Want to know the secret to grilling and smoking restaurant-quality food? No, you don’t need to invest in commercial restaurant equipment. All it takes is a conventional grill or smoker along with premium cooking wood. By combining these two simple things, you can cook restaurant-quality meats and veggies from the comfort of your home’s outdoor living area.
What Is Premium Cooking Wood?
Available for sale at Cutting Edge Firewood, firewood for cooking is wood that offers an unparalleled level of performance when used for cooking. While it can be burned for heat in a fireplace or fire pit, its primary purpose is for grilling or smoking foods.
Premium cooking wood includes specific flavorful varieties of wood, some of which include hickory, pecan, white oak and cherry. Each variety has its own unique properties, but they all provide an out-of-this-world flavor when used to grill or smoke foods. As premium cooking wood burns, it releases flavorful compounds in the form of smoke. These compounds are then absorbed into the food, thereby enhancing its flavor to create truly delicious dishes.
You’ll also notice that premium cooking wood is smaller than traditional firewood logs. Most firewood logs are about 2 feet long. In comparison, cooking wood logs are usually just 1 to 1.5 feet long. The smaller size allows them to burn more quickly, thereby releasing more flavorful smoke. In addition to logs, premium firewood is also sold as chunks. Known as smoking chunks, they consist of block-shaped pieces of flavorful wood that are ideal for smoking.
How Restaurants Use Premium Cooking Wood
Countless restaurants use premium cooking wood to create mouthwatering dishes bursting with flavor. Located in Bethlehem, GA, Lane’s BBQ is an award-winning catering company that offers smoked brisket, smoked ham, prime rib roast, sweet potato casserole and other delicious foods. If you’re a Georgia resident, you may have heard of Lane’s BBQ. But what you may not know is that Lane’s BBQ uses the same premium cook wood offered by Cutting Edge Firewood.
To cook their globally recognized smoked brisket, smoked ham and other foods, Lane’s BBQ uses Cutting Edge Firewood’s signature premium cooking wood. Considering that Lane’s BBQ is an award-winning catering company, this alone should be reason enough to use premium cooking wood with your grilling and smoking cookouts.
Why Restaurants Use Premium Cooking Wood
So, why do restaurants like Lane’s BBQ use premium cooking wood instead of traditional firewood to smoke and grill their dishes? Traditional firewood doesn’t offer the same flavor as cooking wood. Most firewood consists of ordinary hardwood trees that are easy to ignite and burn hot, whereas premium cooking wood consists of flavorful trees that burn more slowly.
Using premium cooking wood, restaurants can slow-cook their dishes without exposing them to an excessive amount of heat. Most importantly, the smoke produced by premium cooking wood is more flavorful than that of traditional firewood. Whether grilling or smoking, restaurants can use premium cooking wood to improve the flavor of their dishes.
Premium cooking wood is also all natural. Lighter fluid-soaked charcoal can leave a harsh chemical flavor on foods, but this isn’t a problem with cooking wood. Premium cooking wood contains no lighter fluid, preservatives or other synthetic chemicals. It’s 100% organic and all natural.
Preparing Your Grill or Smoker
When you’re ready to cook meats or veggies using premium cooking wood, you’ll need to prepare your grill or smoker. You don’t have to necessarily rely on premium cooking wood to fuel your fire. Rather, most chefs prefer to use charcoal for their fire and wood for added flavor. After your charcoals have turned white, you can add your premium cooking wood to your grill or smoker.
You can either place your premium cooking wood directly over your fiery-hot charcoal, or you can place it next to your charcoal. When placed directly on charcoal, cooking wood will burn more efficiently, which could result in less smoke being produced. If you place your cooking wood next to your charcoal, on the other hand, it will produce more smoke while burning slowly.
The key thing to remember when using premium cooking wood is that you should cook your food slowly and at a low heat. When smoking ribs, for example, you should aim for a temperature of about 225 degrees to 250 degrees for about four hours. As the ribs soak up the flavorful smoke, they’ll not all only taste delicious, but they’ll also be more tender. Slow-cooking ribs – as well as most other meats – breaks down the tissue to increase their tenderness. Once finished, you can literally pull apart the ribs using your fingers.
Take your culinary skills to the next level using Cutting Edge Firewood’s premium cooking wood. Whether you choose hickory, pecan, white oak or cherry, it will allow you to cook delicious, restaurant-quality food.
