Schmoke
Full Fledged Farker
I was watching 'Man, Fire, Food' on The Cooking Channel, hosted by multitalented (rapper, to spicy hot food, to exotic food, now cooking with smoke) chef Roger Mooking. While interviewing the owner of some smokehouse, Roger, on two occasions, picked up the guy's unburned cooking wood, and started sniffing it.
Why?
Is there any way to determine how good a hunk of cooking wood is by smelling it?
Is it like sniffing the wine cork, means not a darn thing but everyone does it?
I'm not going to deny occasionally smelling wood in the past. Green wood smells ... not too darn good. Seasoned wood usually smells like ... almost nothing, and any odor I do detect isn't a whole lot better than green wood.
My take: Sniffing cooking wood gives the sniffer an illusion of expertise to others who don't know better. Am I wrong?
Why?
Is there any way to determine how good a hunk of cooking wood is by smelling it?
Is it like sniffing the wine cork, means not a darn thing but everyone does it?
I'm not going to deny occasionally smelling wood in the past. Green wood smells ... not too darn good. Seasoned wood usually smells like ... almost nothing, and any odor I do detect isn't a whole lot better than green wood.
My take: Sniffing cooking wood gives the sniffer an illusion of expertise to others who don't know better. Am I wrong?