How do I dry small chunks of wood for my meat smoker?

[Al]

My smoker works best and the food tastes best if I use dry wood.  It is not recommended with this smoker that I soak the wood in water first.It seems like resins or something come out of the green wood and leave an undesireable taste on the food. I'm using apple, plum, white oak, alder generally.

I have enough trees to trim or thin out for all the smoking I'll ever do but nothing cut and dried right now.

So the problem is I want to smoke a turkey in a few days but my plum wood is green. From a tree I just removed from my lawn.
I cut the wood in pieces the size of a hockey puck to go in the smoker.

If I put them on a cookie sheet in a barely warm over would they dry in a day?
Temperature suggestion?

Other ideas?

Thanks, Al.

[Den Socling]

They will dry in a day. Set the temperature around 150 I would guess. Set it at 220 and the wood will be "bone dry".

[Al]

Thank you! Al.

[Furby]

I use tin/alum foil so as not to ruin cookie sheets and stuff.
You can find cheap cookie sheets at a $1 store.
Either way, I wouldn't use the wife's cookie sheets............. or you may be the turkey in the smoker! ;)

[Al]

Not married so I can use any darn cookie sheet I please! 

I've been thinking I could just use the smoker to do it. Its an electric one with a thermostat and racks just like an oven.  Heat control goes down as low as 150°.

[Furby]

  ;)

[SwampDonkey]

I wonder if plum would be OK to use for smoking? Maybe not eh? In the cherry family, might be carcinogenic, I'm thinking cyanide compounds here. Or would the heat reduce the compounds?

[ohsoloco]

Cherry gives you cancer  ???  That's all I do my grilling with  :-\

[SwampDonkey]

ohsoloco, I don't know, that's why I'm asking.

[Furby]

I thought it was the fresh or wilted leaves that were the problem?
I've used the wood as well, guess I should be dead.
Maybe I am and just don't know it, hmmm.......

[SwampDonkey]

I was wondering about that Furby. Since the leaves are producing compounds and sugars and the leaves are sending stuff down the phloem or sapwood, one might assume some compounds get into the wood. The plumbing is all connected in some way.  ;) But maybe the heat reduces (destroys) the compounds?

[Furby]

Well I figure it this way, if it's bad to smoke food with, it must be even worse to use it as firewood. ;)
I don't know really.

[SwampDonkey]

Well I figure if you two been using it and can tell about it, it must be fine. I just never heard of smoking with cherry before. I have heard of hickory, maple, apple and even alders used to smoke meat.

So where abouts and when is the next wood smoker's grill gathering?  ;)

[Furby]

Well I'm still ticking and lots of folks don't know why, so maybe we better use Osoloco as the guide. ;)

[ohsoloco]

I've used cherry to smoke meat and cheese with as well. 

Actually, if you believe everything you read, isn't grilling food in general carcinogenic?  I thought all of those lovely charred pieces cause cancer  :P  What a way to go...with a big, juicy medium rare steak in my mitts  :D

[SwampDonkey]

Well, maybe a grilled wild Atlantic salmon steak in mine. ;D

[Dave Shepard]

I know cattle can't have dried cherry leaves, but they can eat them if they are fresh.

I'll have a nice fat cheese burger with cheddar cheese. Mix black pepper and horseradish in with the meat first. Mmmm.


Dave

[Al]

I'll have a nice fat cheese burger with cheddar cheese. Mix black pepper and horseradish in with the meat first. Mmmm.


Dave

Juicy enough to have a messy chin and need a pile of napkins.  Mug of dark beer, enjoying it all in a Wisconsin tavern on a snowy day while visiting with some neighbors.

Nothing better....

[Dave Shepard]

Sounds like a Roxbury Tavern ritual to me.


Dave

[Sprucegum]

Cherry bark and cherry pits have a bit of cyanide in them - don't worry about the cancer  ???

[Dana]

I thought it was the fresh or wilted leaves that were the problem?
I've used the wood as well, guess I should be dead.
Maybe I am and just don't know it, hmmm.......

Well, your Furby avitar has been under water for a while. ;D

[bitternut]

Apples have cyanide too but its in the seeds. So do peaches, its in the seed inside the pit.

[SwampDonkey]

We eat a roasted seed of one type of peach, the Almond. Anyone ever crack a roasted almond pit this time of year? ;)

[Furby]

I've eaten a fair amount of apple seeds/cores in my younger days.......... guess I AM dead after all. :-\

[bitternut]

I always used eat the whole apple but the stem. Don't know if it caused any harm or not. We will never know.

As for almonds I happen to have an almond tree in my yard. It actually looks like a peach tree, has blossoms like a peach tree and bears fruit that look like small green peaches. They do not fill out like regular peaches and do not get any color. The pit looks exactly like a peach pit and inside is the almond which looks exactly the seeds inside peach pits. They are a favorite for the red squirrels though and I have to keep the population in check in order to get any for myself.