Being a Chef for the past 10 years I've only just discovered how to smoke food. Well properly that is. Using the right kind of foods given the equipment we have domestically is important to consider too.
Because we can only smoke foods using a small oven were only smoking to flavour the food, not cooking it. You would need to smoke most meat and fish for days in order to cook it right through.
So here are the basic essentials:
- Wood chip. This can be purchased at barbeque's galore in a massive bag for quite cheap. Small size wood chip too i might add.
- A oven.
- Frying pan or skillet.
- Wire wrack or perforated tray. ( tray with small holes in the bottom)
- Fish, more so the pink flesh fish, salmon and trout.
- Chicken, the thighs are the best bit as they have a little more fat in them, but smoking a whole chicken is still awesome.
- Raw ham and turkey.
- Duck, even though the skin is quite fatty.
- Tomatoes, yep they rock. However you must blanch them in hot water for 10 seconds, remove the skin, cover with a some salt to draw some moisture out, cure for 1 hour, rinse and then smoke... hmm its a process but they taste so good.
- Depending on what you intend to smoke, a few pieces of fish or some cut up chicken then i would suggest 1 cup full of wood chip should do the trick. A whole chicken I'd use 3 cups.
- So all that's required is you basically need to cook the wood chip in a pan until it all turns black and starts smoking. Quickly place in the oven with your ingredients on top of the wrack, close the door and smoke for 20 minutes. Bigger amounts of food require a little extra time and wood chip.
- Once the food is smoked we then must cook it. Cook the item how you normally would and enjoy.
