Smoking (cooking)

Uncommon card · No. 180941

Smoking is the process of flavoring, browning, cooking, or preserving food, particularly meat, fish and tea, by exposing it to smoke from burning or smoldering material, most often wood. In Europe, alder is the traditional smoking wood, but oak is now more commonly used, while beech is used to a lesser extent than both oak and alder. In North America, hickory, mesquite, oak, pecan, alder, maple, and fruit tree woods, such as apple, cherry, and plum, are commonly used for smoking. Other biomass besides wood can also be employed, sometimes with the addition of flavoring ingredients. Chinese tea-smoking uses a mixture of uncooked rice, sugar, and tea, heated at the base of a wok. Some North American ham and bacon makers smoke their products over burning corncobs. Peat is burned to dry and smoke the barley malt used to make Scotch whisky and some beers. In New Zealand, sawdust from the native mānuka (tea tree) is commonly used for hot-smoking fish. In Iceland, dried sheep dung is used to cold...

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