Have you eaten any unusual smoked foods?

Cafe Society
1

I have had smoked carp prepared by a coworker who knew what he was doing. Delicious and not fishy at all.

This summer I put smoked salt on a steak. I t was a bit hard to tell how much flavor it contributed but it was tasty. Andrew Zimmern tried various smoked salts in one episode. The salt was packed in bamboo and set over the fire. And then some of it was double smoked, and some of that was triple smoked, etc. I forget how many times the most intense was smoked but Andrew found it all but inedible.

2

I’ve got a few different smoked salts in my spice cabinets. Alderwood, Chipotle, I think hickory. I also recent got some smoked black peppercorns but haven’t used them yet.

Smoked blue cheese seemed pretty unusual when I first discovered it, but I but it all the time now. I love all sorts of smoked cheeses, but smoked blue is my favorite. It makes an amazing steak sauce when melted with a bit of white wine, garlic and red pepper flakes.

I tried making baked macaroni and cheese using smoked gruyere, smoked cheddar, and the smoked blue. I found the smoked gruyere and cheddar didn’t melt normally like unsmoked, but it still tasted good.

I got some smoked olive oil from a little store that sells just smoked food just north of me in Poulsbo, WA. It’s incredible but pricey, so I have to use it in moderation.

I may need to get my own smoker. I’m known for my deviled eggs, but haven’t gotten a chance to use smoked hard eggs for them yet.

Now I’m hungry. Thanks.

3

I’ve had smoked rattlesnake before at a BBQ competition. I was 18 or 19, so I don’t know if I appreciated it at the time other the novelty of it.

4

I’ve had it as an adult. It’s nasty. I only took a nibble on a dare. Gross.

5

When I got my electric smoker a couple of years ago I got all experimental with it. Best thing we made was the smoked cornbread.

I didn’t actually cook it in the smoker, but I smoked the cornmeal for about an hour and then made the cornbread with that. It was amazing. I can’t even explain it exactly, but it was like smoky butter somehow.

6

My dad took Venison hams to the local barbecue place. They’ll smoke it for a fee. They will ask for the game tag to prove the deer was taken legally.

My dad gave me Ziploc bags of the sliced meat for my freezer.

Absolutely delicious :yum: OMG I’m salivating thinking about it.

It’s been ten years since dad passed. I miss him and that deer meat.

7

There’s a guy near the marina we frequent who has a little shop in his garage. He smokes all kinds of cheeses as a hobby. We stop in every so often and buy some, but I always lose track of what cheese I’m eating. They all taste similar, and nothing is labeled (no business license or anything, zoning wouldn’t allow it)

A roadside rib seller occasionally smoked salmon and it’s delicious. We’ve had a smoked turkey (from the turkey farm) for Thanksgiving and it’s delicious though exorbitantly expensive.

My BIL smokes meats and has gotten very good. He does a wicked brisket, and has done macaroni and cheese along with it.

8

I wonder if that’s the Korean bamboo salt. I just bought my brother an 8.47 oz (240g) container of it for $70 for his birthday, as he enjoys all things foodie, and I read it as being one of the most expensive salts in the world. Mine is 9x baked in bamboo over a pinewood fire.

9

No, nothing really unusual, but at a very good sushi bar that serves the most marvelous otoro sushi, and variants that are blowtorch-seared, I once had a wonderful sushi that was described as “straw-smoked tuna”. I’ve seen smoked tuna since, but nothing that could touch the wonderfulness of that one.

On a more mundane level, smoked trout is very good, and of course the classic of them all, smoked salmon, but only if it’s high quality, very thinly sliced, and heavily smoked.

10

The most unusual has been unagi futomaki (smoked eel sushi) from the deli counter at a local grocer.

We’ve had an electric smoker on our balcony for years; I’ve done a holiday ham before and ISTR corn on the cob before we learned that my SO shouldn’t be eating corn.

11

I’ve smoked cream cheese and water. The water was used as in ingredient in a recipe I can’t remember, the cream cheese was eaten on bagels.

12

I’ve had smoked string cheese many a time. I can’t say I like it most of the time; it tastes more chemically treated than smoked in most cases.

13

I’ve had smoked ice cream at a high end prix fixe restaurant. The seating is at a bar around the kitchen so I could see how they prepared it with each dish of ice cream sitting in an ice bath while they used some kind of handheld smoker. It tasted like…smoked ice cream. I don’t need to have it again.

14

I recently listened to The Disappearing Spoon podcast about Umami, taste generally, and flavor receptors. Is smoking adding purely a scent component, or does it affect taste?

15

When I ate here many years ago, one of the between-course bites was a smoked sunflower root. Small (because there’s not much left after you cut away all the branchy bits) but nutty and quite tasty.

16

Love me some smoked sugar - it’s brown granular demerara sugar that goes very nicely with oatmeal and in certain desserts. I also like it in my tea, but that’s a personal taste.

17

I was in Madrid in April and had a tapa of smoked butter with anchovy. It was so delicious that when I got home I bought and inexpensive cold smoking device. I have pretty faithfully reproduced the smoked butter. I have tried some cheese (Gouda was great, mild cheddar was good and a Colby/cheddar blend was meh.) One of the best things I have tried is smoked olives (the large green ones with pimientos.) Those are fantastic. I have also smoked an inexpensive hot sauce and it really gives it a different flavor.

18

Several years ago I visited Scotland and went to Arbroath, where I had Arbroath Smokies in a local restaurant – smoked haddock caught in the North Sea and smoked right in town. The local museum has a diorama showing how they’ve been doing it for centuries. One thing they haven’t been doing for centuries is vacuum-sealing it in plastic so you can take it home to America, which I did. My family loved it for Christmas Eve dinner (which is traditionally meatless in our family).

The only problem is that it has a gazillion tiny little bones.

19

I had a drink (martini?) that was presented under a glass bell jar. There was smoke under the glass that imparted a smokey taste to the alcohol.

20

I would absolutely say it affects taste–I don’t see why it wouldn’t. But taste has a large scent component to it. A smoked rack of ribs tastes quite different from a grilled rack of ribs, and I don’t think it’s just the smell. I’ve also oversmoked food and, man, you can definitely taste that (bitter, and even made me cough–nothing to do with smell.)