The process of preserving food, cooking, or flavoring by subjecting food to smoke from the smoldering or burning plant materials is called Smoking. Mostly, wood is used for this purpose. The most popular smoked foods are fish and meat; the common choices amongst the vegeterain food delicacies vegetables and cheese dishes. Beverages such as lapsang Souchong tea, Rauchbier, and whisky are smoked too.
Types of Smoking Methods
Generally, there are three types of smoking methods; they are –
• Hot Smoking,
• Smoke Baking or Smoke Roasting, and
• Cold Smoking.
In case of hot smoking, food is exposed to heat and smoke in a regulated environment. Even the food items that are hot smoked already, can be cooked or reheated again; they are healthy and delicious and one can eat them without cooking again.
Talking about smoke baking or smoke roasting, it is a method, which has the qualities of smoking with either baking or roasting. This method of smoking is also called as “pit-baking”, “pit-roasting”, or “barbecuing”.
Coming to cold smoking, it is used as an enhancement to flavor for eatables such as scallops, salmon, chicken breasts, beef steaks, and pork chops. In this process, the food item is subjected to smoke for short time and later flavor will be added to the food.
Different Types of Smokers
Currently, three types of smokers exist in the market; they are
• Charcoal Smokers,
• Propane Smokers, and
• Smokers based on Smoke Box Method.
Let us discuss them in detail.
Charcoal Smokers
Considering American BBQ smoking methods, there are of two types – Upright Drum Smoker (generally known as Ugly Drum Smoker or UDS) and the offset charcoal smoker.
Ugly Drum Smoker
This smoker is also known as the Upright Drum Smoker. Its name itself tells everything about the process of smoking; in this method, an upright steel drum is used for hot smoking purpose.
There are plenty of methods for this process. However, the basic method includes the usage of a steel drum, a basket to grip charcoal at the bottom, and baking racks at the top. These are all enveloped by a ventilated lid, and work with different steel drums (85 gallons, 55 gallons, and 30 gallons); with the most common size being 55 gallons.
Offset Smokers
The major highlights of the Offset Smokers are its cylindrical shape, smaller diameter, and shorter size. For meat cooking, a small fire is given in the fire box in which airflow is controlled very tightly. With the help of heat and smoke, fire is drawn via an opening or connecting pipe to the chamber of cooking. Most of the developers follow this principle for achieving high performance.
Propane Smoker
It is a modern method in which, meat is cooked in a controlled environment. The basic differences are the smoke source and heat source. The heat is developed with the help of a gas burner in a propane smoker. This remains under an iron or steel box that has the charcoal or wood, which is mainly used to generate smoke.
Smoke Box Method
This process is a usual standard method, which utilizes a 2 box system; the food box and the fire box. Typically the fire box is placed underneath or adjacent to the cooking box, to be regulated to a better degree. And, the rest of the things remain more or less the same.