Food Smoking is hot and on trend for many reasons. Don’t be surprised to find delicious smoke flavors imparted in such varied foods such as butter, fruit, yogurt, desserts and beverages as well as such traditional items as meats, marinades and sauces at today’s top tables. Smoking flavors are adding nuance to a variety of applications! This is Why Food Smoking Is The New Favorite Cooking Trend!

Over the last couple of years, smoke has become extremely integral to menus all around the world. From smoking meat for hours over a day, to smoking elements that make up a dessert, the ways in which smoke has been used in cooking have become more diverse over time, and have definitely challenged the way in which people think about using it with food.

It’s not only about the balance of seasoning and the flavoring of the food, but it’s also about the balance of the smoke and heat. Smoking is the precise application to impart deeper flavors and returning to wood for cooking.

Why Smoking Techniques Have Been The Focus As Of Late

Protein (meats) continuously gets the centre attention in food smoking, but vegetables and new experimental creations are also being made each day.

There is something so satisfyingly primal about the simplicity of wood and fire. It’s surely an attractive relief from finer techniques. Of course, cooking with smoke still involves a lot of skill, but it’s so fun and there’s plenty of room to experiment with different ingredients that would not usually come into contact with smoke. For instance, pitmasters and smoke hobbyists can experiment with various flavours from the wood or hot and cold smoking.

In the past you’d need to build a smokehouse, cut and dry the wood and babysit it to make sure you’re not adding ash flavor to your recipes. But for a while now, modern food smokers make it a log simpler and fun to experiment!

There’s a trend towards more of a general focus of simplicity in food. Small scale, sustainable farming gives us cooks and chefs some incredible produce to work with. To do the ingredient justice, sometimes simply smoking it with bisquettes with minimal babysitting brings out the best in the product. As mentioned before, it’s also a very primal process to take part in food smoking. When you are using great produce, you don’t want to do too much to it other than throw it in the smoker.

Why Smoke Is Integral To Every Menu

Any chef can experiment with lots of different dishes in a smoker. For instance, you can smoke fried chicken, and of course, there’s our signature brisket, which is smoked for hours.

The smoky flavour that you get from either cooking with bisquettes or the cold smoke adapter is really unique. You can use cold smoking with your desserts too. For example, you can make a maple syrup smoked ice cream, served with cashew nuts, brown sugar and hemp seed oil in a spun sugar cage. The ice cream is smoked to order using maple bisquettes, and served in a closed container so that when the diner lifts the lid, they smell all that fragrant maple smoke and then taste it again in the ice cream. Sounds fancy, but completely do-able!

You can get a salmon to the next level by making it using a smoker other than the regular oven!

Why Food Smoking Is A Special Process

The great thing about smoking is that there are so many subtleties that chefs, pit masters, and even the average Joe can play with. Different woods produce different flavours and of course, there’s cold smoking as well. There are so many ways to experiment! So we definitely encourage you to do so.

The more chefs get used to smoking food, the more there there will be a ‘smoke signature’ where you can tell which chef created the type of smoky flavour in your food.

“Our guests usually take photos and videos of the process of lifting the dome to release the smoke, and then they post it on social media and tag us,” says chef Dmitry Rodov of Duet Restaurant in New York’s West Village, which sells around 50 smoke dishes per week.

Smoking is already being introduced into all styles of kitchens, and not just savoury applications. Some kitchens are making smoked chocolate ice cream, there’s smoked soy products, and some great smoked salmon roe on the market. In the near future, smoking will become more and more commonplace on a day-to-day basis as opposed to gas cooking in restaurants and food manufacturing.

Conclusion

And there you have it, this is Why Food Smoking Is The New Favorite Cooking Trend! You can experiment with a smoker often and create your own repertoire of recipes and creations. Don’t forget to check out the Bradley Smoker blog for more delicious smoking tips and tricks.