Search Results for 'heartwood'


Example of the layers that form a tree showing the heartwood of the tree

Cross section of a harvested hardwood tree showing the heartwood of the tree

IS HEARTWOOD REALLY THE ‘HEART’ OF THE TREE?

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By now you’ve come to recognize SmokinLicious® as the Company that produces it’s cooking wood products from only heartwood.  Yet, there are still many questions out there as to what that means for the individual using our products.  Is heartwood where all the life forces of the tree thrive?

 The short answer is, no, but there are benefits to using woods derived from this part of the tree for cooking.  Let’s explore!

Mini molecular-biology course: wood is an organic material that is porous and fibrous.  It contains hundreds of organic compounds but there are three primary compounds responsible for the cell construction in trees: Cellulose which is a glucose that is tasteless and odorless but comprises 40-50% of the cell.  It is crystalline so it provides for the strength of the cell wall.  Hemicellulose is also a glucose and carbohydrate but unlike cellulose, it has little strength and makes up 15-25% of the tree’s cell structure.  Lignin is the cell compound that is responsible for the structural materials in the support tissues of wood and bark and makes up 15-30% of wood cells.  Lignin is what fills the cell wall spaces between the cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin components and is crucial for conducting water.  Lignin yields more energy than cellulose when burned.  Most importantly, lignin is what gives wood-fired cooked foods their flavor and aroma.

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Our forest Fresh products to your smoke Generator

Our traceability of forest fresh products to your smoke generator

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listen to our blog

 

Our view of wood –  it is not simply what produces vapor or being a smoke generator.  It is THE ingredient that provides for colour, aroma, flavour and even texture to food. 

Just like the other ingredients used in your operation, you need peace of mind knowing that if questions arise, you can produce the documentation to show where the wood came from and how it was handled.   

Tracing from Mill to You- A Key Factor for Wood to Be a Smoke Generator

First, when you partner with SmokinLicious®, you’ll be using fresh forest hardwoods from Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania.  Second, all our hardwoods arrive at our facility de-barked.  Third, we only use pure heartwood for the log.  This is considered the purest part of the tree and one that is resistant to decay, pests, and fungi. 

We trace each wood piece we manufacture. We have information on:

  • the harvest date
  • what mill processed the raw wood
  • our heat treatment date and data
  • ship date

That is forest to oven. 

Why is Traceability Important? 

Without it, your operation could be interrupted.

Any time your company’s standards are reviewed, we have the data on the wood.  That means, it’s at your fingertips.  Plus, our commitment to a higher heat treatment level (75°C for a minimum of 75 minutes) ensures Thermal Death Time.  Potentially dangerous organisms like fungi spore, mold spores and listeria can’t survive with our heat level!

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Caution- When selecting wood chips for smoking know the wood source!

Caution- When selecting wood chips for smoking know the wood source!

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN $3.99 WOOD CHIPS FOR SMOKING AND THE SMOKINLICIOUS® BRAND

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listen to our blog regarding wood chips for smoking

 

 

If you’ve ever looked at the wood chips for smoking products available at most discount retail stores, you’ll notice that they seem to have consistent pricing in the $3.99 or less bracket.  Yet, you look at the SmokinLicious® brand and come up with a price that’s close to twice the cost.  What’s the deal with the price difference?

There are many factors involved in determining the retail price of wood chips many of which I’m sure the average consumer hasn’t considered.  What exactly are you paying for when you select a specific wood chip brand?

Let me give you some insight.

Wood Chips for Smoking- Let’s Start with the Raw Material

The raw material is by far the largest cost factor with selling wood chips for grilling, smoking, and cooking in general.  I’ll make the comparison to cotton purchased by a t-shirt manufacturer.  There are grades of cotton.  Higher grades of cotton go into more expensive cotton clothing.  Purchase a $5 t-shirt and you’re guaranteed a lower grade cotton was used. This means you likely won’t get more than a year of consistent wearing and washing out of that $5 t-shirt!

The same is true for wood chips.  There are 8 different grades of wood or lumber for purposes such as cabinet making, flooring, construction, and pallets.    Only one culinary wood company specifically purchases raw lumber material for cooking wood manufacture only.  That would be SmokinLicious®.

Other companies will do one of three things; have a primary business in one of the areas listed above and use the waste product for producing the wood chips, or, purchase another company’s waste product to market as a wood chip grilling and smoking wood, or, have the company with waste product package a private label brand of grilling and smoking chips and deliver to a centralized distribution warehouse for the brand, something commonly done by equipment manufacturers who feel a need to offer a wood chip to go with the equipment.

