New Dimension of Taste: Smoking Food at Home

A few days ago, I came across the Zwilling smoker set and immediately knew, this is (besides a Sous Vide cooking equipment - blog post will follow soon on that topic) the thing that is still missing in my decadent kitchen. The Zwilling smoker set consists of a sturdy pan that you can use with any kind of stove, some pieces that will help keeping the smoking wood chips separated from the food and a tight fitting lid.

The idea is, to put the wood chips in the pan, cover them with a steal plate having holes for the smoke to escape and head the pan until the wood starts to turn to coal. This will release the smoke and infuse the food that was placed on a grill. The tight lid will keep all the smoke inside the pan and nothing is supposed to escape. I was surprised, how well this actually worked, there were some smoky flavours escaping, but the kitchen did not turn into a complete chimney as it did last time I smoked some duck the poor man’s way…

I was smoking some maple sirup glazed deboned chicken thighs with some birch chips mixed with chips from old Jack Daniels barrels. I smoked the chicken for about 30 minutes and put it in the oven for another 15 minutes and the result was amazing. The maple sirup glaze combined with the smokey flavours were amazing. And the chicken was extremely juicy thanks to the comparably low temperature during the smoking process. The short period in the oven was purely for caramelising the remaining glaze that I distributed before hand.

Since the recipe for the maple sirup glaze is most likely copyrighted, I will only give the ingredients:

• maple sirup
• sweet coarse mustard (bavarian style)
• Dijon mustard
• herbes de provence
• Umami No 5 paste

As you might have already guessed from my post, I am really excited about this smoking set. This definitively opens up a new dimension of cooking!