Don't Forget This Expert Advice When Choosing Wood Chips

Smoking meats is a great way to make them more tender and achieve flavors you won't get with normal grilling. If you're not a heavy smoker (in the culinary sense) and you're turning your grill into a smoker to experiment before investing in the real thing, it's possible that you haven't seriously considered what wood you should be using. Wood is wood, right? Not really, as it turns out — there's hickory, maple, mesquite, applewood, and cherrywood, and those are just a few choices. Different wood chips make your meat taste different, somewhat similar to how barrel-aging spirits or grilling with cedar planks can impart special flavors.

For some advice on choosing wood chips, Chowhound spoke exclusively with Rich Parente, chef and owner of Clock Tower Grill in Brewster, New York, which he runs with his wife, Cassie. The couple also owns the nearby Clock Tower Farm, where they raise pigs and sheep for their farm-to-table restaurant. According to Parente, the meat you're working with determines the wood chips you want to buy. "Pork and chicken are milder and go well with a lighter kind of wood, like applewood and other fruitwoods. Red meat is heavier and can stand up to more aggressive smoky flavors of woods like mesquite and hickory," he says.

Those fruitwoods that Rich Parente mentions are known for adding a very light sweetness to meats (or, at least, they lack the bitterness of stronger wood chips). You may not get exactly the same taste as the fruits these trees bear — applewood does indeed come from apple trees — but applewood and cherrywood can impart fruity tastes that linger in the meat. These result in a different experience from hickory, which has a strong, almost savory flavor that people often compare to the taste of bacon. Popular wood types like oak are more versatile and easy to use for a general smoky taste across different meats. If you're just starting out on your meat-smoking journey, you might want to pick up a few types of wood chips, like this bundle of four from Western Premium BBQ Products, to experience these flavor variations firsthand.

Remember that how long you smoke your meat matters and different types of wood for smoking produce different amounts of smoke. Some of those stronger woods like mesquite require a shorter cooking time because of how much smoke the wood emits while burning. If you leave your meat sitting in that smoke for too long, the flavor will become bitter in an unappealing, overpowering way. Beyond that, the wood chips you ultimately use the most will become a matter of preference — you'll find out quickly which ones you like best.