Smoking Wood Chips

Precious little smells or tastes as luscious as grilled meat. Health gurus’ and cardiologists’ admonitions notwithstanding, we have sizzled beef, poultry, pork and lamb for 40 years.
First we charcoaled broiled chuck steaks squatting over this little Hibachi grill no more than a few inches tall in the driveway of our Bronx apartment downstairs from the Golds. Moving on to Chicago, we installed a taller and somewhat bigger grill on the cement-covered back yard of our brownstone and challenged our guests (and some of us) on the rawest, thickest sirloin steaks we could prepare. Through the 1970s it was always charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid, careful to store it away from flammable harm and to limit the smell of gasoline on the food. Our home in Houston came with an installed gas grill in the gangway between the house and the garage and we became “liberated” from the restrictions of weather on our menu planning. We grilled everything outside rain or shine; in fact, for a number of years the kitchen oven did not work but we did not miss it and did not bother to repair it until the kitchen remodeling in the late 1980s. At first the gas grill produced a hot and steady fire but over the years, and despite buying a new grill, we started to feel that the flame was not hot enough for the lean, fast cooking cuts and that the taste was tamer than what one could get in a real steakhouse. Truth is, we gradually forgot what a strip steak should taste like and got used to the acceptable gas version so handy and convenient just outside the door.
Then we ventured to our second home in the Adirondacks. The cabin came with a Weber grill left in the garage by the Scotts, with a wide open outdoors so inviting for early evening preparations and with plenty of time to sit around, ventilate the lighter fluid and watch over the fire as it got ready for the food. Of course, the weather did not always cooperate; we have pictures of Joe standing over the Weber with a large umbrella in the rain tending over the fire, braving against the elements all in the name of a good proper meal. Then we visited Jerry and Kass in their Lexington home and learned about charcoal chimneys. A chimney is a metal cylinder with an inverted wire funnel at the bottom. It requires 3 double newspaper sheets stuffed under the funnel, a supply of charcoal over the top of the cylinder and a lighter to ignite the paper. The fire goes up through the charcoal which turns to red hot embers within 20 minutes; no need for lighter fluid, no variation in the technique or timetable. A rare “aha” realization and technology that changed our grilling habits forever. We bought our first chimney at Bering’s and shipped it to Tupper Lake but quickly chimneys became available everywhere including the local Fortune’s hardware store. We failed to obtain a fire only once when we bought generic charcoal from the Save-a-Lot store and learned our lesson.
Still, we continued to gas grill in Houston for the convenience of predictable, weather and hassle-free dinner at the end of a long day at work. After a few sessions with the Weber at the lake, however, and with our daily routine a bit relaxed once the kids grew up and life became a bit simpler, we realized that there was no longer need to miss out on the superior flavor of a charcoal-fired grill. We bought a classic, black, round Weber grill and added it to our cooking armamentarium. Since then, we have charcoal grilled everything at the lake and reserved it for beef in Houston. We still use the gas grill for chicken and sausage or other fatty and slower cooking foods including fish and vegetables. Then, we discovered smoking wood chips.
In truth, we discovered meat-smoking 30 years ago when we first bought a meat smoker. The process was a bit cumbersome and prolonged. We had to pull the cars back, haul the smoker out into the driveway, load it up and wait for several hours before the low-level heat could cook a reasonable size piece of meat. Plus, the embers remained hot for over a day and the clean-up was fairly messy with all the fat drippings in the water pan. It generally seemed excessive to put it all together for a casual dinner or for a small piece of food. Over time, the smoker became a signature activity earmarking holidays, parties and special celebrations. Every thanksgiving we bought a medium size turkey; Joe and Jonathan were generally in charge of this culinary activity. Around ten in the morning, they spiced the bird, (almost always some honey was involved), took out and loaded the smoker and tended to it periodically checking and adding water until 4-5 in the afternoon when the bronze, glistening bird emerged from the smoker and plopped into a large baking pan to rest for a few minutes and then get carved onto the cowboy platter, ready for transfer onto the dinner table. We also smoked a turkey or a brisket for large outdoor parties and for Xmas sometimes. One refinement to the routine was to also “gravlax” a slab of salmon on the top rack of the smoker. Unlike the usual fairly understated smell and texture of a restaurant version, this fish was dusky and strong with thick tones of smoke and oiliness; it is hard to describe it there was so much depth to our smoked salmon than anything we have tried commercially. Of course, it was something to either love or leave alone and, at least Joe and I loved it; I would have to ask the kids if they even remember what they thought of it so many years ago.
