Yoder Smokers Community Forum

Quick question for the board. When seasoning your stick burner, can you use any wood? I don't want to use any of my apple or pecan and have some old firewood I can get rid of. Is it better to use cooking wood or would firewood do? Thanks.

My suggestion is to use charcoal, if you do not want to use cooking wood. The main idea is to use heat to do a burn off of the manufacturing grease and oils, so that you can do an initial cleaning. Then, use a high temp cooking oil to season the metal, utilizing the heat from the fire to open the pores of the metal to bind the oil.

I would not use anything that you would not normally use for cooking to create a fire in your cooker.

Thank you sir!

Yes, don't use pine or any softwood in a cooker as it will put nasty resins and bad smells in your cooker. Throughout most of the country you can find oak, maple, alder or hickory easily and pretty inexpensively as well depending on your region. In addition, oak is a good wood to have on hand to mix with your apple and pecan. It will provide good heat, keep a good bed of coals going and it won't change the overall smoke flavor of the apple or pecan you would use. Since you would alternate between oak and your flavor wood, I will stretch out the amount of flavor wood you buy a little further as well. Heck, oak by itself is one of my favorite woods to cook with.

What are the wood split sizes most cook use? I had to cut down a hickory tree on our property and it is just sitting in 18" logs not split. I had delusions of making my own lump charcoal. I don't have a stick burner (yet) but wanted to know how to prepare this wood for long term storage just in case. No other fruit trees, but a bunch of immature maples. From what I understand our property was logged of the good trees a few decades ago.

Normally a max of 16" lengths and split into beer can, or slightly larger sized pieces. The wood needs to be "seasoned", or dried. "Green" or not dried, wood will be almost impossible to create a clean, non-soldering fire with.

Thanks Herb!