Cleanliness of the Manufacturing Process

Another key factor in cost is the handling of the material during the manufacturing process.  Now I understand that we are talking about wood and not a food item.  However, if you are using a wood to add flavoring to food through smoke vapor from burning wood, then I see the wood as an ingredient.  As with any ingredient, I would prefer to use something that is clean and pure since I will be eating this.

Since I’ve already pointed out that many companies use materials that are labeled as waste wood, you have no idea how the waste material was collected, stored, moved, and processed.  You also don’t know what’s in that waste wood (treated lumber pieces, a mix of woods, some softwoods) or how old that material is which directly affects the moisture level.  Remember, moisture is needed to smolder the wood and produce smoke vapor.

SmokinLicious® is the only culinary wood manufacturer that is Kosher certified, attesting to the steps taken to ensure the culinary products are clean, clean stored, and preserved.

Wood Chips for Smoking- Varieties and Availability

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SmokinLicious® Log burns cleaner than Compressed Sawdust

SmokinLicious® Log burns cleaner than Compressed Sawdust

USING COMPRESSED SAWDUST-WHY NOT DO IT OUR WAY? LET’S COUNT THE REASONS!

I read a lot. It is the nature of a scientist. It doesn’t matter if it’s a plant molecular-biology journal article or a cooking/food magazine that is readily available on any newsstand. I love to read and analyze the content. So, when I came upon Bon Appétit’s “Best of 2016” list (September 2016 issue), I was drawn to #11 on the list: a reference to using compressed sawdust blocks for cooking.

Now, if you follow us on our Blog, Flipboard, or our social media platforms, you know our stand on wood used for cooking: no bark ever, only specific hardwoods known to be free of or minimally contain toxins that can accumulate in the human body, use of heartwood only in our manufacturing process, and moisture-rich products so we can control that variable for the specific cooking technique.

I certainly have knowledge of compressed sawdust products used in the heating industry for standard wood stoves and fireplaces, but I had never come across a reference to using them for cooking aside from the pellets commonly used in pellet-style smoker equipment, products that have been around for years. So why did the red flag come up when this reputable magazine referenced a renewable heat product? Because none of these compressed wood product manufacturers ever referenced using the product to cook with. In fact, most stress the use of caution for the intended use in fireplaces and wood stoves, stressing that the BTU level of the product is much higher than standard firewood or cordwood. But let’s take a look at a number of other factors you should weigh before considering these products for the cooking application.

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Smokinlicious® orders in a shopping cart being delievered by FedEx to your door step.

WHY WE WON’T SELL PRODUCT ON AMAZON ®

SUMMARY:

We have been an online shopping source since 2005! We promote quality products and living wages for our employees! Producing a list of food safe woods, bark-free cooking wood only from the heartwood of a tree! Our internet online business brings “fresh” products to you! Which is why we won’t sell product on Amazon!

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listen to our blog

 

I won’t deny that I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to wanting more out of every 24 hours I can get.  This is the main reason why I am an internet shopper.  I rarely frequent an actual retail store aside from a wholesale club to purchase office supplies and the occasional trip to the grocery store.

I also won’t deny that I am an avid Amazon.com shopper!  Just about everything you can think of, I have purchased: clothes, specialty paint, make-up, kitchen supplies, food products, small appliances, area rugs – like I said, just about every category they offer.

So why aren’t SmokinLicious® products offered for sale on Amazon.com?

“Negative” Feedback Services

 Today, there is literally a service for anything and everything.  That includes services to pay individuals to post negative reviews on a seller’s product and services.  Let me be clear.  SmokinLicious® certainly has had negative issues arise from time to time in the past 13 years.  When they occur, we have our own procedure in place for remedying the situation which often results in great appreciation from the customer and a brand loyalty relationship developing.  However, when negative feedback occurs when selling on Amazon.com, it can take a little as .0008% reported issues of the total products sold to kick you out as a seller!  Kicking you out means you’ve lost all the inventory costs you started out with as Amazon.com ties up your account.

Open Market for Copy Cats

As anyone who has been in business for themselves can attest to, you spend months working on verbiage for your products, photo imagery for a gallery, and unique header descriptors to bring attention and get you sales.  The last thing you want is someone stealing your work and posting to a seller’s listing on Amazon.com.  That can and has happened!  When it does, you are obligated to show proof of ownership of all content if you want to bring issue against an Amazon.com seller.

