Facts in Wood Grilling In San Diego

Wood grilling is one of the best ways to impart some delicious flavor into your meat, fruit or vegetables. The major hurdle to wood grilling is that it requires time, patience and restraint. Small plates, big flavors, and wood grilling are what we’re all about as we create innovative interpretations of classic favorites.

Wood grilling is the preferred method of grilling by most professionals or anyone serious about grilling. This kind of grilling is an art which takes the experience to know how to control the heat and get your food cooked the way you like it. Wood grilling is definitely all the rage, both in the commercial culinary world and home cooking.
Grilling over wood is different and is practiced all over the world. In the Spanish Basque country, grilling over wood is an ancient tradition.

Grilling Over Wood as a Sweaty, Smoky Sport

GRILLING over a wood fire is as much a sport as an art — it’s more instinctive than cooking with a gas grill, more nuanced than cooking with charcoal, and more athletic than both.

In my experience it’s also more satisfying, and not just when a platter of grilled lamb or a slab of crispy glazed pork belly is brought to the table still smelling of oak and applewood. It’s the theater of building a fire out of split logs, and cooking over it. It’s steaming open clams in a caldron set directly on the flames, or charring fennel on a cast-iron griddle, or lowering a grill over a shallow pile of glowing coals for a steak gently seared to medium-rare. Grilling over hardwood is sweaty, smoky, eye-stinging work, but it’s fun.

Not quite. If we were in Argentina, I would draft my friends to help me grill a whole cow, which is one of the recipes in “Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way” (Artisan, 2009) by Francis Mallmann, the chef and owner of Patagonia Sur, the celebrated Buenos Aires restaurant, and Peter Kaminsky, the Brooklyn-based writer. Read more here.

Whether it’s on an open flame in a humble backyard BBQ or in a high-performance wood burning oven like the ones we carry, grilling over wood is something that any cook can do to elevate the quality of a dish.

The Wood

Many types of wood can be used for smoking, with different woods best suited to specific types of meat. Basically, any hardwood will work, but avoid softwoods like pine as the resins don’t make for good flavoring. Avoid any wood that has been treated with chemicals.

Classic woods to try

Mesquite or hickory: Big and bold, a few handfuls of these kings of the grill are perfect for the barbecue — especially beef and pork dishes like steaks or chops.

Oak: A nice middle-of-the-road wood, oak pairs nicely with seafood or poultry. It can also be mixed with stronger woods to mellow the overall smoke. Oak’s a good slow burner, too.

Apple or pear: These woods are very mild smoking woods that will do well with poultry. For a real treat, try these with some grilled vegetables. See more here.

Grilling over wood is a little more difficult than grilling with a gas or charcoal grill, but the added flavor from the smoke and the delicious contrast of a crunchy and salty charming (just a little bit) will have everyone coming back for seconds.

Here are some additional tips for grilling over wood:

  • Always use seasoned (dried) hardwoods like oak, alder, ash, beech, hickory, maple, pecan, birch, walnut, mesquite, or fruitwoods. Other options include olive wood, wine barrel staves and grapevine clippings.
  • If you’ve ever built a campfire or started a fire in a fireplace, you know the drill: Create a teepee of small twigs atop a pile of kindling (wood chips, newspaper, or other tinder), adding larger pieces of wood as the fire catches. What you may not realize is that you can start a wood fire in a chimney starter.
  • Allow plenty of time—up to 45 minutes—for the fire to mature and burn down to embers. Then, with a shovel or long-handled grill hoe rake the glowing orange embers underneath the grill grate. As with charcoal, the deeper the pile, the higher the heat. Read full article here.

Grilling Over Wood Is Very Tasty

Grilling over wood is an age old art in Spain, especially in the north of the country, where beef is quite prominent and as flavorful as anywhere in the world. The food was very tasty with a nice touch of grilled flavor only real wood grilling can achieve. More open fire grilling using wood is creeping into restaurants across Europe as chefs discover the unique taste benefits of preparing meat in this way.

Wood drilling is perfect in camping with family and friends. If you wanted more information about what grilling is best for any occasion, we at BBQ Island in San Diego are experts to help you with your grilling needs. Don’t hesitate to reach us here (888) 556-8121 any time!

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