by Steve » 08 Jun 2011, 12:30
With chips, I find it's best to put them in a foil parcel with some holes in it and lay that on top of your charcoal. I would never soak them as I think this just gives you a damp wood taste.
Adie used chips a lot on his WSM and he used to just throw a handful in every so often.
I use chunks that are between half and whole fist sized, I don't put these in anything, I nestle them in my unlit charcoal and then put my hot coals on top when cooking minion method. If using fully lit, I will just put my chunks directly on the charcoal.
While I agree with Vic that it's easy to oversmoke, I don't agree with the one hour thing. The way I set my cooker up it will generally smoke lightly for a few hours, afterthat it will burn clean. It depends on rate of smoke, you're looking for a thin wisp of blue smoke, not white smoke. Meat will only take smoke until it reaches a certain temperature anyway and different sized cuts will take more or less smoke too.
The key thing is to experiment but always er on the side of caution and build up to a smoke level you like.