmmmm smoked food is good. I have also used some tea leaves added to a hardwood mix. There are a lot of different varieties of tea leaves out there let me tell you.

Pete

[echnidna]

fruit woods

[AlexS]

I've used red gum chips in the webber - don't know if it was psychosomatic, but I reckon they made an improvement.:licklips:

[dadpad]

Local butcher uses Mountain/alpine ash chips. I've always wanted to try some of the aromatic Australian Natives such as Mountain Pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata) or Lemon myrtle (Lemon ironwood).

There are several books about edible Australian natives Tim Low, Cribb, Julie Robbins, Vic Cherichoff and a few web sites that would give you leads on aromatic Australian natives.

If you use a non flavoured (?) wood you can add various herbs to flavour the items being smoked.

Most important attributes would be no added chemicals and moisture content.

[tanii51]

my small goods teacher told me anything thats red is fine i use red gum chips soaked in water for my smoked hams ... its great............. smoke house is the weber

[Clinton1]

A mate uses plum, which also colours his sausages red.

Stay away from the Dogwood I reckon!

[soundman]

the various stock herbs I would take as a given.
I hadn't heard of tea leaves, but i supose some tea drinker would have to had tried it in the last thousand years.... & I supose If you can drink it it should be OK for smmmookin'.
Probaly the reason that hoop pine is OK is because it isn't a pine.

Have heard of redgum and ironbark being used before.
Mountain /alpine ash..... so by extrapalation tasy oak and the related dryish woods like strinngy bark should be ok

I wonder about the corymbiers like spotted gum? or perhaps too much resin.

There are a few timber I have milled up of late that leave a nasty taste in your mouth from the saw dust.... I recon to give those a miss.
Stuff that termites & borers won't touch because of the extractives.... probaly give those a miss too

I think this bears some serious investigation.

Keep smmmooookin'
cheers

[echnidna]

The stringy barks have a fair amount of tannin in the but mountain ash doesn't
dunno whether its relevant

[outback]

We used to smoke all our own bacon and ham.
We used to gather yellow box, red gum straight off the chainsaw when cutting firewood.
We never bothered soaking the sawdust, insted we had a pit connected to the smoke house via a tunnel, the whole lot was covered with a sheet of old corro iron, the lack of air getting in, meant it all smoked away merrily.