Charcoal Barbecue

Adding wood chips to charcoal BBQ, do you soak the wood chips or not?

I am a recent convert to charcoal barbecuing. And let me tell you, once you start doing it you will never want to use your gas grill ever again. Everything just tastes so much better. I use a simple chrcoal grill, good quality brickets, and great meat. Recently, I have been using wood chips such as hickory, maple, and mesquite. But what I am wondering is, should I soak the wood chips in water before adding them to the charcoal?

On the bag of chips it says you should soak the chips before using them in a smoker, but it says nothing about soaking them when using them on the BBQ. So the implication is that I should just put them on dry. But I thought it couldn't hurt to get some advice here and see what other BBQ aficianados do.

Thanks!

Soaking them is usually recommended for basic wood chips like hickory, mesquite, etc. About 30 minutes of soaking works for us. We also found wood chips at a bbq specialty store that were made from old wine casks, which were outstanding. For these, they did not recommend soaking.

Also, since you're a convert from gas to charcoal grilling you'll notice that cooking times are slightly less for charcoal. This is because charcoal creates a radiant heat, where as gas actually gives off water vapor which reduces the intensity of the fire. We use the cookout calculator at charcoalbob.com because it takes these factors into account when figuring out the grilling times for things like steak, boneless chicken breasts and pork chops.

We usually start with a couple of handfuls of chips, depending on what we're grilling and the type of wood chips, especially if we're using something like mesquite which can overpower the flavor of the food if too many chips are used. At least that's been our experience.

Grilling with wood chips adds great fun, and also can make you very popular with your neighbors.

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