I am new to this cooking Q, But I love what I have cooked. As I read through the forum trying to learn there are a few posts that worry me. People talk abought using hard wood lumber scraps to cook with. I dry lumber for a living. When you dry hardwood on a large scale you overdry the lumber by 1%. Then at the end put raw steam from a boiler into the lumber kiln and inject 1% water back into the wood. This sofens the wood to make it machine easyer. This steam has some nasty chemicals in it to protect the boiler. Exposer would be very small, but cooking wood is cheap why risk it. Another kiln man trick, You can dry your small wood pieces in a microwave oven. If it has a low setting and a turntable on the bottom. Put wood in for 1 min. at low setting with turntable running. Then take wood out of the oven for two min, to let it cool off. Do this 3 or 4 times and the wood will be dry. Caution do not use a high setting the wood will burn. My wife does not want a smoked microwave.
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