Gourmet Cooking Wood: Your Choices And How To Use Them

Using gourmet cooking wood is an excellent way to cook your food because this helps you capture the natural essence of wood adding flavors to pork, beef and fish.

Gourmet cooking wood produces flavorful smokes that can be infused into the food while grilling. The most popular woods used are Oakwood, Western Red Cedar, Hickory and Mesquite.

Below is some gourmet cooking wood that you can use for roasting, grilling and baking:

• Oakwood – This plank is perfect for different types of barbecues. Some people consider this wood as the only wood needed for barbecuing.

• Alder – This gourmet cooking wood is perfect for fish. Its gentle and mild flavor is suited for smoking a salmon.

• Apple – This gourmet cooking wood produces savory flavored smokes perfect for roasting chicken. Most people will only go for this apple wood after having tried it once.  You can marinate the chicken in apple juice with olive oil and garlic and then roast it. This will provide your chicken tender flavor.

• Hickory And Pecan Woods – These woods are perfect for pork, ham, fowls and briskets.

• Mesquite – This firewood is best for grilling hamburgers, steaks and chicken breasts. This gourmet cooking wood burns really good and produces plenty of fumes that can add flavor to your food.

• Cedar Planks – Perfect for grilling different kinds of fishes. You just have to place the planks on top of coals. For best results, the wood should be covered in olive oil or water overnight. Afterwards, you can add your very own special seasoning.

There are two kinds of gourmet cooking wood that you can use and they are the heavy-duty plank and the lighter-weight planks. The heavy-duty plank is perfect for repeated oven use while lighter-weight planks are best for grilling.

To obtain that flavorful smoke, the gourmet cooking wood should be soaked in water for at least 2 hours. Afterwards, preheat your grill on high fire and once it is hot, brush the planks with olive oil.

Burn the planks until smoke appears. You can control the smoke by using a small squirt bottle to extinguish the flames. Also, you should also flip the planks to balance the heat.

Once ready, put the food on top of the plank and then cover the grill to retain the aromatic smoke.

Cooking over wood is an ancient cooking method that is proven to make meats tender and moist. Nowadays, this cooking method has become one of the most famous ways of gourmet cooking.

Plank-cooked meals are way beyond description and one must experience it to get a better understanding.