Last wood guide5/30/2023 ![]() In this stage, no flavor is imparted to the food. There isn’t a fire, and there isn’t much heat - yet. This stage occurs while the wood is below 500 ☏.Īll that happens is that any moisture in the wood turns into steam and escapes, while some CO2 and methanol also escape. The Four Stages of Wood Burning, and How They Create FlavorĪs detailed in this great article by, wood burns incompletely and in a specific order of four stages.Īnd it’s important to know that although we are detailing four distinct stages of wood combustion, in reality, these will all be occurring at the same time, in differing quantities, throughout the wood in your fire.įor the record, we want to control our fire to get and keep our wood-burning in stage 3 of what I’m about to describe, to get the best flavor onto our food. So let’s look at the four stages of wood burning and how they affect flavor: These four stages are important to understand when it comes to flavoring our food because different compounds and flavors are produced at different temperatures and times, and some of these we don’t want, while some we do. When you burn wood, it goes through four distinct stages as it progresses toward being a pile of ash. So wood could almost be considered a sugar stick, mixed with lignin to give it a solid, woody structure, then soaked in water.Īnd when lignin breaks down in a fire, it creates aromatic compounds called phenolics that bring spiciness and pungency to smoke flavor. Now, cellulose and hemicellulose are essentially sugars - Which is why wood smoke imparts sweet flavors on food. …Along with trace amounts of minerals, including potassium, sodium, and calcium salts and oxides, in amounts that differ depending on the makeup of the soil in which the tree is grown in. Extractives -The organic impurities that give wood its color, fragrance, and, in certain circumstances, resistance to rot, fungi, and insects.Hemicellulose ( 20%-30%) - a semi-crystalline polymer that also serves as a matrix or binder. ![]() Lignin serves as a matrix or binder for cellulose and is responsible for wood’s strong, fibrous texture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |