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Guest
Guest
Here's a topic you folks might find interesting. When I was a kid growing up in South Florida, I remember my uncle started to dabble with smoke cooking. He mostly did fish and cheese. (He had a bullet smoker; who knows, might have been a Weber!) My memories are fuzzy, but I do remember him saying that used two types of wood: hickory and mangrove. He would buy it in bags from a store.
Today I was thinking that I might smoke a Cuban-style pork butt soon, and I thought, what wood could be more appropriate than a tropical tree like mangrove? So I started searching the web for mangrove wood. I couldn't find anything about mangrove being used for barbecue, except that it's used for fish preservation by some native cultures. (My searches about dogwood smoking ended up kinda the same way.)
I also found sites saying that mangrove forests are endangered, much like rainforests, and efforts are underway to save the mangroves. Some British websites claimed that cheaper foreign charcoal shouldn't be used because much of it comes from mangrove forests, sold by Southeast Asian companies with questionable ecological practices.
All this was quite surprising to me. Were my memories from a time when people weren't so concerned about the environment? Is mangrove wood even sold anymore? Are there reputable mangrove farms in Florida?
--Mick
P.S. In my searches I found a design for a fish smokehouse:
MAP Smokehouse
It comes from a website about saving the mangrove forests. I have no idea why they would publish a smokehouse design. Maybe chopping down one or two trees is not so bad? /infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif
Today I was thinking that I might smoke a Cuban-style pork butt soon, and I thought, what wood could be more appropriate than a tropical tree like mangrove? So I started searching the web for mangrove wood. I couldn't find anything about mangrove being used for barbecue, except that it's used for fish preservation by some native cultures. (My searches about dogwood smoking ended up kinda the same way.)
I also found sites saying that mangrove forests are endangered, much like rainforests, and efforts are underway to save the mangroves. Some British websites claimed that cheaper foreign charcoal shouldn't be used because much of it comes from mangrove forests, sold by Southeast Asian companies with questionable ecological practices.
All this was quite surprising to me. Were my memories from a time when people weren't so concerned about the environment? Is mangrove wood even sold anymore? Are there reputable mangrove farms in Florida?
--Mick
P.S. In my searches I found a design for a fish smokehouse:
MAP Smokehouse
It comes from a website about saving the mangrove forests. I have no idea why they would publish a smokehouse design. Maybe chopping down one or two trees is not so bad? /infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif