Amount Of Wood You Use


 
J

JP Fields

New member
About a month ago I bought my first WSM 22.5" smoker and I absolutely love it. I have a number of very successful cooks (or at least my friends think it was terrific) under my belt but I have a question. When reading through the posts I see many folks talking about only using 3 or 4 chunks of wood during a cook. This seems like a small amount to me. I seem to be adding wood many times during the cook before I wrap the Butts. Am I just wasting wood? How much do most of you use when cooking Boston Butts?

Here's a quick pic from this morning before I put the next batch on.

 
Wow, that's a lot of butt :)

A lot of people say that the meat can only absorb so much smoke flavor and that is usually during the first couple of hours. Whether this is true or not I don't know, but you have to play around with it and find what works for you and your tastes.

The theory is that you want a thin blue line of smoke. If you bury chunks of wood in your coals you will continue to get light smoke through most of your cook. Sometimes I throw more on top because that thin blue line just doesn't seem to be enough.

Everyone's taste varies
 
How much smoke is a personal preference. I cook for my family and friends - you should find your people's preference and cook to their liking.

We are a "less is more" group when it comes to smoke wood. I use it like a very strong spice - sparingly - in order to avoid what we dubbed " the ashtray effect". I usually use one to three pieces over the entire cook (I don't wrap a butt) - one piece at a time added thru the access door - to get a very thin ribbon of blue smoke over the first 3 or 4 hours of the cook.
 
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