Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Dunes Pepper,

Hello.

Do you have the Alder crispa near your pond, which produces Dunes pepper, to accompany the products of your hunt this fall.





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azteca, we have alders along watercourses here in Colorado. This time of year I believe all the seed heads are dried up and shattering.
When were your pics taken? How do you use/prepare the "peppers"?

Hello.

Only the Alder crispa gives the Dune pepper.

We collect the small cones in November, dry them for about 1 month and put them in a mortar.




Another which gives wild pepper, the Myrica gale, we use its small yellow cones and its leaves.
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Thanks azteca. I plan to pick some of those peppers from our local wild alders next year and try them out.
I use quite a lot of alder wood for smoking meats while grilling.

4Corners, what type of wood do you use for smoking fish? Does it depend on the kind of fish?

anthropic, I bring many varieties of wood home from my work as an arborist. I've tried Gambles oak, a species of white oak; plum, cherry, and peach; apple and pear; and the alder and river birch which grow along our streams.

I'm not picky; every one of those woods has added quality flavors to any fish, wild or domestic turkey, chicken and blue grouse, and beef and whitetail. Pork, too, of course.

I have one of the outer burners of my gas grill reserved for the smoking wood. Most commonly I fire up the grill, turn off the burner under the wood after several minutes and extinguish the flames to get the smoke going, then put the food to be grilled on adjacent burners.

I have also successfully smoked several birds and trout/kokanee salmon by keeping the grill temperature down near 200 degrees.

I probably use more alder than any of the others. I have so much of it. But then I have so much of the others,too. I think as long as you don't use pine or juniper/cedar, the outcome will be tasty.

We use hickory and or post oak and get no complaints on pork butt

I tend to use a lot of wild cherry for smoking meat, its not really thick around this area but usually reasonably able to find a tree or two here and there, we cleared out 5A for a little subdivision a couple yrs ago and got a truck load of it, still using some of it for everything, including bon fires, gives off a pleasant, non harsh smoke.
I like to cut down a little tree sometime late fall, Oct or Nov, when the sap is out of it, and by the next summer it will burn like seasoned wood.
I have a pellet smoker for small cooks these days but I have a whole hog rotisserie that I built back in the day, that I like to burn Cherry wood in.

Anybody used mulberry for smoking?

(That is the only "fruit" tree that I have at our farm.)