I remember seeing once, some college students on Spring Break grilling hot dogs. They doused the coals with lighter fluid and lit it, then put the hot dogs on a minute later. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s going to taste nasty. Hot dogs coated with petroleum residue!’ But that got me to thinking: Burning wood releases various things as it burns; a lot of water vapour, and who-knows-what else. ISTM that cooking food over freshly-burning wood would be like cooking it over coals newly-doused with lighter fluid. Especially if you’re using painted/treated scrap wood!
When is a fire ‘safe’ for cooking a joint of meat over it? Note that I am asking a GQ about the safety of volatiles being burned off, and how much the wood needs to have burned before it’s OK to cook food over it; not a Cafe Society question looking for tips on cooking over open fires.
Good question. I’ve been experimenting with cooking over a fire lately. I let the fire get to glowing coals stage just because it is easier to get the heat consistant. I wouldn’t cook over a fire using scrap lumber but I’d be interested to know if ordinary firewood has bad stuff being released when it burns.
Softwoods are never used in smoking food only hardwoods.
With that said as a Boy Scout I cooked many a hot dog over a open fire made from softwoods but the difference is the amount of exposure. I might smoke some foods for 24 hours or more, a hot dog is a couple of minutes.
I’ve seen no research showing that cooking over hardwood fires is remarkably dangerous - at least in terms of chemical release. One should make sure it’s a shallow fire and/or a cooking grate is used and don’t trip on the rocks around your firepit, etc. etc. for all those fire safety reasons, of course.
Cooking over pine and other aromatic resinous soft woods isn’t recommended because they impart some yucky flavors to the food. Safety depends on the dosage, though - a small bit of pine essential oils/resin won’t hurt you, but a large amount internally may cause liver or kidney damage. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather err on the side of not getting liver or kidney damage from my S’Mores. If I have pine to burn, I’ll use that to start the fire, then put hardwood on and start cooking when the pine’s gone. (Never use pine in a fireplace, only an open campfire.)
Pro tip: don’t cook over poison ivy. Don’t burn poison ivy. Yes, it grows that big and sometimes people try to kill it with fire. But the oils which cause inflammation and itching and blisters isn’t killed by fire. It is made wonderfully airborne, however, and will enter your lungs and give you a poison ivy rash inside your lungs. This is not a good thing, and may require being on a ventilator while it heals!
Everyone I’ve ever learned from has said not to cook over treated wood, as the chemicals may be released in the smoke. No cites, though, just experienced campers and backwoodspersons.
And likewise, I’ve routinely seen it admonished: Never burn treated woods in a fireplace either, because of the pollution released by the burning paint, lacquer, creosote, or other stuff wood gets treated with.
ETA: Okay, here’s an example cite I just found, straight from the EPA. (Scroll down a bit to see the list of things you should never burn.)
Red Oak has been believed to be a poor wood to open cook with, bad flavor included. When doing large
barbeque’s we do use some oak to hold good coals but we mostly Maple and Apple.
When I grill Steaks at deer camp I always used Poplar that was cut the year before and left vertical to dry.
One of the things i would do is run the chain saw out of chain oil long before i cut my cooking wood.
In my Shack I cook with Ash unless I am baking, then i throw in some pine to get more heat.
Toasting a sandwich over a soft wood fire was a tradition for many years while hunting. Cut a forked stick and toast away.
Well there generally is no hardwood available in most of the places Ive camped, and I have never noticed anything but a nice smoky taste from such cooking fires.
I know not to cook with painted or treated wood. Nor oleander.
I hadn’t thought about soft wood, but that’s probably where the question originated. Pine, cedar, and such seem to have a lot of soot, and I must have been imagining all of that black stuff getting on the food. I presume there’s no problem once it’s burned down to coals?
It sounds like cooking over an open fire, it’s OK to use hardwood while it’s still flaming. Is that correct?
Note that I am not going to be doing any fireside cooking. I’m just curious about the ‘stuff’ that comes out while the wood is burning.
Isn’t alder considered a hardwood? Various sites on the internet seem to think so. I thought “softwood” was just another term for wood from the conifer family of trees.
You’re correct, you do have to clean your chimney more frequently. It’s certainly not as nice to burn are hardwoods, but there are whole regions that burn it almost exclusively in their fireplaces.
Thanks, Learn something new every day. We always referred to it as a softwood because it was well… soft. I’ll replace that with cedar, traditionally used in cooking salmon.
From what I understand the suitability of Red Oak is dependant on what part of the country it’s harvested. Northern Red Oak has a bad flavor while in the south it’s often sought after for the large amount of smoke and mild flavor. Post Oak is highly prized by some of the more legendary Texas BBQ establishments like Lockhart, Giddings, etc. Good ol’ Live Oak is readily available in the south and used by many residential smokers.
The problem with pine leaving a residue isn’t just that it closes off the flow but that it’s pitch, creosote. Pitch can be quite flammable and if you do burn a lot of pine in a fireplace and it’s allowed to accumulate chances are someday you’ll have a chimney fire.
Yeah, but I think of cedar plank grilling as a bit different, as you don’t cook the fish/meat over a cedar fire, but on a plank over a fire. I suspect if you cooked over cedar wood chunks themselves, you’d get an undesirable flavor. Cedar, for instance, is not good for smoking, just like all other softwoods.
Ok that sounds right. i have never cooked with Southern Oak. We hold a better bed of coals with oak than any other wood.
One of the down sides to using the Poplar was the coals only lasted a very short time, there wasn’t time to grill a second time without starting over.
I look at the Snapping and Popping of pine being a bigger problem when using it in a fire place. I still have a Hearth Screen for my fireplace. You would never burn pine with only a screen.
On the other hand, I have glass doors now and there is a chain mesh screen to use if the doors are open. The mesh will not stop all the glowing embers from pine, or “Pop Corn Wood”
