About the Wood

The two most common questions I get about Llano & Rye’s barbecue are:

1. “How long does it take to cook the brisket?” (Answer:  around 12-14 hours depending on a number of factors.)

2. “What kind of wood do you use?” (Answer: read on!)

Firewood Lore:  Then & Now

I started cutting firewood (post oak and mesquite) in Texas when I was 15 years old and sold it throughout high school – a total of about 80 cords of it cut and split by hand. It was hard work, but I came to love it:  the smell and grain of the wood, reading each piece for the best split, and seeing it stacked up in rows, seasoning for the following winter. That company, “The Beaver Wood Company”, was the first business I started – it shaped my life in many ways.

Fast forward several decades: the first thing I bought when we arrived in New Hampshire was a new chainsaw. I’ve since cut my share of firewood up here in New England and still cut some of the wood that we use at Llano & Rye.

The Cooking Wood Gospel According to Franklin

In April 2015, Aaron Franklin published Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto. It was a revelation in many ways. Remarkably, it provided barbecue enthusiasts a first-hand account from one of Texas’ leading pitmasters of how to cook every barbecue item offered at Franklin’s Barbecue in Austin – a perennial Top 10 Texas Monthly barbecue joint. (Who publishes step-by-step instructions for every competitor in the world to read? An industry visionary like Aaron Franklin, who loves barbecue and saw that doing so would only open more doors for the range of barbecue-related businesses he has launched over the past decade.)

In his Manifesto, Franklin made clear his use of Texas post oak as his go-to cooking wood. This became “gospel” for many enthusiasts, and shipments of post oak started moving around the country to backyard cookers and barbecue joints. No doubt about it:  well-seasoned Texas post oak is great barbecue cooking wood. It burns hot, creates a long-lasting coal bed, and produces a mild, flavorful, versatile smoke. But there’s more to the story.

Apocrypha…?

All you have to do is drive around Central Texas, and you will quickly see that post oak is by far the most common hardwood tree, followed by live oak and mesquite. While post oak abounds, you will have a hard time finding a hickory tree. But take a drive through most parts of The South (and even East Texas) and you will find hickory in abundance and may also note that it tends to be the leading cooking wood for “southern style” barbecue.

This illustrates the fact that barbecue pitmasters have traditionally used the best woods that are available locally, and these choices are part of the distinctiveness that barbecue has from region to region. Many leading pitmasters will say as much:  they use what’s available locally and sometimes even blend different types of local hardwood when they cook.

Does The Choice of Wood Make a Difference?

Yes – up to a point. Different types of cooking wood do have broadly differentiated flavor profiles, and an experienced barbecue enthusiast may be able to discern these profiles across different types of meat. But factors like the seasoning of the wood, the quality of the fire, and the amount of time any given barbecue product is left “on the smoke” also make a big difference. Said differently, unseasoned post oak used by an inexperienced cook can produce truly awful barbecue, and well-seasoned maple used to best effect can produce amazing barbecue. When used properly, many different kinds of hardwood can turn out great results.

What About in New England?

Here on the Seacoast of New Hampshire, we have a wonderful variety of hardwood – oaks, maples, cherries, apple, ash, birch, beech, etc., but there is not a post oak to be found. At Llano & Rye, our go-to cooking wood is red oak. It splits easily and creates a hot, long-lasting fire. The smoke is generally regarded to be slightly stronger than that of post oak. It works well for live-fire barbecue of all types and truly excels at beef. We aim for barbecue that has deep, complex bark and a robust smoke profile. Red oak is a natural fit.

Yeah Henry David, firewood does warm you twice (Thoreau-ly). And, wherever you go, it’s also a basic ingredient in truly great barbecue and the very definition of The Taste of Time Well Spent.

- Pitmaster Dub