Top 5 Woods for Barbecuing

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder today i'm going to give you another top five list this time we're talking about the top five woods to use for barbecue now before we jump into the list do not forget to like the video subscribe to the channel and turn the notification bell on if you want to get updated every time we put out new videos and fun barbecue content you can also follow me on twitter and instagram at mad scientist barbecue now let's start talking about some wood now with wood there are a lot of different opinions so you look at lists online i remember when i was first getting started in barbecue some lists would say that oak is mild and some would say it's very strong and it's just really hard to pin down great information on what wood you should use for what purpose so if you go to the store you'll find a bag of wood that's at the barbecue store that is that says oh this is good for chicken and pork but not beef or this one's good for beef and pork but not chicken or fish so it's hard to know exactly how to interpret that information so i'm going to break down my experience with wood and hopefully this list gives you some insight into what woods you should use for what purpose now before i give you the top five i want to lay this piece of information down at least from my experience there's only one exception to this world but we'll get there in the video more important than the kind of wood you're using is the kind of fire that you're burning so you can get great flavor if you're burning a clean healthy oxygen rich fire but if your fire management isn't really on point you can have bad flavor no matter what kind of wood and in my experience you can have great flavor no matter what kind of wood you're using as long as you're burning a great fire before we get to number five i want to take a chance to thank today's sponsor skillshare if you don't know what skillshare is skillshare is an online learning community where they have hundreds and hundreds of classes to choose from and i'm taking one right now called iphone filmmaking with caleb babcock and niles gray and i'm going to put that knowledge to use by the time you're watching this video because if you're watching this video on the day it's released or in the week after i will be in the mountains in colorado practicing my iphone filmmaking because i'm going on a hunt for elk and i'll be trying to film the elk i'll try to film the other guys who are on the trip with me and try to capture those moments that are going to really define and make the trip something enjoyable and something that i'll cherish for a long time so that class is incredibly valuable to me now if you want to try out their classes the first thousand of my subscribers who click on the link in the description will get a free trial of skillshare premium so you'll have full access to everything you need and you can learn so so so much that sounds like a good idea to you go ahead and click that link in the description so if you love to learn skillshare is a great place to do that and for less than ten dollars a month you have access to so much information that is really hard to come by in everyday life so click on the link in description check it out all right number five cherry now cherry is a wood that i don't use very often i use it sometimes for specific purposes now there's nothing wrong with the flavor you get from cherry but the thing that's special about cherry wood is that it does provide good flavor but it provides amazing color more so than any other kind of wood that i've ever used so if you're trying to make the perfect deep deep red color on the outside of ribs cherry is the go-to wood for that purpose so when i use cherry i always use it with another wood because i want the other wood to be predominantly for flavor and the cherry to be predominantly for color so if you want your barbecue to look as good as it tastes if you want the appearance and its presentation to be phenomenal having cherry as a tool in your arsenal is going to be tremendously helpful especially for things that don't cook very long so things like ribs or chicken cherry is phenomenal at providing great color number four mesquite so i love mesquite for certain purposes when i grill so i have a pk grill right there it's off camera what i love to do is take mesquite burn it down to coals in the pk grill and then use that to grill burgers or grill steaks because mesquite provides a ton of flavor more flavor you know per chunk in mesquite than any of the other woods on this list so that means that you have to deal with it in moderation at least in my opinion some people say that they'll smoke a brisket for 16 hours using only mesquite i found that to be a flavor that's too strong it just it's too pungent kind of i don't really like it i prefer other woods but for grilling or for direct cooking over coals mesquite is unmatched for its ability to impart flavor in a very short period of time so if you can find mesquite in your area have some of it on hand anytime you really want to you know light up your taste buds when you're grilling number three hickory hickory is very popular for barbecue and for good reason now i believe hickory's in the same family as pecan and their flavors are somewhat similar but definitely distinct so hickory to me is a little bit stronger than pecan it has