Occasionally, one of my favorite websites, Woot! features the cedar wraps by TrueFire Gourmet.  I went ahead and ordered a pack a couple of weeks ago to see how they fair in the kitchen.  What makes these different from the cedar planks is that the cedar wraps are made for the oven and not for the grill.

When I received the box in the mail, I wasn’t sure if anything was in it.  The package of cedar wraps was much smaller and lighter than I had expected.  Then again, the only way to wrap wood around food is to make sure the wood is thin.

The instructions for the wraps are easy to follow.  Just soak in water for 30 minutes, wrap around the food, and keep the wrap in place with a scallion or something similar, and throw it in the oven to cook.

For my test, I chose salmon and beef.  Since each wrap only measured 6 inches by 6 inches, there isn’t much real estate for the food.  In fact, I had to cut down the portion of salmon by half .

I placed the wrapped food in the oven and cooked it at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.  A pleasant scent of cedar filled the apartment as the food was cooking.  It felt like I was cooking in the woods.  After the timer went off, the moment of truth came.

First off, the wraps do keep the food moist, but that’s a no brainer,  seeing that  the damp wood not only releases the wood flavor while cooking, but steam as well.  Second of all, the meat absorbed the scent of cedar much better than the fish, so much in fact it was a tad overpowering.  And finally, the food had a woody scent to it, but don’t count on a smoky accent to the meat.  I guess if left in the oven longer, the cedar would start to burn, but that would also overcook the fish and meat.

All in all, I wasn’t blown away by the product and isn’t something I would use regularly, perhaps when I have friends over for dinner, so the 24 sheets of cedar wraps will last me quite a bit.  So far, I’ve only found these on Woot!  They’ve been featured twice in the past month, so visit daily!