When this girl gets smoking, all food items become suspect. This is the maxim I’ve been developing with my new smoker. The smoker has several shelves of space within, so it only makes sense to fill it up when ever I smoke something.
Perusing the food blogs Ideas in Food and 101 Cookbooks have helped spur my smoking creativity.
What non-meat items can you smoke?
I’ve been using cold smoke for non-meat smokings.
- salt: spread in a pan and placed on the top shelf to catch moisture drippings. I’ve run my salt through two sessions of apple wood smoking. It takes several hours for it to turn color.
- maple syrup: poured out thin in a pan. I’ve been using my smoked maple syrup in cornbread, beans, and chili.
- sugar: I spread it out in a pan just like salt. The top layer only, shows coloring from the smoking, so I like to stir it around through out the smoking process. I’ve enjoyed using this smoked sugar in buckwheat pancakes and pralines.
- almonds: smoking your own nuts leads to creative candy projects and smoked homemade nut butters. It’s a great adventure.
- butter: yeah, I’m talking about putting jars of your homemade butter in the smoker for a couple of hours. The butter will likely melt as it smokes, but that’s ok. You can always pour off the separated melted smoked butter into a new container to separate it from the milk solids at the bottom. Developing this smoked butter into brown butter could lead to interesting brown butter ice cream experiments.
jalapeños: this is a great first step to making your own chipotles in adobo sauce. These smoked peppers would also be interesting added to vinegar or vodka.
Brainstorming with friends have yielded the following to-smoke list:
- roma tomatoes
- chantrelles
- hops
- eggs
- cheese
- spices: paprika, cinnamon, cumin, peppercorns…
- blueberries
- garlic cloves
Hmmm… I’m almost running out of things to not smoke.
14 Comments
I’m intrigued by the idea of smoked salt, and I think smoked garlic sounds like heaven!
Eggplant and all summer squash types are great smokables. Smoked leeks are great as well.
smoked mushrooms works ok, but the fungus dries out a bit and gets tough. Smoked reconstituted porcinis or somesuch might be a more cost effective experiment.
I assume you’re not planning on smoking ground spices? I think that’d kill ‘em instead of add flavor.
applewood smoked apples would be an interesting experiment.
uncooked rice?
the ideasinfood people have smoked all sorts of crazy stuff.
what about smoking some flour?
stupid me–you linked to ideasinfood in your post. I swear i read it before i started typing! honest! i’m just an idiot
I’m jealous. I’ve been dreaming of having a smoker. Chipotle is so hard to come by in Australia and I have a bumper crop of chillies.
Chex Mix is the bomb when you smoke it!
Here! Smoke this!
you said “cheese”, but specifically I’m thinking panir, to then be used in rajma, a spicy kidney bean/panir dish not unlike chili. in fact you may have tried some rajma at the last co-op meeting. smoked panir! that’s as crazy as vegan magic shell. –patrick
Mmmm- yeah! Panir will hold up too if it gets a bit warm- I think? I love a good salty fresh paneer.
–McAuliflower
Smokers are addictive. We got one last year (the Big Green Egg) and now my husband won’t stop trying to smoke everything, and I do mean everything. Other than meat, I think that the asparagus came out the best so far. We have smoked stuffed apples in apple wood, and the result was a resounding hit.
I love smoked paprika! It is so wonderful in so many ways…
By the way, I am in Portland, too…I found you on Lelo’s blog…She is great! I am selling some of my produce to a local cafe…Little Red Bike Cafe in NoPo, so check it out if you get a chance…
What kind of smoker do you have?
[...] / chocolate bible, the Essence of Chocolate and gussied it up with chipotle, orange, and a touch of smoked sugar. The flavor combination is a winner- alluring, sultry, warm yet [...]
Our smoker house is up and running. I am eating the bacon as we speak. We will now be trying butter, garlic, salt, sugar and maybe the blueberries. We are already doing chipotles here in australia and they are gorgeous. We smoke with gum here – there is plenty of it. Nice blog!
I had a party yesterday, and smoked everything.
I smoked potatoes for potato salad. Baked beans, corn, lemons for lemonade, and a few other things.
The big hit was the smoked peach cobbler. I made biscuits with smoked butter for the topping.
These are great ideas! Thanks for noting it here b-wik.
–McAuliflower
I buy my smoked spices from the smokehouse salt co. website. They are the only ones Ive seen that has smoked sugar, smoked garlic and smoked onion.
