Smoky will be offering his talents, techniques and secrets discovered over the last 150 years, or so. He will be to the point, pull no punches and if you suffer through the process, you will become a much better outdoor cook, turning out masterpiece meals for friends and family alike.

In this column, Smoky takes to the woods in search of the different types of woods available to the outdoor cook for preparing some great tasting wood smoke-cooked entrees. Hope this helps you folks! . . . . . take notes!

So, with no further adieu, we turn the mike to Smoky. You're on Smoky . . . . .

OUTDOOR COOKING WITH SMOKY HALE

By: Smoky Hale

Interest in the characteristics of particular woods has, traditionally, been confined to wood workers and their clientele and those folk who heat with wood. Except for MacBeth's fate resting upon whether or not Great Birnham wood came up the "high Dunsinane hill" (Act IV, Scene I), particular woods have never seemed like a life or death situation. But, lately, with all the smoke blowing going on, the fad for cooking over exotic woods and the extravagant claims of smoke blowers has reached outrageous proportions.

As more and more people are learning, meat cooked in the smoke stream of burning wood gets marred with all the cresols and phenols and other noxious volatiles which make good wood preservatives but don't taste very good - even to an unskilled palate. Since early time, even primitive man with primitive palate learned that food tastes better cooked over coals than over flames and smoke.

Besides unbounded enthusiasm spurred by abject ignorance, what has permitted this travesty to good taste to even start has been the growth of the horizontal cooker with an offset firebox. When meat was cooked directly over the coals/fire, the results of flames and wood smoke were immediately apparent to even the dullest tongue. Even users of the tin can water smokers quickly deduce that it is very easy to turn an otherwise fine piece of meat into a mummified creosote fossil.

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Smoky's 5th basic position for really great barbecue'n.

'According to Smoky' is © by C. Clark Hale
who is solely responsible for its content. Comments
should be addresses to cchale@bellsouth.net