Cooking with a grill can be the best experience of anyone’s lifetime. Modern inventions have made it easy for getting smoky flavors using a gas grill and smoker box only. All you need are wood chips or wood pellets. The tricky part here is to get a consistent smoke without worrying about the sharp rise or sharp decline in the smoke intensity.
The blue a thin smoke is necessary to generate a great smoky flavor in your dishes. If you want to know about the temperature or cooking speed of the grill, all you need to do is monitor its smoke. As the combustion times come near, the intensity of smoke changes to billowy white smoke or blue-white smoke. This is the right time to cut the supply to control smoke intensity. One of the best ways is to soak the wood chips before putting them in the smokebox.
Why soak wood chips?
The wood chips from the market are kiln-dried and are made up of hardwood. Thus, it becomes mandatory to soak them in water before firing them on the grill. The wood chips can gain up to 3% water during the soaking process that makes them ready for the grill. Thus, these wood chips dry up quickly by absorbing the water content when placed on the grill. Thus, the wood gets dried quickly that further eliminates the chances of getting fire while being on the grill.
Thus, it is all about lowering the temperatures and managing the moisture content. Many persons know that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. The average combustion temperature in the grill is 301 degrees Celsius and can start around 301 degrees Celsius. Thus, it can be clearly inferred that the wet wood delays the smoke generation until it dries in the grill. Thus, it is crucial to soak the wood chips before putting them in the smoker grill.
Amount of time required to soak wood chips for smoking:
The different types of wood have different soaking requirements. Before we start with the amount of time, it starts with the procedure. All you need to do is add half a cup of water to the chamber of wood chips and keep the grill at a constant temperature of 260 degrees Celsius.
The temperature of the grill rises to 315 degrees Celsius from the initial temperature. The time taken by the wood chips to start smoking is the pre-heat time of the grill. There are two chambers of the smoker box that contains dry wood chips and wood chips with a half cup of water.
The dry chips, while having the pre-heat time of seven minutes and the drenched chips, have the pre-heat time of fourteen minutes. The dry chips give smoke for seven minutes while the drenched chips give smoke up to five minutes. It takes fifteen minutes for the dry chips to catch fire while the drenched chips catch fire for seven minutes only. Thus, it has a total smoke time of thirty-two minutes.
The wood chips when soaked for sixty minutes have a pre-heat time of seventeen minutes, smoke time of eight minutes, and fire time of ten minutes. Thus, water can delays the smoke by almost ten minutes at high temperatures.
Wrapping Up:
Thus, you can soak the wood chips for a half hour or one hour according to your grill requirements. It ensures controlled smoke to incorporate the best cooking requirements of infusing smoke in any dish of your choice. Blue smoke is an ideal temperature over the white, grey, or black smoke. The different time for wood chips makes the entire process smooth and quick.
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