Worse yet, the other seller may be allowed to continue to sell a product that looks exactly like yours but maybe lesser quality in similar packaging!  Plus, it is easy for your photo to be high-jacked and replaced with another image to cause high percentages of returns.  Remember, there is a return option that states the item “does not match description,” allowing the buyer to make the return easily while you get a demerit from Amazon.com.

Sinking Price Margin

By far this is the number one issue for my brand to use Amazon.com.  For a good majority of shoppers on this site, they are price driven in their choices.  Imagine SmokinLicious® Grande Sapore® wood chips going against the company that sweeps wood shavings off the floor from their flooring or cabinet making business, placing them in a cheap plastic bag, and slapping a simple label over the bag.  That company can afford to list the price at $3.99 a bag when they have no extra costs involved for the material, just the cheap packaging.  We are not in the market to compete on price.  We are in the market to compete on quality and purity of product.  That’s it!

For the brand SmokinLicious®, we are all about quality, safety, legitimacy, and value!  Our goal is to enable anyone around the globe who enjoys wood-fired cooking to do without having to think about the cleanliness and type of wood.  We’ve selected the safest hardwoods to cook with, stripped them of all the impure bark, reduced the wood to just heartwood so you have the fillet of the tree and dialed in the moisture so you have success at the grill, smoker or plancha every time.  You’ll find us online 24/7 to fill your needs in North America, the UK, and soon, in South Africa and New Zealand.

 

I hope you gained a better understanding of SmokinLicious® and why we do what we do!  Leave us a comment and subscribe to get our latest articles and information on recipes, techniques, and the science beyond the fire, smoke, and flavor.

Purchase products:

Wood Chips: Grande Sapore®, Piccolo®, Minuto®

Wood Chunks: Double & Single Filet

More Related reading on "What Wood for Smoking" and other great smoking and grilling tips and techniques

More Related reading on “What Wood for Smoking” and other great smoking and grilling tips and techniques

Additional reading:

-THE SMOKINLICIOUS® STORY

-HOT TREND MAY NOT BE THE SAFEST BET

-WHAT’S IN THE SMOKINLICIOUS® WOOD CHUNK BOX?

-IT’S A MATTER OF PRIORITY! DON’T PUT US LAST!

Dr. Smoke our reasons on WHY WE WON’T SELL PRODUCT ON AMAZON at this time

Dr. Smoke our reasons on WHY WE WON’T SELL PRODUCT ON AMAZON at this time

our food scale demonstrates Grande Sapore® and Double Filet wood chunks as a guide to adding wood flavoring with our Smokinlicious® products.

Our food scale demonstrates guidance on adding wood for food smoking.

One of the most common questions asked when it comes to smoking foods on a gas grill, traditional charcoal grill or smoker is, how much wood do I need? Likely the second most common question is where does the wood go? Click To Tweet

Listen to the audio of this blog

 

Let’s break this down by equipment and method of smoking so you have a good place to start in answering the above questions.

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Smokinlicious® Cooking Wood in the chimney starter!

Smokinlicious® Cooking Wood in the chimney starter!

COOKING WOOD WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW Click To Tweet

 

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I’m going, to be frank.   When having an opportunity to search through social media photos of various foods cooked by fire and smoke and seeing a reference to the wood, I get uncomfortable.  There doesn’t appear to be the same concern for the choice of wood as there is for the rub, cut of meat, quality of meat, choice of equipment, and sauce.

Why is it that the wood used to flavor the foods grilled and smoked is an afterthought?

Rating Scale for Cooking Wood

Recently, I ran across an article in Reader’s Digest that focused on the dangers of wildfire smoke, especially for those living in areas of the United States that are hit repeatedly by these events.  What struck me the most was the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index: good, moderate, unhealthy for sensitive groups, unhealthy, very unhealthy, and hazardous.  This guide is used to recommend evacuations of locations, use of HEPA filtration to allow people to remain in an affected area, and as a method of gaining valuable data post-fire on the effects, smoke has on plant life.  There is considerable data available from tree bark which has long been known to absorb pollutants.

This got me thinking about hardwoods used for smoking, grilling, and overall cooking of foods.  There is no regulatory agency that oversees wood used for cooking.  Despite efforts to get the Food Safety and Inspection Services division to recognize the risks associated with cooking with wood, no governmental agency has stepped up to offer regulations in this area such as established inspections of equipment and wood.

Why Kosher is important for Cooking wood!

As the manufacturer of all the products sold under the brand SmokinLicious®, we struggled with what steps to take that would demonstrate our commitment to only offer hardwoods that are considered safe for cooking.  Although we stressed that we are bark-free (an important step to reduce the exposure to toxins locked in the bark layers), that we only manufacture from the heartwood (an area of the tree that is known to be resistant to insects and decay), and that we manufacture each cut to the wood for the end cooking product, we simply desired some validation of these steps.

