The Texas BBQ Forum

After today's smoke I was doing some critical thinking about my cooking routine. I have always put my wood chips in tinfoil and chunked them on the coals. Smoke is always thick and white. Just learned from the forum that that smoke is bad. Dad and Grandpa never smoked meat so I didn't know it was bad. I used ole rusty like always. How can I fix my smoke problem.

Imho I wouldn't put them in foil.
I would just lay a few good sized chunks on the coals, and I would ( not ) soak them in water first.

Again, this is just what works for me and jmo

woodenvisions wrote:Imho I wouldn't put them in foil.
I would just lay a few good sized chunks on the coals, and I would ( not ) soak them in water first.

Again, this is just what works for me and jmo

I agree with this


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that makes three of us and I put mine in right at the beginning

Instead of using wood chunks I like to use small splits. When I'm cooking on my UDS or my other charcoal smoker I'll cut my wood in 6" long pieces. Then split those sticks to where they are only about the diameter of hot dog. For me this size tends to burn cleaner and provide a clean blue smoke.

To those of you that put yours on at the beginning, do you get thick white smoke or is that just me? The chicken I cooked was good but it had a bitter smoke taste to it. I just need to experiment more with big chunks.

the smoke is always white from my ECB - - - the bitterness could be the wood wasn't cured or possibly beginning to decay some??????????????????????????????

Whether using chunks or chips, I mix them in with the lump and don't soak. Wait for the "bad" smoke to clear before loading.

OldUsedParts wrote:the smoke is always white from my ECB - - - the bitterness could be the wood wasn't cured or possibly beginning to decay some??????????????????????????????

OUP I had an ECB once (left it behind when I moved). Back then I was using wood chips and not chunks or splits. I noticed when I would put too many chips at one time it would produce a thick white smoke. I've also found my UDS will produce a continous white smoke if my wood chunks are too big or I have too many wood chunks in the basket. Uncured wood will produce white smoke too.

Justin like EH said there will almost always be white smoke at first. Give it about 20 minutes and the white smoke should clear to a thin blue smoke. If it doesn't your wood chunks are either not cured or are too big (or you have too many of them in at one time).

thanks, Gents, don't know if I had forgotten that or if I just learned something new

When I use chunks on my kettle I use them from the beginning.
I start the coal and put the wood on it then.
Then I wait for a while before I put the meat on.

It thakes a while before the coals and the wood is working

Chips -- Bad, deficient, imperfect, defective, faulty, shoddy, amateurish, careless, negligent, miserable, sorry.

Chunks/Small Splits -- Good, fine, very well, all right, right, all right then, yes, agreed, OK, okey-dokey

Got a great "Chippy" comment to make but I think I'll pass

So y'all think that either the wood chips at wally world lack in quality, I'm using to many chips, or I need to wait a little while before I put the meat on. But you all say to skip the tin foil. So till I run out of chips I will skip the tinfoil and put the chips on and wait a little while. Thank you all.