Re: [CH] To boldly go...
Rich McCormack (macknet@cts.com)
Fri, 29 May 1998 18:12:15 -0700
Cameron Begg wrote:
> >Smoking meat or sausages and smoking chiles is not
> >the same thing. Trust me, a handfull of soggy hickory chips ainít
> >gonna make it!
>
> Agreed. In fact use VERY dry wood to avoid giving chipotles an acrid taste.
I agree...sorta. At the beginning of the smoking process, I use moist
(not soggy) wood chips. When the charcoal is very hot at the start,
the moisture in the wood chips helps it smolder instead of flash and
burn up quickly. As the fire dies down I throw on drier to actually
dry (toward the end) wood chunks (along with an occasional "stoking"
with a few additional briquets to keep a fire going) and they smolder
just fine on the low fire.
I mention in my webpages that after 6 or 7 hours, I remove the chiles
from the smoker and finish drying them in a dehydrator. Actually, more
often than not, I time it so I can leave the chiles on the smoker until
the next morning at which time they rarely need much further drying.
Atmospheric humidity comes into play, of course, but in the fairly
arid climate I live in, it seems to work for most of the year...
--
Rich McCormack (Poway, CA) macknet@cts.com
Who is Rich McCormack? Find out at:
http://www.free.cts.com/crash/m/macknet/