subject: Hickory Smoking Secret for Home Barbecues [print this page] For years I've tried to capture that beautiful flavor that the big barbeque pits in KY offer. Hickory wood gave me some depth, but I just wasn't getting it with the chips or chunks you stocked the stores. At any rate not on my back yard barrel smoker.
About four years ago I hit on something that I decided to give a try. Since I've several hickories in my back yard, I started gathering the husks that popped off the hickory nuts as they ripened.
Just like wood chips, I soaked the husks in water for about 30-minutes before I started to light my charcoal smoker. Then, just as I put the meat on, I threw on a handful of these soaking wet husks.
No kidding. You can smell that rich hickory smoke for a mile around. People going by the house slow and sniff the air.
Midway through the cooking, I throw a second handful of wet husks on the coals, and finally a handful about 15-minutes before I'm ready to pull the meat off the smoker.
I use a "barrel" smoker that uses charcoal, not gas. And, I don't care if I'm doing hamburgers or steak, everything gets the hickory smoked treatment!
Talk about a hickory smoked piece of meat that will make your tongue slap your back teeth silly, this is it!
Since weather will dictate the amount of hickory husks available from year to year, I keep a 50-pound onion sack full of husks in my garage. They stay just like the day I picked them off the ground, and they never lose the flavor.
If you're lucky enough to live where you are able to get your hands on some Hickory Husks this fall, collect all you are able to. Put them in potato sacks if you don't have access to bigger onion sacks, and they'll keep for years.
These things are so good and add such a deep, rich flavor to meats, that I've got people that order them from me from FL, CA, and all points in between. You'll NEVER top the flavor.
One last note. Make certain you get the husks from the large (golf ball size) hickory nuts. The little hickory nuts (called "pig nuts" as farmers used to feed them tot he hogs,) don't have the flavor. And, they're so thin they burn right up and just don't impart the deep rich, sweet hickory flavor you get from the bigger hickory husks.
