Smoking and cooking with wood dates back to our ancestors serving up some of that wooly mammoth that tastes so damn good cooked over an open fire.  We have come along way since dragging our women around by their hair and hitting each other with clubs, well at least the dragging part and we have also come along way in properly smoking meats.

Whether you like hickory, cherry, pecan, or apple etc., too much of a good thing can actually be a bad thing. I think we all probably started out thinking the more smoke the better, I know my first attempt at smoking resulted in a meal that closely resembled a charred pine tree after a wild fire. This was caused mostly by not having a clue as to what I was doing. I used all wood for the fire and I think it was mesquite; gee I wonder why it didn’t turn out.

I, like so many, use natural lump charcoal as a fuel and wood chunks or logs for flavor, and of course there are the pellet cookers.  Some folks, and my hat goes off to you, can smoke entirely with wood and the food turns out great. For the rest of us, one thing to keep in mind is that meats will only accept smoke until the internal temperature reaches 120 – 130 F. so beyond that you are just wasting wood and can actually make your meat taste bitter or over smoked. This is not to say that you have to immediately cut off the smoke, like turning off a switch. Just don’t add any additional wood.

The first thing I will notice when eating someone else’s bbq is if it was over smoked, because the most tender and moist meat can be ruined by the over powering taste of too much smoke.

So drop your club unless you need it for self defense and if you need a pickup to haul the wood your using for a single brisket you may be over smoking. The important thing to remember is that unlike what the Surgeon General says, smoking is actually good for you.