So let's cook........something.

Once I felt like I wanted to try getting started I figured the first thing was to try some different types of woods and see what types gave me the flavor I was looking for. Throughout all the information I had acquired I read in numerous places that many were just using their old gas grill in the backyard. I knew through my own experiences that by cooking things low and slow would net a tender piece of meat. Being a single parent with not much money I was no stranger to buying lesser cuts and cooking them to where they were edible. The crock-pot and slow cooker had on more than one occasion been my friend when it came to making something good from something bad so the premise of low and slow made perfect sense.

Since I needed to find out what direction I wanted to go, I went to the store one afternoon and found a couple of decent steaks. I don’t exactly remember what cut it was, but I figured since it was steak it would be hard to mess up and would give me a small sampling of the flavor of whatever wood I was going to use. On the way home I stopped at a hardware store that also sold camping and outdoor cooking supplies. I knew they had small bags of wood chips so I picked up some hickory since that seemed to be the wood of choice.

Reading the bag of chips it recommended that the chips be soaked in water for a time so I put some in a bowl and let them set. While that was happening I started the grill and got it set up. I had read on many threads of how wood chips were placed in a piece of folded aluminum foil with holes poked in the top and placed directly on the burner and since I was not sure how deep I wanted to get right off the bat it seemed like a good way to start. Once the chips had soaked for the prescribed time I pulled them from the bowl and made up my little foil pack of flavor. I turned off one of the burners and placed the foil directly on top of the still lit burner and turned it down to low. I waited until I could see small wisps of smoke coming from the foil and then it was time to put the meat on. My gas grill has an upper rack so I put the meat there, opposite of the side of the hot burner and wood chips.

It took about 30 minutes for the meat to cook and once I pulled it off the smell of the smoke and cooking meat filled the air in my backyard, it was very nice. Cutting into the meat and tasting it gave me my first taste of what cooking over a flavored wood could do. I have always been an “outdoor” cook, the use of a Dutch oven and charcoal and gas grills had always been a part of summers for me, but the use of real wood was something completely different. Other than fruit trees, the majority of wood here is all evergreens and aspens, both of which are anything but good cooking woods.

I was amazed at how the taste has been enhanced, even though other than a little pepper I had added no seasoning. Once I had finished eating the first one I jumped right into the other piece, I was completely hooked.

Over the course of the next several months I continued with testing different woods and began to delve more into different spices and such. The hickory worked okay and tried everything I could get my hands on. Mesquite was a waste of time, fruit woods worked well and nut trees worked really well.

I used the foil pouch method for quite some time but it got to the point that I wanted to get more smoke during my cooks so I bought a chip pan. This was a great investment and it made it much better to test different woods as well as making it nice to be able to mix different types of woods. I am lucky enough to have a couple of nice apple trees in my yard so every once in awhile I would go out and cut a piece off of a limb and use it. I also have a friend that works for the city and every once in awhile he would send me pieces of trees that had been trimmed. One day he sent me some Pecan and I gotta tell ya, it worked wonders.


Along the way I began to experiment with different spices and such trying to find a combination that I really liked. It started with the basic salt and pepper along with things that were sweet and hot and spicy. I searched endlessly through sites on the Internet trying brands and recipes that were common to different areas of the country trying certain spices and mixes combined with certain woods. After several tries I finally settled on a mix of about 1/3 apple and 2/3 Pecan to get the kind of flavor that I really liked that went well with the many spices that were tried.

I never really could settle on a “style” for the rub that I liked best. The thing about people from Utah is that pretty much everyone knows how to cook. I don’t mean that everyone is a culinary genius, but keep in mind that there are large families here. I personally come from a family of 5 children, there were 6 kids in my wife’s family and I had 3 of my own. Everyone here has that special recipe that grandma used for a number of things and those types of cooking were passed down. But, since there weren’t a lot of fine restaurants people here have very specific tastes. Basically if it is hot and brown, the people of this area are connoisseurs.

At this point I decided it was time to take a step back. I had spent plenty of time working with different types of meats; beef, pork and chicken when it came to cooking for my kids, so I went back to what I knew as far as what I liked as far as tastes. Starting with a base of Salt and Pepper and adding brown sugar in varying amounts, I used this as a base and little by little I developed a couple of different rubs that I am very proud of. I am still working on getting the chicken rub where I want it, but I have put together a sweet pork rub and a spicy rub that works really well on beef.

From this point the grill was becoming too small for the things I wanted to cook so it was time to go a little bigger.