With our recent snow damage this winter, there's a few ornamental choke cherry trees that have been damaged and I got a whole tree this past weekend. I'm sure it's good burning, but is it worth keeping for smoking food? You can see some of it in on this last trailer picture . I saved little branches figuring it might be good for smoking meats. What do you FHCer's think?
While it's not a standard smoking wood, I've used chokecherry and other non standard woods (mountain ash, willow, and saskatoon as well!) and they all seem to impart nice aromas/flavors. Def not as strong as more common smoking woods though. Remove bark or burn off first, as it may? impart a bitter flavor.
We have a bit of it around here and I heard that it was not great to smoke with and was bitter but please take that with a grain of salt I've never tried. Perhaps mix in with some other woods!
I should've thrown a little on the fire I had on the fire ring last night. I didn't notice any nasty smell when I cut it, if anything a little sweet. I cooked on the fire outside last night.
I have used black cherry for smoking meat and cheese (bark peeled off). I like it but it does impart a different, sweeter smelling smoke. Not sure if choke cherry would be different?
Any wood I use is bark less. I don't know if it matters but my thought was the bark less is cleaner. I didn't want to take a chance and use wood with bark figuring if there was anything funky it would most likely be in the bark and not from a clean split. Does it matter? I have no clue but it has been working for me and plenty of no bark to use for this.
I agree, think it does matter. I found smoking with chunks with bark gave the finished product an unpleasant strong taste/smell.
I've always been told this too, and while I've never tested the bark being unpleasant, I've always removed the bark and it turns out well.
Ive never smoked with choke cherry so cant weigh in on that but will regarding wood bark for smoking. I dont bother taking bark off my apple unless its visibly pealing off. Ive never tasted a difference. The fun thing about cooking is there are so many different ways of doing it so do what works best for you!
I had a weird dream last night about eating choke cherrys and these were actually sweet. Weird. I mean, don't they call them choke cherry because they are bitter tasting?
I haven't eaten them (only black cherries) but I do know people make jams, pies and such with choke cherries. I heard they are on the tart side but still very much edible.
They make a lot of chokecherry jelly around here. I think the recipe calls for 6 chokecherries and 5 lbs of sugar or something like that…..yeah they are pretty tart
