A subtle hint of woodsy smoke is one of our absolute favorite flavors in a dish - meat-based or vegetarian. Of course, cooking food on a charcoal grill will give us the flavor we crave, but we can think of a few more ways...
1. Make an Indoor Smoker: It's not as hard as you might think and can be done quite easily on your stove top using a wok and a grilling grate. Here's how - but don't forget to take the battery out of your smoke alarm!
2. Add a Strip or Two of Bacon: Cut the bacon into pieces and render out the fat before any other cooking. Use the rendered bacon fat to cook the rest of the ingredients and then add the bacon back in at the end for a subtle smokiness. Smoked chorizo, tasso, and other cured meats also work very well here.
3. Cook with a Dark Smoky Beer: Used in a marinade or substituted for some of the broth, dark beers will add a very nice undertone to the dish. Look for porters and stouts, and ask the sales person for help with flavor profiles. For smokiness, we like cooking with Guinness and the smoked porter from Stone Brewing Company.
4. Use Liquid Smoke: Some people consider this cheating, but we think it makes sense for small apartment living when grilling isn't possible. Liquid smoke is actually an all-natural product and adds great smoky flavor to slow-cooked braises and stews.
5. Add Lapsang Souchong: A few teaspoons of this tea works well for adding smoky flavors to vegetarian dishes. Buy the tea looseleaf from a reliable seller and grind it into a powder using a spice grinder.
6. Add Molasses: Molasses is a common ingredient in a lot of barbecue sauces, and we can take advantage of its dark, earthy flavor to add smoky depth to glazes, sauces, and even soups. Start with one tablespoon and add more as desired.
7. Use Smoked Spices: Some spices come with their own smoky flavor, like cumin, while others have been smoked before being ground, like smoked paprika. Add a half teaspoon at a time until you get the flavor you want.
8. Sprinkle on Smoked Salt: Use smoked salt as a finishing touch, particularly on individual dishes like hamburgers or over a pasta dish. Don't bother adding smoked salt to things like whole pots of soup - you can wind up over-salting the dish before you can even taste the smoke.
What other ways do you add "smoky" to a dish?
Related: Taste Boosters: Best Meats for Flavor
(Image: Flickr member crinxols licensed under Creative Commons)
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a simple way to to heat a piece of charcoal till its red hot. with a pair of tongs, place it on foil on top of the food you're trying to smoke. then add a tablespoon or so of oil to the coal in foil and immediately cover the dish when the coal starts to smoke. keep it covered for 5 mins or so... its smokey!
If you want smoke from beer, look for a rauchbier - literally, "smoked beer."
I got a Camerons stovetop smoker ( http://tinyurl.com/yb3htr ) for christmas one year and absolutely love it. It's great because it came with a bunch of different types of wood chips and I can use it as a regular roasting pan when I'm not using it as a smoker. It does a really great job of adding a wonderful smokey flavor to whatever it is I'm making and it's fun to experiment with different wood chips and add things like beer or bourbon to the drip pan makes to get different kinds of flavors. The smoker I got doesn't leak too much smoke into the house at all so it doesn't seem smokey. But, it does make the house smell FANTASTIC. The point of smoking is to go low and slow so the chips are smoldering rather than burning. Also, I've been able to get really great results by taking the smoker off of the stove top and sticking the whole thing in the oven at a low temp and roasting the meat for another 4-6 hours to really let the fat render out and let the meat tenderize.
Yeah... it's kind of an all day affair if you want to make some true smokehouse style grub, but I kind of enjoy it. I get to hang out at the house on a sunday with my cats and my husband and sip on some bourbon and make some killer sides. Good times!
i've had one cup of lapsang souchong in my life - and could barely drink it because it TASTED LIKE BACON! not that that was a bad thing, just weird as a tea. so maybe this really is a good use for it!
I use lapsang souchong all the time in cooking... I just mash it up with my mortar and pestle. It's delicious. I don't usually drink it straight, but a hot cup with a wee bit of whiskey on a cold day is pretty fabulous.