Ironically, the first time we considered having a quick, weeknight meal of smoked food happened in Galveston in our high rise apartment where grilling of any kind was impossible. In order to add some variety to the dining options, we bought a stove top smoker; we poured small aromatic wood chips on the bottom of the pan, covered them with a second metal sheet on which we placed the meat with seasoning; then the top lid slid over to seal the cooking space. After the stove was on for a few minutes a faint smoky smell wafted out from around the pan edges. As the pan heated up, the wood chip essence rose through the meat to flavor it with a delicate, subtle smoked taste. Also ironically, we almost always smoked a fillet of fish which was our staple animal protein on the island. We left the stove-top smoker for the next owners when we sold the apartment and did not do much about weeknight smoking until we somehow noticed bags of mesquite and hickory wood chips in the BBQ supermarket aisle over the bags of charcoal. This discovery, made decades later that it had to be made, once more changed our dining options and added a wonderful and lasting nuance to dinner.
It is a remarkably simple procedure: in a small bowl, we drop a handful of chips and soak them in water for an hour or so before the fire is started; when the charcoal is ready, we drain the extra water and simply drop the chips on top of the charcoal, set the grill up normally put the meat on and close the Weber lid. The aroma is phenomenal while the food is cooking filling the yard with rich, smoky air much like the old-fashioned smoker to Thanksgiving memories. The meat is also richly infused with the smoke and emerges a very different texture, color and taste from the normal grill charcoal. We have decided that this additional treatment overwhelms good quality marbled beef while it enhances the richness of chicken and transforms a thick slam of pork into an amazing experience. Smoking charcoal chips are very commonplace in Houston; most grocery stores have two or three varieties, while more specialty stores like Academy carry several types of wood chips. There are recommendations for pairing the fight wood to the appropriate meat and suggestions for variations on the theme. We quickly thought to add charcoal smoking to our dining menu at the lake. The obvious presumption was that the raw material would also be available anywhere charcoal was sold just the way we found things in Houston and no need to pack and transport bags of wood in the airplane.
Wrong again; in this era of globalization where every mall looks the same as every other mall in every other Us and even European city, there still are pockets of unexpected regional character. You cannot presume that the states recognize the superior importance of something as obvious as smoking wood chips just because they are a staple in Texas, as basic and necessary as toilet paper and Palmolive soap. And so, the final chapter of the quest that gave this essay its title began in earnest during the summer of 2009. I traveled to Boston for the annual endocrine Society meeting and in addition to spending some time with Kass and Jerry in town and at Becket, Kass and I went to lake together for part on the following week. The original plan to fly to Saranac got nixed because Kass has a strong aversion to small planes so we resolved to drive from Boston. It therefore seemed silly to pack woodchips and I deferred to buying what I needed locally… While surveying the goods in the supermarket I told Kass that I was especially interested in buying a couple of bags of smoking woodchips for the lake. She gave me a puzzled look, surprising already coming from such a charcoal-savvy lady; after all, if it were not for her household, we would have never discovered the charcoal chimney in the first place……. We made several stops wherever it seemed remotely possible that I would find wood chips. We looked in Boston proper, the suburbs, along the way while driving across the state. We even stopped at the Tail of the Pup, a self-professed smokehouse, for goodness sake and came up completely empty handed. I believe Kass got more than a little exasperated with the fruitless search by the time we got to the lake house chipless (and without simple syrup, another story altogether).
We resolved to respect the differences of the land and shipped woodchips to the lake as we were able, and packed bags of the aromatic scraps when we travelled and safely stocked the lake workshop with a nice variety and were finally able to enjoy smoked chicken and pork by the water. The following spring I returned to Boston and felt it my duty to carry a bag of hickory wood chips and introduce my friends to the pleasures of smoke grilling. Then regional individuality gave in to industrial globalization for wood chips as it has for so many other aspects of our lives. We travelled to New York for Jonathan’s medical school graduation and made our usual pilgrimage to Zabar’s on Broadway and 81st. We wondered about, marveled at the cheeses and the olives and mostly the incredibly thick crowd and narrow aisles and the feeling of New York and then walked up to the second floor to look for potato chip bag clips, a quest that had begun unsuccessfully back in Houston months earlier. Zabar’s failed us on this point as well and bag clips seemed delegated to an era past of incredibly useful common-sense inventions that somehow fickly fell out of favor like the table top crumber or the small, inexpensive camera card reader. Disappointed, we started to leave and then, right there in the middle of the floor was a bright display of Weber accessories for your grilling pleasure, including…….. yes, exactly right: several varieties of smoking wood chips in crisp colorful plastic bags. The last time we went to the lake in the summer of 2010 smoking wood chips were available for purchase at Fortune’s the local Tupper Lake hardware store. For the foreseeable future we will continue to buy things local up there and will now be able to add hickory and mesquite wood chips to our list. We still have to hand carry cherry and alder chips but that may also change in time.