Large Big Green Egg, Weber Performer Deluxe, Weber Smokey Joe Silver, Fireboard Drive, 3 DigiQs, lots of Thermapens, and too much other stuff to mention.
In my young days I used to work with horses. I worked my way through college packing mules in the back country of the Sierras. I have used hay to add fuel to an old Weber BBQ. My recollections - alfalfa is strong smelling and smolders a lot more. Straw has a much lighter smoke but is hotter and ignites fast. Most of the time when I used it I had consumed a bit to much whiskey so I can't remember what the flavor profiles were. In fact, at the time I don't think I cared about flavor profiles. The thing to be careful about with hay is that it has to be dry. Hay can get moldy really easily. Now, Mosca, if you are going to give this a try and find that alfalfa is good they sell alfalfa and straw pellets (my folks' burro eats them) and they sell cubes that are shaped roughy like briquettes. Maybe you will report back on each of them! HA - I'm not going to be the first to try.
Mosca I wondered about hay, too. I wish Steve said more about hay. I also wonder if wood chips wouldn't work as well on a quick cook. They burn pretty quickly on a hot fire.
Large Big Green Egg, Weber Performer Deluxe, Weber Smokey Joe Silver, Fireboard Drive, 3 DigiQs, lots of Thermapens, and too much other stuff to mention.
I automatically wonder if he really meant hay or straw, since everyone tends to mean straw when they say hay...
I did a quick search of his forum before asking:
Originally posted by bluemountain
"In this episode you "Hay" smoked steak. I've worked and lived on farms here in the Northeast most of my life, and what you used looked like straw rather that hay. Am I correct? If not, what type of hay was it?"
Originally posted by Steven
Busted again! It was straw. Thanks for setting a city slicker straight. (But hay works equally well.)
Straw is what's left of grain plants after the seed has been harvested. Hay is grass plants cut and dried with the seeds still attached. Straw would be more from a crop such as wheat. Hay is usually animal feed.
No - both feed, although we only used oat for bedding. Horses could eat morning alfalfa and evening oat. Mules could not eat alfalfa. Before that I worked for a quarter horse trainer who we mixed twice daily oat and alfalfa flakes and the horses bedded in sawdust.
Hay...hay...hay...everybody relax. If it come outta the ground naturally and can be lit on fire, then man has probably cooked with it. If you make small batches of hay fire you would have less smoke just gotta have enough oxygen. May not be the greatest taste, but desperate times requires desperate measures.
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