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Smokers

I was a personal barbecue 'burning' enthusiast untill I tried a smoker. I always burnt everything because when the food was ready the guests were socialising and too engrossed to come for another 20 minutes. So then I tried a water smoker. Got the food cooking a couple of hours before the guests came. Found that it's almost impossible to overcook, and discovered the admiration of our visitors when I lifted the lid off, revealing tons of perfectly cooked, hot, delicious, moist food... Well... I was converted. I now have been known to even do the Sunday chicken or roast in it. Sad I know but true.

If you've never tried smoked food before then you are missing a treat. Smoked food (and we're not talking about kippers here, prepacked from the supermarket) really does have that extra special BBQd flavour.

What's so different about smoking? I hear you ask. Well... Crudely put there are three types of barbecuing - grilling, roasting and smoking. Grilling will do for steaks, chops, sausages, burgers and kebabs etc ie food that is cooked close to direct heat; at high temperature; and quickly. Meat juices drop onto something hot (coals, flames, lava rock, ceramic brickets or sear plates) vapourize and caramelise the food. Producing that recognisable BBQ flavour. Any heat in the air disappears past the food and is gone.

Put a lid on it though, turn down the heat and you can start to cook by that trapped hot air and also by the reflected heat bouncing off the lid. That's roasting. Just like mum doing the joint on a Sunday plus the benefits of the meat juices still hitting something hot and vapourising. You can even use a rotisserie. Great for whole joints of meat, chickens etc. Roasting obviously takes longer than a few minutes.

Throw on a couple of handfuls of flavoured wood or herbs and we are in a whole new world of flavours. Soaking them in water first (for 1/2 to 2 hours) makes them burn slower and smoke longer. Wrapping them in aluminium foil a couple of times and piercing a few holes has the same effect of slowing down the burn and increasing the smoke. The more you can remove the food from the direct heat the better. The food gets roasted & smoked rather than grilled. If you're using a hooded grill have the heat source or burner on at one end and the food at t'other.

If you then go and put the flavoured wood chips in a pan of water and simmer that lot, you start 'water smoking'. You end up cooking in a succulent steam which never gets much above 90-110 degrees centigrade. The food therefore, never has the moisture sucked out of it by the heat. In fact the meat sucks the smoky flavour right in deep. This process does take much longer than straight grilling of course! I fill up my smoker with burgers, chicken pieces, prawns etc and come back about 2-3 hours later. All the food is superbly cooked. Leave it another hour and it still won't be overcooked.

Wood chips.

Throw on a couple of handfuls of flavoured wood or herbs and we are in a whole new world of flavours. Soaking them in water first (for 1/2 to 2 hours) makes them burn slower and smoke longer. Wrapping them in aluminium foil a couple of times and piercing a few holes has the same effect of slowing down the burn and increasing the smoke.

OK. So what woods you wonder? Any wood that is not resinous (ie pine which will taste acidic) or pre-treated stuff like railway sleepers, bits of old fence etc. Woods are a bit like wine you either can tell the difference between... fruity... deep... sweet... mellow... subtle... smooth... tangy... or you cant. Me? I can't tell the difference between tangy smooth and subtly fruity - I just get on and enjoy trying them all. Either do that or stick with the ones you like most.

Best with? The more things you read the sooner you come to the conclusion that in a room of 12 people there's at least 14 fervently held conclusions. Me thinks taste could be subjective.

How much? Trial and error and preference. Try a couple or a few handfulls and start from there. Mix different woods and herbs if you like. Hey, there are no rules. You're in charge and you're eating the food so experiment.

Lumps, chunks, chips or dust.

In the rest of the world where forests are plentiful and in some country areas people burn old hardwood logs to power their barbecues. In the bulk of the UK we tend to use charcoal as the heat source, for two reasons - it's cheaper & also easier to get hold of than lumps of wood. Chunks are small lumps of wood and some people prefer including a couple of chunks with their charcoal. The range of chunks available are more limited than...

Chips. Most of us mortals who use charcoal, gas or electric for the heat source, use chips as the flavour source. There's at least half a dozen flavours of chips available. Just make sure that you keep them away from naked flames or else they burn up and turn into a heat source rather than the flavour source you were hoping for. Utilise the usual tricks of soaking, wrapping, boxing etc.

Dust tends to be used when cold smoking.

Wood pellets

We've just discovered these and started to import them from the US. They are more concentrated - so produce more smoke per weight; are more dense - so you don't need so many; and work out considerably cheaper - what more do I need to say? They also come in 11 - yes 11 - flavours. Including sassafras! Which I'm sure is something that Dick Dastardly's dog Mutley used to say.