Crabapple Wood For Smoking

by phil schade
(cleveland, oh)

Anyone ever used crabapple wood for smoking? I have several small logs from a crabapple tree.

Answer:-

I've never used crabapple but I've heard of other's who've used it and they have been perfectly satisfied with the results. The flavor is very similar to apple.

Almost any fruit wood or nut bearing wood is ideal for smoking although I would avoid using walnut.

All these woods would be described a hard wood. It's really the soft woods that are not good ie. pine or any coniferous tree because that they tend to be resinous and that resin gets into the smoke.

Crabapple is a fruit tree and generally speaking I like fruit tree wood for smoker fuel. Some say that the smoke intensity of a fruit tree is slightly less than say Hickory but I find fruit wood to be really great over a long cookout.

A couple of general points about wood chips:-

If there is any bitter taste it will be in the bark so make sure that there are no bits of bark in your wood chips
Other hardwoods to avoid are Horse Chestnut and Birch

Give your crab-apple a whirl and let us all know what you think.