Take a tip from the experts: use barbecue wood chips to spice up your grill. Connoisseurs know that good barbecue requires a lot more than just putting some meat on a grill. Renowned experts in the field such as Bobby Flay, Dave Foley, Butch Lupinetti and many others swear by barbecue wood chips. With summer grilling season upon us, here are some tips on how to get BBQ wood chips into your grill and start cooking like the pros.

Wood chips are used in your grill in addition to charcoal or gas. They can be sprinkled over coals or placed inside a small smoker box on a gas or electric grill, and the smoke they create lends a distinctive aroma and appealing flavor to all your grilled meats.

Whether you use a charcoal, gas, or electric grill, wood chips will give you authentic barbecue flavor. You can also buy a special smoker box to put on your gas or charcoal grill so you can get that “wood smoke” flavor. Read the instructions for your particular grill before attempting to do this.

Make sure your wood chips don’t end up burning like a campfire; the resulting dense smoke will spoil food with an acrid taste. Expert grillers advise that wood chips be soaked briefly before use, about fifteen minutes or so, and then allowed to drip dry for a few more minutes. Ideally, your wood chips will be moist but not saturated.

If you are using a smoker on your grill, it is probably not necessary to soak the wood chips before using them. Soaking the wood chips will allow them to burn longer, but if you’re cooking a steak, you probably don’t want to grill it for very long.

Wood chips are available in a wide range of varieties to suit all tastes; your local vendor should be able to advise you on how to pair a wood chip with a particular meat.

In general, if your meat is lighter, you’ll need a milder wood chip flavor. However, you can also try “heavier” flavors with lighter meats, such as using mesquite with chicken. If you are going to do this, try using a few wood chips instead of many to see what this does to your flavor.

With its more delicate aroma, alder wood chips go best with lighter meats such as fish and poultry. Savory woody fruits like apple, cherry, peach, and plum go best with beef, chicken, and pork, and also add an interesting flavor to roasted vegetables.

Mesquite barbecue wood chips, perhaps the most famous variety, pair best with heavier meats like beef, lamb, and duck. Also extremely popular, the resonant aroma of hickory pairs best with beef and pork.

Just remember that BBQ wood chips are a flavor enhancer and not the food itself, so don’t skimp on your meats! Make sure you have a good cut, fresh and well prepared. Otherwise, your fancy wood chips will be wasted on an inferior piece of meat that no amount of grilling experience can recover.

Using wood chips for barbecue takes us back to that glorious time when all good cooking was done over an open wood fire. Don’t settle for just a grilled steak or char-grilled tender chicken breast. Cook like a pro and enjoy the vibrant aromas and flavors that come from cooking with BBQ wood chips.