1. Peach Wood is my Favorite
Typically of the fruit woods, my go to is cherry as cherry has a way of offering cuts of meat – specifically pork – an awesome red hue.
For something like pork butt which is going to smoke for an extended period of time, this hue is going to be achieved no matter what.
The meat is interacting with the smoke for 6+ hours in some cases and will naturally take on smoke – where-as ribs are smoked for 2-4 hours.
Here’s a pork butt after smoking 3 hours and 30 minutes with Peach:
Here’s the pork butt after 5 hours and 14 minutes of smoking:
As is evident from the above photos, the pork butt has a deep mahogany color and looks awesome.
Keep in mind too, my rub had no paprika (which most commercial rubs use low grade paprika for the red color, not for taste) and is actually a honey mustard rub:
Some people might argue with me and say that Apple, Cherry, and Peach (all fruit woods) are indistinguishable in the final product, but to me, peach has a stronger “smoke” flavor than apple and cherry.
In my opinion, it’s the perfect amount of smoke to compliment the pork.
With pork butt I like to taste in the following order:
- The intrinsic porky flavor of pulled pork
- The dry rub / finishing sauce
- The smoke
Where-as some of the other woods mentioned below will reverse this order of taste.
It’s worth noting – Peach can be a hard to source – if I don’t have it I’ll use Cherry + Pecan.
2. Cherry Wood Mixed with Pecan
Here’s a rack of pork ribs smoked with Cherry for 2 hours and the rub was just salt and pepper.
These ribs are ready to wrap.
Typically though, 2 hours isn’t enough time to offer ribs tons of “smoky” flavor and wrapping them with limit the smoke even more.
To get around this I’ll usually mix cherry with pecan just to supplement the smoke – pecan doesn’t tend to burn as long but it’s definitely smokier (it’s a species of hickory).
If you have friends or family you’re smoking meat for, you’d be safe to use something like Cherry if you aren’t sure how much smoke they like.
Just to sort of get this out of the way too – Just because peaches and cherries may be sweet, it doesn’t necessarily mean the wood smoke tastes sweet; Granted, it definitely smells sweet.
Personally, with cherry I can always pick up on a slight sweetness – whereas with peach it’s a slightly stronger smoke flavor and no sweetness.
3. Hickory is Punchier and a Safe Bet
If you’re smoking for a crowd that you know likes smoke, hickory is a great way to achieve that.
It’s like I said above though, the order of taste may be changed.
With hickory I find the taste profile is reversed:
- Hickory smoke flavor (more pungent than peach)
- Pork flavor
- Dry rub / Spices / Finishing sauce
Due to how large some pork butts can be – up to 10+ lbs for bone-in butts – hickory wood is a good option as you pull the bark and musculature together.
You also have people who don’t trim fat but remove it later – so you’re removing bark and smoke because the smoke is part of the bark.
Meaning, there’s less of a chance you miss out on the smoke flavor – since it’s stronger.
Be mindful with hickory too – it’s quite easy to over-smoke foods with.
Hickory also lends itself to adding a dark mahogany color to smoked meats – for something like pork butt this is useful as one of the main goals is to build bark.
A Quick Word About Hardwood “Flavors”
A lot of websites on the internet will tend to steer beginners to smoking meat in the wrong direction when it comes to hardwood smoke.
You’ll likely find articles – much like this one – that will tell you, the reader, to use X type of wood with Y type of meat – like pork butt.
The truth is, hardwood smoke exists on a spectrum from mild to strong.
- The mild smoke woods include fruit-woods like apple, cherry, and peach.
- In the middle lies oak, pecan, and hickory.
- At the end of the spectrum is mesquite – which most folks would consider strong.
After this point the articles with then become super nuanced and will start describing “flavors” like they’re a sommelier describing wine.
Hardwood smoke flavor doesn’t work like that.
Rather, the chemical byproducts of wood combustion are not universal and actually depends more on factors like the species, age of the tree, and mineral composition of the soil.
Meaning, the “flavor” of the smoke can change based on where the tree was grown.
