— Camille Campbell

I have, um, I've certainly, people have their favorites. I've never had a favorite brand. I've used a lot of different brands over the years. And, um, you know, again, that's a place where you might wanna experiment. If you wanna focus on Apple wood chips from four different brands and find your own, you know, that's gonna be, uh, your, your experiment. But otherwise, you know, do note that different types of wood, whether it's mesquite or hickory or, or something else, uh, do impart different flavors and start out by, uh, consulting, probably, you know, whatever your source of information is, whether it's a, a book from your local library or somebody online, uh, to get some suggestions on what type of wood you might use for a certain, you know, uh, ingredient, uh, smoke, you know, to impart smoke, uh, you know, in terms of what might go well together, and then experiment from there. Right? Someone else's preference may not be yours. So, you know, don't limit what you do by someone else's opinion. I always encourage you to experiment and find your own boundaries, you know, in the world of cooking your own combinations. And, uh, you know, when it comes to, you know how to smoke, you can buy some sort of a large contraption that's got electronic controls. Uh, you can buy a, a simpler item that might be, uh, integrated with your grill that you use, and it, it, you know, could be a grill that's fired with, with sticks. You know, wood could use charcoal, it could be a, a pellet fired, uh, piece of equipment. Uh, you know, all of these can work well to smoke, uh, certain foods. And, you know, if you wanna do cold smoking, then, uh, you know, you need to pay attention to, uh, a temperature that's relatively low, you know, in which case, uh, you, you'll need some more specialized equipment in order to control the temperature. If you want to, uh, you know, uh, use hot smoking, uh, it's much more common, much easier. You can create a smoker for your stove top, uh, where you can get a, uh, a hotel pan, and it could be a disposable aluminum hotel pan. Get two of 'em. So you have a lid as well, you're gonna to rack inside. And I like to lift that rack up to the height of that bottom, uh, hotel pan by crumpling up aluminum foil, making some balls, putting 'em in each of the four corners, and then resting your grate on top of that. This is inside of your hotel pan. Put your food items on top of that. And then, uh, or you'll, you'll wanna soak your, your wood chips, and that's going to, uh, go into the pan, and then the rack, and then the lid, and then that, um, you can get that set up, uh, on your fire. Or another way to approach it is to, um, minus the food, get your chips in there, put it on the fire, uh, get, get it all heated up. And then once you know it's smoking, slip your food in there, put the lid back on it, and pay attention to the time. So you can figure out, again, what timing is gonna be best for you. Two minutes, five minutes, 12 minutes, whatever, you know, based upon the amount of the chips, based, based upon the intensity of the heat, based upon the size of the container, based upon what it is that you're smoking inside the container. And then based upon the intensity of flavor that you want. Okay? So, uh, have a, you know, paper and pencil and take notes in your kitchen lab.