less of a sweet flavor but what it does provide you with is very direct straightforward smoke flavor so it's not a very subtle wood in my experience there are some woods that are very subtle so if you used apple the smoke flavor is very subtle with that but hickory very direct but it's not overpowering it's not too potent like mesquite but if you have hickory in your area and a lot of these choices are going to be dependent on what you can find where you live in california my options were extremely limited so i had to use what i could find so hickory if you can find it is a great wood and also if you ever want to use wood to do a whole hog hickory is the way to go so in the carolinas people use hickory all the time they'll build a fire let it burn down the coals and use the coals to cook the pig so the reason that it's important that you have a flavorful wood a flavor forward wood when you're doing that is because you're not getting the full amount of smoke that you would by burning a fire in an offset smoke or something like that so you need a wood that provides flavor up front and kind of hits you in the mouth with flavor so that when you're done cooking this whole hog there's still plenty of smoke flavor on that thing so hickory is number three on my list number two and i think this might get me the most hate but number two is oak now there are a bunch of different kinds of oak white oak red oak post oak fill in the blank oak to me i think that they're not all identical but they're very similar so some people will say that oak has a very mild flavor some people will say it has a very strong flavor in my experience oak has a mild moderate flavor so it's never overpowering if you're burning a clean fire but it's definitely there you're never searching for smoke flavor if you're using oak now people always want to you know imitate aaron franklin and they want post oak really if you have white oak post oak is a kind of white oak but if you have white oak you got basically the same kind of thing and so you can make you know traditional texas style barbecue using oak and you don't have to have post oak that's grown in central texas you can make delicious stuff no matter where you are now for the other kinds of oak like red oak i haven't really noticed that much of a flavor difference really at all it's maybe minut flavor differences but it could just be i'm imagining it because i'm looking for something different in the flavor but one thing i will say that does happen is that certain kinds of oak will burn hotter than other kinds so for me in california the white oak that i was getting definitely burned hotter than the red oak that i was getting even at the same moisture content so there are going to be some differences there but in terms of flavor not a huge difference in terms of heating value white oak i think tends to be a little bit better than other varieties now before we get to number one i want to say one thing whenever you go and buy wood in those little packages at a barbecue store and it gives you a list of it can be used for these meats and not for these meats i would say ignore it if you're burning a good fire you can use any of the regular smoking woods except for probably mesquite on anything you want to barbecue so i've used oak to make fish to make chicken to make pork to make beef to make all kinds of stuff i think i even did a duck with it i mean and it's never been off-putting in terms of its smoke flavor so you burn a clean fire use whatever kind of wood you want whatever's in your area that's a good hardwood for barbecue it'll work fine now let's talk about number one which has always been my favorite barbecue wood and that is pecan so for me if i'm talking about the flavor differences between oak and pecan it's not huge there are subtle differences so pecan to me tastes a little bit sweeter the smoke flavor tastes kind of more rounded out like it kind of hits a few more notes but it's not you know night and day different so if you gave me something smoked with pecan and something smoked with oak and you said which one is which i would probably get it right but i might get it wrong so it's not a huge difference i love pecan because i always get great color with pecan i always get great flavor and i get a lot of heating value so i think the sweetness combined with all the other things that make pecan great in terms of color and flavor set it apart as my favorite barbecue would because it does everything i want my barbecue wood to do and more important than any of the other factors is that it produces consistent flavor and great flavor exactly what i have in my head as to the smoke flavor that i want now with that being said i have a bunch of wood behind me right here and i need to go start a fire if you guys can still see me thanks for sticking around if you enjoyed the video and you want to see more lists or you have more questions that you want me to answer in this form leave it in the comments below and i'll try to get to it i hope that these have been helpful to you if they have like the video down below subscribe to the channel turn notifications on and then follow me on instagram at mad scientist barbecue i hope you enjoyed it i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 175,610

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Id: e_ihPPARY9A

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020