Since we’ve always considered the wood another ingredient to cooking, we decided to explore the options from the food perspective.  What certification could we apply for that would demonstrate that we are a food-related item?  Kosher certification was the perfect place to start!

Certification Means?

For us, the steps we’ve taken to obtain Kosher certification via VA’AD HAKASHRUS OF BUFFALO verified our commitment to keep our manufacturing facility at the highest standard possible.  People are drawn to kosher food for various reasons including quality, a healthy lifestyle, food safety, and allergy security.  By securing this certification, we can demonstrate to the public that our products satisfy the food quality and safety requirements they should strive for daily.  As such, our customers don’t have to settle for an unregulated product that frankly, could contain pretty much anything in the package because, as pointed out, there is no system of check on wood cooking and smoking products.

The SmokinLicious® Cooking Wood Index

Taking a page from the Environmental Protection Agency, I thought it would be helpful to develop an index to use for hardwood intended for cooking.  Our grading system is based on toxicity factors of a wood, ease of lighting, sustained burn, coal formation, smoke production, and heat level.  Our index is: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Unhealthy.

Excellent: Alder, American Beech, Ash, Cherry, Hickory, Pecan, Maple, Apple

Good: Persimmon, Red Oak, White Oak, Mesquite

Fair: Birchwood, Chestnut, Walnut, Peach

Poor: Aspen, Basswood, Poplar, Sycamore, Butternut, Cottonwood, Elm, Willow, Dogwood

Unhealthy: Buckeye, Hackberry, Gum (Sweetgum)

We hope you will find this guide useful. Use it as a means of sorting through all the types of wood offerings to make an educated decision, to look for key information on the packaging that will confirm you are making a safe decision.  After all, why take any additional risks when it comes to the health and safety of your family.

Making you an informed consumer through valuable articles like this one.  Hope you enjoyed this blog about cooking with wood!  Leave us a comment and subscribe for more great recipes, techniques, tips, and the science behind the flavor, that’s SmokinLicious®.

Products discussed in this Blog:

Wood Chunks- Double & Single Filet

Wood Chips- Grande Sapore®

Charwood

More related reading on Cooking wood, how to use and alter its great flavoring capabilities!

More related reading on Cooking wood, how to use and alter its great flavoring capabilities!

 Additional reading:

-WHAT WOOD TO USE FOR SMOKING: A PRIMER

-BEYOND PRICING: THE TOP THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN PURCHASING COOKING WOOD

-Is It Fresh? Here’s Why You Need to Know

-10 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE PURCHASING WOOD FOR COOKING, GRILLING & SMOKING

Dr. Smoke- Cooking wood provides great flavor in our BBQ, Smoked Bacon, Ribs and even on Vegetables!

Dr. Smoke- Cooking wood provides great flavor in our BBQ, Smoked Bacon, Ribs and even on Vegetables!

Our wood flavoring chart

WHAT WOOD TO USE FOR SMOKING Click To Tweet

Listen to the audio of this blog

I see the question asked so many times and in so many ways.  What is the best wood to use for smoking? What is the best wood to use for smoking (fill in the blank with your favorite food)?

I’m going to shake things up a bit by stating there is no rule book saying a specific wood must be used with a specific food.  There are, however, some basic things you should know to reduce the risks of toxicity, damage to your equipment, and overall ruining your barbecue.  Use the wrong hardwood and you can bitter any food you expose to that wood’s smoke.

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In the Wood Bark or Not debate this Diagram shows the two key elements of the tree that can effect your Barbecue results. Smokinlicious® only harvest wood from the heartwood of the tree.

In the Wood Bark or Not debate, this Diagram shows the two key elements of the tree that can effect your Barbecue results. Smokinlicious® only harvests wood from the heartwood of the forest grown tree and recommends that cooking with wood bark not be done.

If you rely on an outside source say a firewood supplier, you may want to rethink cooking with wood bark. Click To Tweet

Listen to the audio of this blog

COOKING WITH WOOD BARK – TO BARK OR NOT?

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Fruitwood trees are sprayed with pesticide to maximize the fruit yield. Spraying of chemical on the bark may not be too good for using in barbecue?

[Fruitwood trees are often sprayed with pesticide to maximize the fruit yield. Spraying of chemical on the bark may not be too good for using in barbecue?]

