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Smoker BBQ special – All about smoked food
Feb
We went to a posh restaurant on the south coast. They were aiming for a Michelin Star and smoked food was the big thing on the menu that evening. The flavours were unbelievable, extraordinary, incredible. We got home and decided to create some imaginative smoked cuisine ourselves – and the rest is history. Years later we’re still smokin’, folks!
Here’s everything you need to know about smoking food outdoors, along with some top notch products and accessories designed for the job. Walk this way for delicious…
About smoked food
In the past people smoked food to preserve it. Today it’s a flavour thing and a hot trend. People all over the UK are happily smoking meats, fish and more scented with aromatic wood chips to create delicate smoky flavours. Even fruit. Seriously. Read on and see.
Smoking food also makes it tender, another reason why it was so handy in the olden days when you didn’t just eat the choice cuts of an animal, you ate the lot. Once the collagen in meat is tenderised by smoke, it breaks down to leave the cooked meat succulent and moist. If you only had a tough piece of gristle for your tea, smoking it would make the meat a lot more palatable – and it’d be less likely to break your teeth!
What is smoking food? There are two types of smoking, hot and cold. This post is about hot smoking, which happens at temperatures between 80 and 120°C, great for BBQs, where it slow-cooks foods while infusing them with flavour.
You might be up for investing in a brilliant home BBQ smoker for your garden. But you can also create superb smoked treats in other ways, using a small portable smoker. We’ll give you some ideas about products, large and small, later on.
So what foods can you smoke? Think salmon, mackerel and haddock. Think smoked ham and smoked sausages, pork and more. You can smoke mushrooms with ease and vegetables smoke beautifully to give you truly unique foodie experiences. In fact you can smoke more or less any food, including cheeses and even nuts. Can you imagine how fab smoked peanuts or chestnuts taste?
Fruit can be smoked even though it does sound a bit weird. It’s actually lovely. Think about experimenting with smoked avocado, pineapple, peach, asparagus, or aubergine. Smoke an entire dish of casserole or stew if you like. Oh, and don’t forget tofu. Smoke adds an amazing flavour.
Over-smoked food tastes acrid. It’s awful. Aim for a subtler flavour and remember food left anywhere near smoke will eventually acquire some of the smoke’s flavour. That’s what smoke does. It sticks to your hair, clothes and everything else – as you’ll know if you’ve ever had a bonfire. Because of this, it’s actually really easy to smoke food. It’s almost like food wants to be smoked 😉
How to smoke food
One thing to mention up front – food smoking is naturally a slow process, not for the impatient. But believe us when we say it is definitely worth the wait!
Smoking, grilling and BBQing are all different. They can all be done on a wood fire, charcoal, or gas but they’re pretty different. Its good to know what the differences are.
- Smoking takes the longest with a temperature range of just 52C to 105C
- Grilling is a high temperature thing, requiring a short but fierce cooking temperature of 200C to 290C
- BBQ food is all about cooking low and slow, taking longer at temperatures of 90C to 150C
How to go about hot-smoking food
Fire up your cooking equipment to around 105C, high enough to cook meat or fish. Hot smoking actually cooks the food, unlike the cold smoking process, so it’s ready to eat as soon as it’s smoked. Always make sure meat and fish are properly cooked through. Because hot smoking doesn’t preserve the food, if there’s any left over you’ll need to stash it in the fridge.
What kind of BBQ food smoker to choose
Next, the smoker itself. Most run on pellets, charcoal, or wood. They come either vertical or horizontal, and both perform supremely well.
Horizontal smokers have two parts, a box for the heat source and a longer chamber or barrel with a chimney , which is where the food goes. Shut the door, heat up the fuel and heat from the box goes into the chamber, then out through the chimney. These ‘offset smokers’ distribute heat across the cooking chamber evenly. You can use yours as a grill if you like, and they’re perfect for cooking up a storm for lots of people.
Vertical smokers are easy to use and affordable. They burn a wider choice of fuel but can’t be used as a grill and lose heat and smoke when you open them up. Horizontal smokers are easier to use, cook more food and can also be used to grill. They tend to be bigger.
A vertical smoker is often portable. It’ll be made up of a heat source at the bottom, a water pan to keep the air moist, and a smoking chamber with hooks and racks for the food. All you do is put the food inside, fill the water pan, add fuel and light your smoker. The heat is directly below the food, easy to regulate.
What about smoking food with a separate food smoker?
So far we’ve looked at gems like offset BBQ smokers and cookhouses. When you’d rather keep life super-simple, there are barbecue accessories to do the job.
This nifty Chiminea, Firepit and BBQ Food Smoker is perfect for creating beautiful smoked foods simply. A removable smoker made out of steel coated with tough Teflon, all you do is stand it on top of the chimney part of your chimenea, a great place to cook thanks to the heat it chucks out. It fits most chims, giving you another cool way to cook on a single handy heat source. The pack also includes a pan for smoking the chips. This model is ideal for small gardens and patios.
Then there’s the Norfolk Grills BBQ Smoker Box, probably the simplest solution of all. Basically a specially designed, very tough metal box, you just add your wood chips or pellets to then sit it over your open fire, BBQ or inside a chimenea. The smoke rising from the slow-burning wood gradually adds a smoke flavour to the food cooking on the grill above.
Which woods to smoke food with?
Just like in your kitchen, you want to pair a mild smoky flavour with delicate-flavoured food like fish, seafood, shellfish and chicken. The same goes for strong flavours, which complement strongly-flavoured meat – steaks, sausages, burgers – duck, cheeses and so on.
If you need to smoke a meat like beef for a long time, to cook it through properly, use a mild wood so it doesn’t end up tasting like a bonfire. Oak is nice and subtle, a deliciously mild smoke taste for every sort of food.
Hardwood is what you need. Think oak, beech, birch, apple wood, cherry, pear and nut woods. Every wood tastes distinctly different, making it wonderfully easy to get obsessed with creating the perfect blend for each recipe. You’ll love the vanilla smokiness, edged with toasty aromas, that you get with oak, and hickory is a lot like bacon, nice for vegetarians and Vegans.
Avoid softwoods. Soft wood smoke tastes awful and wood from trees with needles tastes even worse because it contains so much resin.
Where to buy wood chips or pellets for smoking foods? Easy. They’re easy to find online, including on Amazon.
Fabulous photos – 5 mighty fine food smokers
Pictures speak a thousand words. Here are some photos of food smokers we sell in our store. Because we insist on quality they’re all wise buys. Enjoy the look of these these splendid cooking companions. Just click on the link below each photo for the product details, including more pictures.
