Tuesday 31 January 2012

Stovetop Smoking - A Favourite Way To Cook

I absolutely love smoked foods and for the past year and a bit we've been smoking our own thanks to a nifty stovetop smoker that does the job with minimum effort on our part.

Heat a hob ring on high, then you put a sheet of tin foil in the bottom of the smoker, add 1 and a half tablespoons of your wood chips of choice, put a sheet of toil foil into the drip tray, place that over the chips then put your grill with your food in and close almost shut.

That's all you have to do. Then you just wait until you see some smoke, you close the smoker shut and lower the heat a bit. Easy huh? The smell is absolutely divine, I often think it must drive the neighbours insane with jealously. It would me!

A chicken breast cut into pieces for Quesadillas takes around 10-12 minutes and it's done. The best thing is that you get lots of different flavour results depending on which wood chips you use, you can even mix them together to come up with your own blend.

smoked chicken pieces in smoker
Smoked Chicken
I love this way of cooking and it's yet another way to get more variety into the gluten free diet. I know that unless you get a bit creative that meals can be boring when gluten free, but it's things like smoking food that brings an otherwise bland and boring chicken breast into the realms of delicious with minimal fuss and no need for hours of marinating.

You can pretty much smoke anything; meats, fish, shellfish, even vegetables. There's been some fun experimenting that has resulted in some of the oddest flavours I have ever come across. Smoked mushrooms and halloumi for starters!

Another thing that we've found is great about having our own stovetop smoker is that it costs way less to smoke our own food than it does to buy pre-smoked foods in the shops. That's a big bonus.

So if you like smoked foods and enjoy cooking, a stovetop smoker is a great addition to any gluten free kitchen, it's so simple to use, safe and makes food taste delicious with minimal effort or cost. The one we use is a Cameron stovetop smoker (UK), it came with assorted wood chips but you can also buy others separately which we did. Here's the US link.

I almost forgot one of the biggest reasons as to why I love smoking our food. You don't use any oil, so you aren't adding any fat to your food at all. This is great because we do like to be naughty on occasion and have lots of fried foods, but it's always good to know that we can use our smoker and have something healthy and delicious too with minimal effort.

I'll be doing some smoking over the weekend so I can get some recipes together to post. Smoked Barbecue Spare Ribs will probably be the first, so look out for that on Monday if you're interested.

Bye Bye January.

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