Smoking on the grill - How to proceed?

Tradition with smoking

In Norway, we also have a long tradition of smoking food, both meat and fish. The smoking tradition dates back to the Stone Age. In earlier times, the primary purpose of smoking was to preserve food, to give it better shelf life for storage over time. Before the time of the refrigerator, smoking was primarily a method of preservation, because smoking creates poorer breeding grounds for bacteria.

Times have changed. Today we smoke our food to add good taste and aroma to the ingredients. Like the smoked salmon, the chops, the good old sauna-smoked ham or a New York cheesecake.

Recipe for smoked New York cheesecake with pineapple chutney

Woods suitable for smoking

There are several ways to smoke, and there are several types of wood that are suitable for smoking. It can be in the form of large pieces of wood, logs, smaller chips or finer shavings - depending on which method you are going to smoke with. We recommend not using spruce or pine tiles for smoking. These woods emit a lot of tar and harmful smoking substances that are not good for us, although many still use this. It's okay to think a little about health as well. Junipers and woods of deciduous and fruit trees are best suited.

^{Here you see which types of wood are best suited for smoking, and which we in the FCC swear by:}

There are even more types that are well suited, but these are the types of wood that are easiest to find in Norway. Otherwise, or / older, beech, pecan, walnut, pear, cherries, plum and almost all types of fruit trees are suitable, because they have a good taste that is suitable for food.

If you are in the slightly tough, brave corner and like the special, you can also try dried sheep manure. It is used in Iceland, and according to some we know should give good taste. We have not tried it ourselves, but rumor has it that it will be shitty.

Smoking methods and temperatures

You have several options when it comes to temperature, mostly according to what you want to achieve. If you want to make pepper mackerel, then hot smoking applies. If there is smoked salmon on the menu, then it is cold smoking or cool smoking that is the trick.

If you are not versed in the smoking cabin and not quite by first name with all the smoking methods, we offer an overview of the different variants here:

• Light smoking - Raw materials that are smoked for a shorter time are called lightly smoked. We chefs often use this on fish, meat and vegetables. Then we like to use cold smoking as a method, where we have a low temperature in the cooking room and we only use the smoke as a flavoring. We lightly smoke food from 10-60 minutes.

• Cold smoking - A classic method where the smoke maintains a temperature of 20–30 ° C, depending on the raw material type and size. We smoke cold from 10 minutes to 24 hours, depending on what you are going to smoke.

• Cooling smoking - When swallowing, the temperature is raised to 30–50 ° C. Here you just have to keep in mind that fish is heat-treated at 40-50 ° C, so be careful not to overcook it.

• Hot smoking - Hot smoking is the simplest and most commonly used smoking method. The temperature should be between 50 and 130 ° C, depending on the raw material and size. The smoking time can vary from 20-30 minutes on a salmon side to 14 hours on a large beef brisket, of course also depending on the temperature.

Hot smoking on the grill

There are many options for how to easily smoke on the grill. Perhaps the simplest is smoking with wet pieces of wood or shavings directly on the coal, or in a smoking box. Some people use a cold smoking coil, while others choose the classic American smoker grill. Some even make their own modified solutions with fireplaces connected to wine barrels. So yes, the possibilities are many, and we have seen an incredible number of clever solutions. Here we have considered the most common solutions that most people use. Keep reading, and we will dive into hot smoking on the grill and give some good tips.

If you use wood chips, soak the wood chips in water for 30 minutes before use. If you use large pieces of wood, you can soak them for a couple of hours. You can also use beer, juice and wine mixed with water to get a little extra good aroma. We even swear by a little whiskey, cognac or rum - a little jealous maybe, but very good.

You can also use beer, juice and wine mixed with water to get a little extra good aroma. Try it out and find out how you like it best.

2. Gas: Use an aluminum mold, steel tray or a smoking box. Take a handful of wood chips or pieces of wood, let them drain and put them in the mold. Put the mold on the hot grill grate and wait until it starts to smoke before closing the lid. If you want to smoke for a long time, you have to add more shavings along the way.

Coal: Take a handful of wood chips or pieces of wood, let them drain, and sprinkle them over lit charcoal or firewood. The tiles give a lot of smoke (which in turn means a lot of taste). Chips will produce smoke for about 10 minutes, while the pieces of wood last longer. How long depends on the size, so here you almost have to try. If you are going to smoke for a long time, you must add wood as it burns up.

Try it out and find out how you like it best. Below you can see step by step how to do it. Find the subject of smoke, soak it, and place it on the grill. Exercise makes smoking master.