A perfect piece of smoked brisket can give you a heavenly meat taste. However, make sure you eat a mouthful of smoke. For this reason, choosing the best wood for smoking brisket is essential.
Correct woods provide the most delicious flavors to the meats. Besides, your meat can taste bitter and sometimes awful if you don’t select the right wood for the brisket.
Hickory, oak, and mesquites are the best wood for brisket. Furthermore, some other fruity woods can also provide an amazing taste in briskets.
In this context, I’ll tell you all the best woods to smoke a brisket and give detailed descriptions. You will get some additional tricks to pick the right wood for smoking other meats. Let’s explore the best woods for your brisket recipe.
10 Best Wood For Smoking Briskets:
You need to use the best brisket smoke inside the grill to get the perfect taste of meat. And this is where the search comes out to find the best wood.
If you create your smoke with the wrong woods, you will never enjoy the actual taste of brisket. Now, let’s learn about the 10 best kinds of wood to smoke your brisket properly.
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Hickory wood:
Hickory is the best option for smoked food lovers. If you want to enjoy a deep smoky flavor on your brisket recipe, this hickory wood never disappoints you.
Besides, hickory wood takes a long time to burn. Try Smoak Firewood Cooking Wood Mini Splits to get the best result.
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Maple Wood:
It tastes sweet and mildly smoky in brisket. With an amazing fruity flavor, maple wood offers medium smoke and a sweet smell. Furthermore, in brisket, maple wood mixes quite well.
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Apple Wood:
If you like the fruity and mild flavor at the same time in your brisket, try apple wood inside the grill. Besides, it is also considered the best wood for smoking pork. Like pecan woods, applewood takes time to burn out completely.
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Cherry Wood:
The fruity and nutty flavor is the best thing about cherry wood. If you enjoy some nutty taste in the grill, use cherry wood for brisket. Again, cherry woods give the darkest color over smoked meat.
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Pecan Wood:
With a great sweet flavor, pecan wood provides the meat with a mild but strong smoky taste. For smoking any beef, including brisket, pecan wood will be a great worth.
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Oak Wood:
For mild smoked brisket, oak wood remains the first choice in my preference list. Oakwood provides an accurate smoke level to the meat even if you don’t know about others’ tastes.
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Peach Wood:
Peach wood is the sweetest smoking wood for brisket. If you want some sweet fruit flavor inside your mouth, you can try peach wood to smoke the brisket. However, peach wood burns more quickly than other food-smoking woods.
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Mesquite Wood:
For enjoying the strongest smoky flavor in your brisket, mesquite wood may be the best option. Mesquite wood provides a great earthy taste outside and inside the meat.
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Olive Wood:
Olive wood tastes like hickory woods. However, olive wood burns out quickly and creates a lot of smoke with a small amount of lumber. For this reason, this wood will be the best for budget-concerned people.
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Rosewood:
With an amazing fragrance, rosewood provides the sweetest smell to any food. Briskets taste delicious with some smoky and mind-freshening aromas. Try rosewood to explore this kind of flavor in your brisket.
How To Select The Wood Size?
Wood size is an essential part of smoking your brisket effectively. Besides, wood size makes much impact on the meat taste. There are different shapes and sizes for food smoking woods.
However, you have to understand the right one for you. Below, I have given all the steps for choosing the correct wood size for smoking meat perfectly.
Step-1: Know The Meat Amount
Besides smoking brisket, it is essential to learn about the meat amount. Different meat amount needs an extra level of smoke while grilling inside the machine. Check the amount in the weight machine after marinating the meat completely.
Step-2: Look For The Smoker Type
There are different types of smokers available in the market today. You can only use a single smoker for a wood size. Furthermore, some smokers can only fit some wood sizes.
These smokers work only for specific wood sizes. In this case, learn about your smoker before choosing any wood size to smoke the meat. Realcook Vertical Steel Charcoal Smoker can meet all your demands.
