I used to do commercial landscape and had to clear a property of old growth olive trees because they were fruiting olives. The property managers felt it was cheaper to replace them than pay for clean-up and chemical treatments.
that being said I have at least 2 cords of unsplit well seasoned(several years in the Arizona summer) olive wood. I love to cook with it. It burns very clean and easy to control. However it is a real PIA to split. When you split it, it smells like olive oil. Has anyone ever cooked with it before?
I only experienced it when attending a Greek festival and they were grilling chickens. It was good, kind of like mild mesquite. The chicken was delicious. No experience with a long smoke but I would certainly try it.
"Well seasoned" in the Arizona heat is both a good and bad thing. We have similar issues here in Texas. Most professional smokers who are very tuned into their woods will tell you that it's best to burn splits that are somewhere around 20% moisture content. This gives a good balance of fuel for heat and smoke for flavor. Reality is, for the home smoker, we don't usually go through wood supplies fast enough to stay in that "ideal" moisture range. The splits in my supply stack run in the 8% area, yours may be around that too, maybe less. Moisture measuring tools are fairly inexpensive and are useful for knowing where you are. The lower moisture content typically means the split will burn more quickly and produce more heat than smoke (relatively speaking). You can modify that by reducing the spacing between the splits in the fire box so there is less airflow which will produce more smoke (again, relative).
As for using olive as a smoking wood, I don't have personal experience, but have seen videos where folks have talked about using it and having success. That said, it's a matter of taste............you need to test it out to see if it appeals to your taste buds or not. Keep in mind the above comments that how you run your fire will "adjust" the smoke flavor, so multiple tests might be necessary to dial it in.
Funny, just the opposite in St. Pete. The high humidty and wet weather sometimes requires more than 12 months to season. Winters are drier, so usually two winters.
Scotch: Current favorite- The Arran (anything by them), Glenmorangie 12yr Lasanta, sherry cask finished. The Balvenie Double Wood, also like Oban 18yr, and The Glenlivet Nadurra (Oloroso sherry cask finished) among others. Neat please.
About meReal name: Aaron
Location: Farwell, Michigan - near Clare (dead center of lower peninsula).
Occupation:
Healthcare- Licensed & Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) at MyMichigan Health, a University of Michigan Health System.
I love trying new woods and I would love to try olive but I don't believe I've ever had the chance to. I wonder if instead of splitting it you could just hack off rounds of it with a miter saw for the pieces small enough to fit on one, or chainsaw if not, chunk style. Otherwise I've noticed with well seasoned thincker apple pieces there's no hand-splitting, with apple often being so hard, one needs a wood splitter.
They are average 18in round and 30in long. Olive is super dense and requires a splitter for sure, its also super dense and burns really slow. I was at a steakhouse in Vegas that exclusively used olive wood.
Other wood i like to burn for heat is eucalyptus, but i have been told dont cook with it because it produces toxic smoke.
The furthest 'stray' from standard woods that I've used is lilac, and it's excellent. I'll have to do a google search and see if I can find some olive chunks, you have me curious.
John "JR"
Minnesota/ United States of America
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Get a maul and a good splitting stump. Cutting the rounds down to a smaller size will make spitting them much easier.
It is important to have a solid base to split on so your energy goes through the axe/maul and into the wood and not into the ground when you strike it. You can also rent a splitter and get it done that way. If you lived closer, I would let you use mine. I never use it anymore, I like to split by hand.
I know you asked about whether or not it is good to cook with......sure! If it is a hard wood, than it will be great. It is much more about fire management than it is about what kind of wood you are burning.
For sure. Once you have fire management down it's fun to do a side by side cook on two similar cookers (2 kettles, for example), cook the same foods seasoned the same way using a different wood type on each cooker in order to do an A-B comparison. Fun stuff! You can really learn the subtleties of the different wood smokes that way. Much harder to sense when cooking from one night or one week to the next.
We rent a towable log splitter from time to time. We used to have yards full of mesquite. But since we retired from doing landscape we don't have the endless supply we used to. We split some of that olive and to hear a 20 ton splitter load up is crazy.
Yeah, anything nasty, I throw those rounds in the gentleman's fire outside of our sauna! I have a 24-Ton and she loads up when I have a real knotty or crotch of oak. The worst is elm. Grows twisted, never wants to be split. That elm will stop the ram on the 24-Ton. (Especially if it was standing dead)
Scotch: Current favorite- The Arran (anything by them), Glenmorangie 12yr Lasanta, sherry cask finished. The Balvenie Double Wood, also like Oban 18yr, and The Glenlivet Nadurra (Oloroso sherry cask finished) among others. Neat please.
About meReal name: Aaron
Location: Farwell, Michigan - near Clare (dead center of lower peninsula).
Occupation:
Healthcare- Licensed & Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) at MyMichigan Health, a University of Michigan Health System.
Found some olive chunks on eBay, ordered. I look forward to trying it out. I used to have 22ish types of wood on hand, I'm probably down to a dozen or so now, time to build back up.
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