To our blog kiwifruit gets smoky

ARE FRUITWOOD TREES LIKE THE APPLE “SNOW WHITE” BIT INTO?

There is a fierce debate out there about the use of fruitwood trees, specifically apple and cherry varieties, for cooking purposes.  As a Company, we frequently get the same question – “Why don’t I see Applewood as an option to purchase?” Here’s the short answer: We do not, and will not, produce our products from orchard-based woods.  Our reason is simple – we do not believe in smoking foods over woods that have been or have the potential to be sprayed or growth enhanced with chemicals.

Trees

Let’s review a fact about trees.  All trees produce prussic acid, better known as hydrogen cyanide.  We feel that humans can use woods produced in nature when they have been left alone, unburdened by the human hand in trying to manage what sometimes is the normal cyclical pattern of nature.  In the areas in which we purchase the heartwood for our cooking wood production facility, the varieties of cherry (Prunus pensylvanica L.f.) we commonly deal with are:

  • Northern Pin Cherry, Fire Cherry,
  • Wild Red Cherry, and Pigeon Cherry.

Of course, predominately, we bring in Wild Red Cherry.  There are many different cherry tree varieties available throughout North America.  The main difference in these woods is that our forest trees, the type we manufacture, tend to be on the sweet-tart side versus the sour-bitter.  For the most part, hydrogen cyanide is found mainly in the leaves and seeds of the cherry tree.  Black Cherry bark is also commonly used in herbal cough remedies.

Opinion:

The dominant opinion is that when used in small quantities, the hydrogen cyanide is a moot issue. Now let’s talk about the smoking application of wood.  Cyanogenic compounds WOULD remain a factor in our production of cooking wood.  This is because we do not allow our woods to deplete their moisture content to a level that other wood product manufacturers may (what is commonly referred to as “seasoning of the wood”).

For ideal smoking of foods, wood needs to have a moisture level preferably at ~20%.  This results in the wood smoldering rather than burning at a rapid rate.  The resulting smoke from the plant material provides for that wonderful flavor.  Because smoking is done at low temperatures for longer periods of time, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH’s) found in wood molecules are not stimulated as they normally would be when cooking, say, a steak over a hot flame.  Thus, the health risk associated with PAH’s and smoked foods is not considered an issue.  The same can be said for ember cooking – using the heat of the residual coals to cook foods.

OUR CONCERN:

Our main concerns regarding woods used for wood-fired cooking methods is to always ensure a bark-free product.  Bark does not hold moisture but rather is designed to rid the tree of wastes by absorbing them and locking them into this area.  In fact, this is the reason why bark-on woods burn so much faster than bark-free wood pieces.  This portion of the tree is responsible for temperature flare-ups, tainted smells, ‘spotty’ appearance of the food’s skin, creosote, an increase in the production of ash.  Additionally, once the temperature is increased during wood-fired cooking, heterocyclic amines, or HCAs, are created due to the reaction of the amino acids and creatine with the higher cooking temperature.

In a nutshell, a person is at greater risk of cyanide exposure in treated wood products for home construction than they are when consuming BBQ or other wood-fired foods. Knowing the source of the wood being used in the cooking application is vital to ensure that the necessary steps have been taken to prevent tree disease and pest infestation spread, as well as to ensure that the wood has not been exposed to any chemical/toxin treatments.

It is our hope, that one day soon, inspection of the wood products used by restaurants, caterers, BBQ competitors, and grocery stores who promote smoked and natural-wood fired foods, will occur as normally as food inspections.  After all, I think we all can agree that WHAT you cook the food over is just as important as what food you are cooking!

ARE FRUITWOOD TREES LIKE THE APPLE “SNOW WHITE” BIT INTO? Click To Tweet
More Related reading on "What Wood for Smoking" and other great smoking and grilling tips and techniques

More Related reading on “What Wood for Smoking” and other great smoking and grilling tips and techniques

For related reading:

TO BARK OR NOT

TASTE IS AROMA!

WOOD FIRED CLAMS MAKE THIS THE PERFECT BITE

Purchase products:

Wood Chunks- Double & Single Filet
Wood Chips- Grande Sapore®

Dr. Smoke-<em> "Enjoy the fruit of the tree because that is what they're there for. Just be careful when using fruitwood trees from orchard based woods to cook your food."</em>

Dr. Smoke- “Enjoy the fruit of the tree because that is what they’re there for. Just be careful when using fruitwood trees from orchard based woods to cook your food.”

Wild cherry Wood smoking traits discussed!

Wild cherry Wood smoking traits discussed!

