Have you considered that perhaps your sense of taste might be slightly different? For instance, I like smoked salmon, but I also like fresh salmon, and, for me, it’s not a case of one being better than the other, but of each being different.
And smoked oysters?
I believe smoking was originally used as a method of drying and preserving meat. The smoke kept away the droves of insects and made a much better preserved food product than sun drying. It wouldn’t surprise me if the need for preserving meat is the root need that invented cooking.
Since dried and smoked meat has been around a very long time, and smoking meat is more effective at preserving it and preventing disease, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a genetic disposition towards liking the taste.
It may also be a simple case of an acquired taste.
I’m surprised at the number of folks who disagree with the OP that smoked foods taste better. No question in my mind - that is why they always say “apple wood smoked” or somesuch on bacon packages. Want some random food to taste better - put bacon on it. Want bacon to taste better - smoke it. If we could all have some ribs or pulled pork (NC style of course) out of a smoker right now there would be no disagreement.
Anyway, my theory is that humans have been eating prepared and preserved foods for so long we have come to enjoy the taste. Food has been preserved for 10s of thousands of years with smoke and salt and that’s how we like it now.
Yes! They come in a can like sardines or kippers, and are actually quite tasty! If you like smoked fish that is.
Yep, and I think they are vile. Strangely enough I love oysters many ways, even raw, and I also love most everything else thats normally smoked smoked. But smoked oysters? Yuck. Go figure.
I imagine somewhere in human history, the gene that says “Raw meat is super delicious” led to a lot of food poisoning and the gene that says “Cooked meat is super delicious” led to less. Cooking is a pretty unnatural thing in nature, so some kind of evolutionary bias to do so seems plausible.
Lardo. It’s incredibly delicious.
I love my smoked foods (barbecue is one of my favorite things in the world), but I disagree that smoked foods inherently taste better. Despite what the Straight Dope people say, bacon does not make everything taste better. And I would argue that the flavor boost is as much or more the curing process than the smoking (using unsmoked “bacons” like pancetta or guanciale give foods a significant flavor boost, too.)
They’re just different flavors. For example, I prefer fried chicken to smoked. Raw oysters to smoked. Raw or rare salmon to smoked. Pretty much any fresh fish I prefer to their smoked versions, for that matter. Regular cheese to smoked. Many fresh sausages (Italian, bratwurst, etc.) to their smoked counterparts. On the other hand, I prefer smoked ribs and smoked pork shoulder, and I could go either way, depending on my mood, for brisket.