Add Wood Chips to Your Barbecue for More Grilling Flavor

Summer holidays are a great time for family and friends to get together and enjoy fun, friendship and some great food while celebrating the beginning of summer grilling season. One way to add additional flavor to your barbecue grilling is to add wood chips.

Now not everyone has a smoker grill, but you don't need to have a smoker to enjoy real smoked flavor. And I'm not talking about the fake stuff that comes out of a bottle. When I say smoked flavor, I mean the flavor that comes from using real wood chips and cooking outside.

Wood chips can be added to either charcoal or gas grills. Some grills come with smoker boxes built right into the grill. If you have a smoker box, read the directions that came with your grill. But even if your grill doesn't have the smoker box built in, you still can cook and have real smoked flavor from your barbecue . You'll need a 2 quart metal pan to use for holding the wood chips.

The most important thing to remember when using wood chips is you want smoke from the wood chips, not flames. If the wood chips burn, you will end up with charred smoky meat, not a smoky taste. My son says burning chips makes the meat taste like the meat fell in the dirt with the chips.

One way to avoid the chances of your chips catching fire is to pre-soak the chips. You will want to soak the chips in water prior to use especially if your grill doesn't have a built in smoker box. You will want the chips to be damp, not soggy. Soggy chips won't smoke until they dry out. So plan on soaking the chips for about 15 minutes before using them. This way the chips will be just wet enough to smoke without catching fire.

You can find a wood chip to suit every meat or fish dish you might think of serving. But remember much of smoked flavor is personal taste. Lighter meats such as fish or chicken generally are smoked with a mild flavored wood chip such as alder, or maple wood chips. If you want a bolder flavor for your chicken then try mesquite chips.

For pork and vegetables, our family favors apple, peach and hickory. You can always start with a few chips and add more to get a more intense flavor. With the mild year round weather in Texas we grill year round, so I always keep a variety of flavored wood chips on hand. That way if there's a sale on a particular type of meat, we're always ready to grill. I just keep the chips in their original containers in my kitchen cupboard. Here's a great resource chart to use for your grilling with wood chips

Using wood chips for smoking is not a substitute for old meat. You want freshly prepared meat that is well cut and ready to grill. Just because you smoke a piece of meat, doesn't mean you can give flavor to a piece of meat that doesn't have any flavor to start with.

You can vary the taste of your meat by adding rubs which are dry seasonings rubbed on the meat prior to grilling or by marinating the meat prior to grilling. Marinades are great when you have a large group coming for a barbecue. You can pick up some inexpensive pieces of meat, soak them in marinade and have some fork tender meat after grilling. Here are some ideas for mixing together some marinades.

Combining wood chips with rubs and marinades can make your Memorial Day grilling a delicious experience.