Since this started as an old thread,I'm curious what we are talking about cooking/smoking.
As most of us know,the low/slow cooking method is all about rendering fat and breaking down collagen over long periods of time.
The standard CS models were developed by the owner's family as brisket cookers,when folks cooked packers for 24 hrs at 180*,and they are still great.
I used to try to cook anything that could be crammed into my Smokette,whether it made sense or not.
After a couple years of proving I could make something smokey and cooked to some degree of doneness,I gradually came to the realization that not all things need to be smoked,and weren't always improved.
I ,also,tinkered with every flavor/combo of woods in various composition.
After a couple years,I realized that most of us could pick up branch scraps around the neighborhood that would do well in most cooks and I could buy enough wood at a box store for $10 to last for years in my CS.
I realized that after being around the cooker all day,I became desensitized to the change in flavors of the woods and that it was also very rare that any diners could tell one wood from another.
Yes,when grilling, they could stand back and smell the smoke coming off the grill and feel it was pleasant.
They could tell that the efficient CS could oversmoke the product and hurt the flavors.
Now there are some products that we feel only need a wisp of smoke flavor to enhance them.Short cooks and minimum wood can help these.
Some folks like to cook chicken in their well seasoned cooker with no wood in the woodbox and rely on the subtle flavor blends of light rubs and bastes to enhance the well cooked poultry.
Lastly,there might be the occasional user for cold smoking that is doing sausage,bacon,fish,cheese,etc that is looking for some smoke without cooking the product too soon.
Those folks experiment with accessory smoke boxes,sawdust,wood shavings,and occasionally even pellets.
A couple thoughts would be that it can be fun to experiment , or sometimes in emergency to make do with whatever smoke source we can lay our hands on.
Many of us "older folks" have noticed that good cooks usually tend to settle in with the products that are saved,or enhanced,by the cooker and using the minimum mix of the wood sources that the cooker was designed for.
Plus,when all the secret tips/experiments are behind them,they can focus on learning how to best use their cooker to most correctly cook the product.
Some folks on here call this the K.I.S.S. technique.
