Posts Tagged ‘smoker cooking’
Creating Unique Foods on the Smoker
For some of us, there is something strangely magical and, indeed, addictive about standing over a smoker to create what we hope will be edible art. I have fond memories of my first restaurant, where on Thursdays, we did serious barbecue. This, of course, involved getting outside at five in the morning to fire up the smoker, the meat having been carefully set to marinate in my barbecue sauce the night before. I knew that by six, my good friend Christopher would join me over the smoker, and we would have wonderful conversations fueled by the ingestion of a hallucinogenic combination of crisp early-morning air, dangerously strong coffee, and copious amounts of hickory smoke. For those of us with the love of smoke flavoring, there is nothing for it but to move beyond the limits of smoking meat and search for other foods which, eaten either solo or along with other dishes, extend the range of our eating pleasure. Here I will share with you some of my favorite discoveries and experiments in smoke-flavoring of foods, ranging from simple salt to more complex, combined products. For each of the following foods, unless otherwise mentioned, I tend to favor the use of hickory wood, and I smoke at a temperature of 200-225 degrees.