Step 3: Check The Capacity Of The Grill
Every grill machine contains a smoker option inside. These smokers are different in size and shape. For this reason, you must find out the grill’s capacity.
Large smoker grills need wood logs to smoke any meat. On the other hand, small-size grills effort wood chunks perfectly. Therefore, know the grill capacity first.
Step 4: Understand The Wood’s Burning Ability
Food-smoking woods have different burning abilities. Wood logs burn for a long time, whereas wood chunks burn for a short time. Besides, wood chips also burn more quickly than logs and scraps.
You must choose the long-time burner wood to smoke a large amount of meat. Otherwise, quick burner woods are suitable for your brisket.
Step 5: Choose According To The Burning Time
Large brisket or turkey must smoke for a long time to get the perfect smoky taste. For this reason, you must pick the long-time burners.
On the other hand, if you smoke a smaller piece of meat, quick burner wood will be suitable for you. Smoking wood must last long, the same as the burning time. Hence, choose your woods according to the burning time.
Learn more about the smoking woods for brisket in the video below –
Related Questions
Q: How To Choose The Right Wood For Smoking Meat?
Ans: By understanding the meat type and your taste bud, choose the right wood for smoking meat. Generally, perfect smoky brisket depends on the wood type and quality according to the flavor.
Fatty meats like pork, beef and mutton need hardwood for smoking the meat. On the other hand, chicken, turkey, and other light meats taste great with fruity wood.
Q: What Wood Gives The Most Smoke Flavor?
Ans: Hickory and mesquite woods give the most smoke flavor to the meat. If you want to enjoy some mouth full of smoky flavored meat, use hickory or mesquite for brisket.
Besides, these woods provide a strong smoky, and nutty flavor to heavy meats like pork. However, mesquite wood can create a bitter taste quickly while smoking. That’s why to smoke the meat slowly with mesquite wood.
Q: What Should Woods Not Be Used For Smoking Meat?
Ans: Eucalyptus, cedar, spruce, ELM, cypress, pine, sassafras, sycamore, FIR, redwood, and amber woods should not be used for smoking meats. Even these woods aren’t suitable for smoking any other foods.
Besides, these woods create harmful smoke for foods and beverages. Again, all of these woods are dangerous for the environment after burning. Never use any of these woods for smoking your meats and foods.
Q: Can You Mix Wood When Smoking Meat?
Ans: You can mix different types of wood while smoking meat. Every wood provides a specific smoky flavor to the flesh. For this reason, you can’t enjoy various tastes with a single wood flavor.
If you want to enjoy a variety in your smoked meat, mix multiple blocks of wood before supplying it inside the grill. Different fruity woods are perfect for mixing smoky flavors.
Q: Should You Soak Wood Before Smoking?
Ans: You can soak or use the wood in the dry phase before smoking. Wet wood can add some additional flavors to the meat. It especially happens when you wash the wood chips or pellets in another flavored liquid.
To do this, you must choose the best pellets for smoking brisket. You can use dry wood chips or pellets if you don’t want any other food flavors.
Q: Which Wood Burns The Longest For Smoking?
Ans: Hickory wood burns the longest for smoking any meat and other foods. This wood is quite hard and dense.
Also, it needs a high temperature to create smoke. If you want to smoke a larger meat piece, try hickory to get balanced smoky meat.
Besides, hickory lasts longer than any other wood, like maple or oak. Hence, try hickory for smoking, and it never disappoints you to get the perfect smoky meat.
Final Verdict
Briskets are quite tough and heavy meat to smoke perfectly. To enjoy the delicious smoky brisket, you must pick the best wood for smoking brisket.
Besides, you can use different types of wood for brisket. For this reason, you have to understand your taste bud first.
Try all these woods in your grill to smoke the brisket and enjoy the perfect meat taste. Remember to inform your experiences about smoking brisket through my comment section.
Happy grilling and smoking!