Wild cherry Wood smoking traits discussed! Click To Tweet 

 What can I tell people about smoking food with wild cherry wood when they have been told there is arsenic in wild cherry wood?  They want to know if it is safe.  Also, what about the issue of cyanogenic compounds?  Is this a concern, and if so, I assume it is a non-issue if the wood is aged a period of time?

Thank you for educating me about the SAFETY of using wild cherry wood for smoking food. 

Elizabeth Andress

Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D.
Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist
Department of Foods and Nutrition
The University of Georgia

Our Response to The Wild Cherry Wood Question:

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"You are what you eatII" saying is more true today than it was years ago!

“You are what you eat” is a saying that is truer today than it was years ago!

‘YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT’ APPLIES TO WOOD COOKING

Summary of You Are What you Eat

Healthy eating recipes, eat smart with Bark free cooking wood, cooking wood as a food ingredient is a clean eating basic. Responsibly sourced wood and only using heartwood Hardwoods avoids what woods are toxic to humans. Please remember you are what you eat when it comes to smoke flavor in food and your sourced wood.

We’ve all heard it, likely from our mothers.  You are what you eat.  If you truly understand the meaning of the statement, you know that we extract necessary nutrients from the foods we ingest to energize and stabilize our bodies.  The nutritional content of what we eat determines the composition of our cell membranes, bone marrow, blood, and hormones.  Every day we lose cells which is why the foods we consume are so vital to our body’s health.

Like Any Other Food Choice

If you’ve been a follower of my writings then you are aware of the stress I put on recognizing the wood used to cook foods is just as important an ingredient as the cut of meat, choice of spices, quality of oil, etc.  There has been a lot of focus on the origin of food and how important it is to source locally both as a means of supporting local business and to control what you’re putting in your body.  From our perspective, you want to know that the wood used for cooking is sourced close to the growing area.   This ensures that there is knowledge about how the wood is processed before it gets to you and it assures the freshest product.

Minimal Processing

Just as with the clean food concept which focuses on minimally processed foods and as direct from nature as possible, SmokinLicious® holds to the same approach.  Sourcing wood from forest regions (direct from nature) that are in close proximity to our manufacturing facility, provides us with the unique advantage to process into the various cooking products the hardwoods harvested that meet our strict criteria: 100% bark-free (we don’t allow any bark-on product to cross our threshold), 100% heartwood (no outer cores of the tree cross our threshold), harvested hardwood that is less than 6 months of age (ensures this is still a “green” product), chemical-free (no pesticide or growth enhancement techniques employed), and in raw state to allow us to process it into a suitable cooking wood size.

The Risks

If you love foods that are cooked with wood, then you should know a few specifics to keep you on the path to health and long life.

Hardwoods only!

  • Softwoods or coniferous woods should never be used for cooking as they have elevated sap levels and more air in their cell structure. This causes them to burn fast, produce lots of sparks, and unpleasant flavors that are not ideal for flavoring foods. These include pine, redwood, cedar, fir, spruce, hemlock, larch, cypress.

Toxicity Risks:

  • There are many known toxicities in certain species of wood with softwoods containing the highest risk. Other woods have the potential to cause sickness and in some cases death if a person’s system is already compromised. Most of the risks are associated with the cooking process rather than the ingestion of the actual wood-fired food. But know that if a balance of the wood-tar creosote is not found, then the ingestible risks of the food heighten.  One of the best means of obtaining a balance is by starting with hardwoods that are considered safe for cooking, are clean, are bark-free, and derive from the inner cores rather than outer of the wood, where more impurities lurk.

Cooking Technique Influence Risk:

  • At some point, I’m sure you’ve read about heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are the chemicals that form when meats, poultry, and fish are cooked using higher temperature methods like grilling. Why does this pose a health risk?  Because these chemicals cause changes in DNA and when you change DNA and they are metabolized by specific enzymes in the body, you can increase the risk of cancer associated with these compounds.  There is no definitive link between HCA and PAH exposure from cooked meats and cancer in humans.  There is no way to differentiate between other exposures to the chemicals from the food exposure.

HCAs are found to only be associated with meat cooked at high temperatures. While PAHs can be found in other smoked foods.  Remember, PAHs are also in cigarette smoke and fumes from car exhaust.  A recommendation is to remove any charred portions of meat, continuously turning meat over the high heat source, and avoiding direct exposure of meat to the open flame to reduce exposure.  Here’s a tip that can also reduce the risk of forming HCAs – marinate your foods for at least 10 minutes.

