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Mesquite Wood Chips for Smoking

A

aeiou

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I love to barbecue and especially love to barbecue with smoking wood chips. I find that chicken barbecued with Mesquite Wood Chips is the the best. I have heard that Apple Wood Chips are great to use for chicken as well. Does anyone have experience using Apple Wood Chips?
 
Hi aeiou!
I've never used apple wood chips, nor have I ever seen them in stores. Do you make them yourself? We usually just make our own hickory chips by chopping up fresh hickory limbs and use them to smoke with. It's easy that way as there ain't no need to soak the wood chips. The limbs are green so are already wet naturally. It works great.

Rob
 
Apple Wood Chips for Smoking

Hello Rob,

You can get apple wood chips or pieces from any orchard that has apple trees. They have to regularly prune the trees and normally just discard the purned limbs. You can ask them to have some of the purned limbs. If they are still green you can use them like the hickory you described. The apple wood really adds a sweet smoked flavor to whatever you are barbecuing.
 
Apple wood

Hard to find orchards these days unless you live in the country. I wonder when they prune the trees, spring or fall? Knowing the right time or year would make a country tip more useful for a Balmerite.

Here's a place that focuses on woods for barbecuing. Looks like they sell apple wood for campfires and chimineas too. They have a lot of other woods too, including apricot. That sounds sweet :)
 
Thanks Oldbay for listing the website where you can purchase the apple wood. They offer the applie wood in bisquettes as well as wood cooking planks. I will definitely have to purchase some of both. The apricot also sounds like a great sweet and mild smoking flavor, will have to check it out.
Orchards usually prune their apple trees in the late winter early spring and are usually more than willing to give you the pruned limbs.
 
We have a home made solution to apple wood chips. There is an apple tree in our backyard and there was a previous one that had been cut down before we moved in. We take an old aluminum can, fill it with water and put the wood in it to soak for a while. Then we place the soaked pieces on the shelf inside the lid of our grill. It's a nice change of pace every once in a while from just "plain" grilled food.
 
I love to do that too ... except we use hickory wood. We also like to use the green limbs that are low enough to stick us in the eye, then we don't need to soak them. Apple trees grow more upright so that's not an option, although if I had one I could see me thinking a limp was low enough to be trimmed :)
 
We have a few peach trees in our yard, too. I have to admit, I'm curious now how that would shape the flavor. I'm betting it would be sweet, and chicken seems to lend itself more to sweet flavors. Hmm, maybe I'll have to try that next time we grill chicken. : )
 
I'd bet any fruit tree would taste good as a smoke flavor for chicken, or turkey. That site listed by Old Bay sells apricot wood. Might find myself with some of that soon. We love fresh apricots yet many people don't know such a thing exists. I suppose they think they grow dried. Once we tried growing apricots with a winter hardy variety that wasn't quiet winter hardy. Should have kept the wood and got something out of the deal.
 
Every December and January I prune my fruit trees. After pruning, I use a bandsaw to cut the limbs in to about 1/2" disks. I let them dry (season), and when I begin to BBQ or smoke in the spring, I soak them in water for a few hours. I add the soaked fruit disks just before I place my meat on the grill or smoker. These disks will give the meat a wonderful flavor!!
 
Be sure to strip the bark off the limbs because they will leave a real bitter taste! I found this out when using pecan. Apple has a great flavor, though much less strong than Mesquite!
 
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