Through the years in culinary talk, the term smoking has become synonymous with meat. Indeed, for the longest time ever, smoking has largely been the territory for favorites like ham, sausages, jerky and an assortment of fleshy products.
Smoking relies on indirect heat, thus, by utilizing the smoky air rather than the direct flame, on can slowly cook up sweet tasting delicacies under low temperatures. Ideally, the temperature fluctuation shouldn’t go higher than 225 degrees.
Cruciferous, crunchy vegetables can fit right at home in a smoker. At the same time, leafy vegetables like spinaches do not excel under smoker conditions. When it comes to smoking vegetables, it’s always important to remember that if it can do well on a grill, then, it probably will be perfect on a smoker. For unbelievable offers, we recommend checking out, the Smoker Black Friday where there are lots of electric smoking solutions.
Vegetables like asparagus, squash, zucchini, artichokes, eggplants, and mushrooms can handle smoker conditions with great ease. As previously mentioned, it’s always important to ensure that the heat conditions stay low. Since vegetables obviously smoke faster than meats, it’s wise to constantly check on the smoker every 10 minutes to ensure that the final result isn’t overcooked.
Choices
Amazingly, other foods like nuts, eggs, and cheese are able to withstand the conditions of a smoker and produce mellifluous results. When smoking cheese, it’s important to always leave the cheese outside of the fridge for a period so that the outer region becomes toughened up a little. Since smoking can be quite heat-intensive, caution should be taken to ensure that not all of the cheese melts away. Preferably, the smoker should be big enough to keep the cheese far away from the heat source. On average, it takes about 2-6 hours to smoke cheese, depending on the flavor one wants to achieve.
To smoke potatoes, it’s good practice to rub them down with some olive oil and sea salt before sticking them down in the smoker for a couple of hours. Once ready, the result is sweet tasking baked potatoes that can fit right in with any delicious accompaniment.
When smoking corn, a little margarine or vegan butter paired with some paprika, pepper, and salt is recommended. To produce a neat result, chefs recommend that the smoke time should ideally be about an hour and a half. Of course, with regular basting every thirty minutes or so.
Generally, nuts tend to require higher temperatures than normal, about 300 degrees tends to do the trick. The nuts (whatever type really) need to be put in a pan together with some oil/butter plus some salt to taste. The smoke time should be about an hour or so, with frequent stirring.
Parting Shot
Before smoking, it is advisable to wash the vegetables first. Large vegetables need to be cut up into smaller pieces in order to ensure that they cook up evenly and faster. Before placing the vegetables on the grate, it’s best practice to first let the smoker heat up in order to ensure that once food items are placed in it, the process goes allow smoothly.