Purchase products:

Wood Chips: Grande Sapore®, Minuto®, Piccolo®

Wood Chunks: Double & Single Filet

More Related reading on this subject

More Related reading on this subject

Additional reading:

-Food & Smokehouse Processing Double Standard?

-TO BARK OR NOT

-COOKING WITH WOOD YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT YOUR SAFETY

-HOT TREND MAY NOT BE THE SAFEST BET

Dr Smoke-As we promote a healthy diet enjoying different foods please remember "you are what you eat" !

Dr. Smoke- As we promote a healthy diet enjoying different foods please remember “you are what you eatII” !

In Smokinlicious customers’ houses, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung and filled with charwood with visions of great barbecue to come.

In Smokinlicious® customers’ houses, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stocking was hung and filled with charwood with visions of great barbecue to come.

When it comes to Santa’s ‘Nice & Naughty List,’ Dr. Smoke of SmokinLicious® has this explanation for those that cook with wood- “If you’re fortunate to get Charwood® in your Christmas stocking, it’s a great cooking wood product and shouldn’t be confused with the message being sent by a stocking filled with coal!”

Why?

Whether you prefer a wood-fired oven, grill, or smoker, efficiency should be the key consideration. Higher quality materials, insulation, heat retention, and radiant heat, result in more efficient function of the appliance. Likely the most important consideration though, is the type of fuel you plan to use in the appliance. That is where efficiency takes on a whole new meaning.

So why do we call our product Charwood? In short, because our product is not standard charcoal. Our method of production is based on the Japanese direct method which removes pyroligneous acid during the charcoal making process. The difference is, when burning, there are almost no stimulating smells or smoke. We produce our Charwood in small batches, carbonizing at temperatures between 400 and 700 degrees Celsius. The Charwood is then smothered using a non-chemical procedure to cool it down. Plus, we produce a wood specific charwood for those that understand that every component used in wood-fired grilling, smoking, and cooking affects the outcome of overall taste in the food. As with ALL our products, we manufacture our Charwood with premium, heartwood that is 100% bark-free, not from recycled or waste wood by-products.

Happy Holidays from all of us at SmokinLicious®!!

Dr Smoke- "You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, if Santa puts charwood in your stocking."

Dr Smoke- “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, if Santa puts charwood in your stocking.”

Charwood is perfect on the wood charcoal grill

Especially produced for your wood charcoal grill use!

CHARWOOD For your wood charcoal Grill

As a brief introduction to Charwood, we like to begin with this statement- Whether you prefer a wood charcoal grill, oven, or smoker, efficiency should be the key consideration. Higher quality materials, insulation, heat retention, and radiant heat, resulting in a more efficient function of the appliance. Likely the most important consideration though is the type of fuel you plan to use in the appliance. That is where efficiency takes on a whole new meaning.

Cooking on an appliance with thin metal walls and without appropriate insulation means valuable heat is lost to the air. In the long run, that means more expense to you as you will have to keep adding fuel during the course of the cooking process. Cookers with well insulated heavy metal, brick, clay, or ceramic housing retain the radiant heat which results in the better cooking outcome and less fuel cost.

So why do we call our product Charwood? In short, because our product is not standard charcoal. Our method of production is based on the Japanese direct method which removes pyroligneous acid during the charcoal making process. The difference is, when burning, there are almost no stimulating smells or smoke. We produce our Charwood in small batches, carbonizing at temperatures between 400 and 700 degrees Celsius. The Charwood is then smothered using a non-chemical procedure to cool it down. Plus, we produce a wood specific charwood for those that understand that every component used in wood charcoal grill cooking, smoking, and cooking affects the outcome of overall taste in the food. As with ALL our products, we manufacture our Charwood with premium, heartwood that is 100% bark-free, not from recycled or waste wood by-products.


Charwood Shopping Cart

1 Box of CharWood

$35.82 USD
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Try our Direct Fired Charwood
Produce from 100% hardwood
blocks for Perfect Flavor




