As a newbie I have ruined food cooking with wood. I have used wood chunks and I have used wood I bought in the log form. I usually use charcoal as the base and then add wood chunks or wood logs.
I don't think the problem lies with the wood as much as it does with just inexperience. People can ruin food on a gas grill with no wood involved.
I want to know if it crosses your mind that you could buy a commercial bagged product in a store - will that eliminate the bad experience?
Could you further expand on this idea? I'm not quite sure what you mean by it. Do you mean some other bagged product that isn't wood chunks, chips, or logs?
What do you think makes for a wood that wont make food bitter? is it the price? - familiarity of the species? or how do I learn without blowing a wad on bad choices?
The learning comes with trial and error and learning as quickly as possible from those errors so that a person doesn't continue to ruin food. Any wood can make food bitter IMO if not used properly, if over used, if the wrong type (non smoking type) is used, and I also feel that air intake and exhaust management is the key as well as being familiar with the type of wood you are using and its properties. Minion and a few chunks is very different from all logs in a stick burner and even from a smoke bomb in a gas grill. Some woods are stronger, such as mesquite, due to the oil content in the wood. That doesn't make it bad, but just needs to be used in lesser quantities and know what it can and will do. Another big issue is simply personal taste and preference. Some like a heavy smoke flavor, some don't. This is where the type of cooker you use, the amount of wood you use, and things like wrapping food in foil etc will control the smoke issue.
How do I decide what will work before I ruin another meal? I want smoke flavor - how do I know how long to apply smoke - burn the wood? ( I am talking about traditonal wood sources not the pellet type of wood)
Just curious why pellet type wood is excluded? The issue is the smoke and controlling the smoke. Pellet type wood gives off smoke too. When using Minion in let's say a WSM or a UDS or offset in a Kettle (for me) my preference is 3-4 sometimes 5 for brisket in terms of chunks for smoke flavor. But that's my preference. Some might find that too smokey or not smokey enough. When I've used stick burners and all log fires, the key is fire management and air control. Some other tricks are preheating the logs for quicker ignition, but the biggest key is realizing that a stick burner needs LOTS more attention and tending. I also know going in that the all wood fire will create a much stronger smoke flavor profile so I will use things like foil pans, foil, etc to control the amount of smoke I get on certain things. In a WSM, Drum, you can apply the wood as a one time shot and in a stick burner, well, that's all you will use.
IF Im going to spend time buying this stuff should I buy the cheapest? does the size of wood matter? How do you know how much to add?
By stuff, do you mean chunks, chips, and cords of wood? I'm going to say size doesn't unless you are using a stick burner and want to buy it already split or split it yourself in order to save yourself time and labor. As for price, I've seen one brand of oak chunks differ in price from brand to another, but I couldn't tell you why there was a difference. Both looked and smelled like oak to me. The price difference could have been a number of things dealing with the business end to shipping rates, and beyond. I don't think the more expensive oak chunks would have been any better or different. One thing that helped me greatly was keeping a log of each cook and looking at what wnet well and what didn't and adjusting those factors so that I either did them again to continue gettign the positive results or eliminating the bad to discontinue the results I no longer wanted. Yet another, and the biggest part of my learning, came from the experience that the membership HERE was willing to impart. That alone cut my learning curve dramatically, and it still does. Good questions. This should make for an interesting thread. I look forward to the coming posts.
Thanks