Cooking on a BBQ is great for getting out of the steamy kitchen and enjoying what nature has to offer while we prepare our food. There is something about cooking in the open air that makes the food taste that little bit better, provided we haven't burnt it to a cinder on the grill.
Why not go one step further with you outdoor cooking and really infuse it with the taste of nature! A fantastic way to do this is by smoking your food. The smoker has been around for a long time but is starting to see a dramatic increase in popularity. Generally peoples interest and curiosity with food has grown immensely in the last ten years, and with that comes a desire to test out interesting ways to cook and flavour food.
The smoker offers the budding chef a great opportunity. The idea is that instead of grilling your meat under high temperature for a short time, smoking allows the meat to cook slowly under a comparatively low heat. The meat is cooked by the hot gasses and smoke from the fire, hence the name smoker.
The really interesting part is when you start to look at how you can vary the meat flavour by varying the fuel to the fire. Changing your fuel from charcoal to hardwood and then from one hardwood species to the next has a huge impact on the final taste of the cooked meat. The smoker offers an inquisitive mind a whole world of smoking options and experiments to be carried out!
Smokers are available to buy from all the usual home and garden stores, but continuing on with the theme of exploration and experimentation, a fun option is to design and build your own smoker. This is actually a lot easier than you might think. The only raw material you are likely to have to go looking for is an old oil drum.
Once you've got your oil drum you can arrange it in a chimney configuration, open at the top, with a fire at its base. After cutting a door in the side to allow access, a series of meat grates can be simply added to rest the meat on. Then let the culinary experimentation begin.
Jon has been making homemade BBQ's, roasters and smokers for years, for his free plans on how to build your own Meat Smoker, check out http://www.oildrumpigroasterdesigns.com
the freewheeling, high-heeled atmosphere, or the simple desire to kill and be killed, but we can say the pig is working it. Food Truck Wedding Catering
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