TESTIMONIALS

  • “Outstanding, as always from you guys! To be honest, we ventured from the products in search of something cheaper and more easily accessible. Big mistake on our part!!! We are back to your product, for good!” Don W. – Virginia!
  • Dr. Smoke: I called your Smoke Line a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving for some advice on which wood to try this year with an 8 lb Turkey breast and for some general tips for the gas grill smoking. You recommended using Sugar Maple Wood Chips and provided some great tips for a novice smoker (cook times, amount of chips needed, when to stop adding chips, etc.). With a little sage butter under the skin, some Sugar Maple Wood Chips, and about 2 hours at 350 degrees, we had the most flavorful and juicy Thanksgiving turkey ever. While we weren’t smoking in the traditional way, the results were nonetheless fantastic! Even non-turkey eaters were loving it. Thanks again for the advice!” Mike T.White Plains, NY
  • Just thought I would drop you a note to let you know how HAPPY I am with your products. My family and friends look forward to whatever I will be cooking with tongues hanging and drool running down their chins. I have been using the wild cherry on chicken and pork, the sugar maple on pork, the red oak on lamb and beef, and the alder wood on salmon, tilapia, cod, etc. I have been cooking Texas-style barbeque and the results are FANTASTIC”!Tony O.”
  • I had ordered 1 cubic foot of your wood and I just wanted to say that it was perfect. All the information on moisture really helped. The chunks were the right size and added an awesome flavor to my food. My 2-year-old nephew loved the way his first steak tasted over the wood! I cannot wait to order more from you in the future. Thanks, H. C.”
  • The quality of the wood from SmokinLicious® is beyond my expectations, but their customer service is even better. Their rep Donna went above & beyond to make sure my order was sent promptly & correctly. Very professional. You have a customer for life. Thank you, Alex, – Orlando, FL”
  • I wanted to let you know that we received our wood on Saturday (just as I had hoped) and I used some Hickory yesterday for ribs and chicken and the wood was wonderful! just like our first order. We love it! Thank you! Clayton H.
    Nashville, TN

Please visit our Products Page for a complete list of our items, and visit our various national sites below:

 

 

Click to be linked to our CA siteClick to be linked to our US siteClick to be linked to our UK site to learn more about wood charcoal grill or grilling

 

 

 

Clicked to be linked to our NZ site to learn more about wood charcoal grill or grilling Click to be linked to our ZA site to learn more about wood charcoal grill or grilling Click to be linked to our AU site

Smokinlicious® Grande Sapore-larger wood chips for smoking are crushed to preserve the great moisture level to be released during the cooking process.

Smokinlicious® Grande Sapore-larger wood chips for smoking are crushed to preserve the great moisture level to be released during the cooking process.

Our culinary quality Grande Sapore-larger smoker chips have many uses: LP/Gas grills, kettle grills, charcoal grills, smoking tubes/pipes, smoking boxes, traditional smokers, stove top smoker pans, and even the homemade aluminum foil pouch. Keep in mind that some electric and gas smokers are designed to only handle wood chips for smoking.

WE KNOW COOKING WOOD CHIPS! That’s why we are the only cooking wood manufacturer to produce 3 distinct categories of culinary quality wood chips for smoking: Grande Sapore®, Minuto®, and Piccolo®.

Our wood chips are sawdust/wood flour free, bark-free, and produced from heartwood – the more stable portion of the tree. Plus, we offer 8 hardwood species:

  • Alder
  • Ash
  • Beech
  • Hickory
  • Red Oak
  • Sugar Maple
  • White oak
  • Wild Cherry

The key to adding flavor to meats, poultry, fish even fruits and vegetables, is to use quality hardwoods. At SmokinLicious®, we only provide the heartwood of hardwoods, meaning our products are always free of resin, spores, and bark. Plus, we use woods that are ideal for wood-fired cooking methods to balance the overall flavor infusion. Be sure to follow us on social media to gain access to our vast wood fired techniques and recipes!

To specify your wood selections for a MIXTURE, please type the woods in the Wood Selections box in the shopping cart area!

Go to Match your Cooker for suggestions on products for your cooker!

FedEx Ground Shipping is Included in our Pricing (Average shipping time is 2-5 days).Grande Sapore-larger wood chips for smoking being applied to the grill


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Grande Sapore® Wood Chips

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Perfect for You to Sample
4 Unique Species
in Wood Chip Smoking





Grande Sapore® Boxes Shopping Cart

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Either Box has Enough
Wood Chips for A Lot of
of Smoking!




 

A recent testimonial from Bill, “Friends and family have “gone nuts” over the smell- and taste of some of my creations. I started using a smoke box in my gas grill and man, what a difference. My motto is “Wood“, its not just for the smoker anymore!”

Bon Bar-B-Q from Smokinlicious®

Please visit our Products Page for a complete listing of other superb Smokinlicious® products for all your grilling, Smoking and ember cooking needs.

Visit our various national sites below:

 

 

Click to be linked to our CA site for wood chips for smoking Click to be linked to our US site for wood chips for smoking Click to be linked to our UK site

 

 

 

Clicked to be linked to our NZ siteClick to be linked to our ZA siteClick to be linked to our AU site