Smoked Onion Rings from Cowgirl's Country Life
Here are some onion rings made from smoked onions. What a great idea! You can find the recipe here.
Years ago I met a chef who told me one of his specialties was fresh spring rolls, the type that are made in Thailand and Southeast Asia. Oh, yes, I told him, I’m familiar with those. I asked if he used chicken or shrimp. Neither, he said; he used smoked duck. He said it lent interest to a traditional dish, and he smoked his own duck in-house just for that menu item. Since that time, I’ve smoked all sorts of foods.
I’ve had a stovetop smoker for two years now, and I think it’s terrific. It allows me to put smoked flavor into foods quickly, without a lot of trouble. You can’t use it to make decent smoked salmon or any other sort of product that is properly smoked-dried, because it smokes foods with hot smoke rather than cold smoke.
The standard electric outdoor smokers used to smoke salmon operate at a low temperature. There’s just a little hotplate in the bottom where you set a pan of wood chips, which smoulder just enough to produce smoke. That smoke isn’t hot enough to boil water, so it takes hours to smoke-cook foods. Great smoked salmon can take eight to twelve hours to finish cooking, by which time it’s partially-dried and firm, and has acquired a huge amount of smoke flavor.
Conversely, a stovetop smoker is much hotter, and cooks foods much more quickly, because the smoke box is smaller and the food is closer to the heat source. The same piece of fish that takes twelve hours to smoke in an outdoor smoker will be fully-cooked in an hour or less using an indoor smoker.
On the other hand, a stovetop smoker still isn’t hot enough to cook most meats. The best technique for meats and poultry is to partially smoke-cook them in the smoker to begin with, for, say, 20-40 minutes, then finish them by baking, frying or grilling. This sort of technique isn’t useful for barbecue purists, but so what? It still produces great food.
A stovetop smoker can steam as it smokes, if you soak the wood chips, producing products that are less dry. Also, it allows you to infuse foods with authentic woodsmoke of whatever variety of wood you choose, versus using liquid smoke, which is usually made from hickory. Different woods impart different flavors, so you can use hickory for pork, oak for beef, mesquite for lamb, alder for salmon, apple for shrimp, cherry for chicken, and green tea for duck.
There are tons of other foods worth smoking, including cheeses, nuts, vegetables and starches. If you buy a stovetop smoker, it’s a good idea to buy a recipe book along with it. There are a couple of books now available specific to this appliance, and they’re full of ideas.
Here are the five most popular brands sold in the US:
Camerons $40-60 15”x11”x3”
This is the best-selling brand on the market. It’s stainless steel, and solidly constructed. It can warp under prolonged exposure to high heat, but under normal use (even daily) this isn’t a problem. This type of smoker only has about 2” of head room, so if you want to smoke a whole chicken or roast, you need to fashion a temporary lid out of foil.
Max Burton ~$30-40
This is a cheaper version of the Camerons-style smoker. Strangely, there’s not a lot of information to be found about this brand, even on the manufacturer’s (Athena) website.
Nordic Ware ~$60-100 13” diameter
This smoker is enamel-coated, and has lots of head room. This is the only model of the five that will cook a chicken or roast. The big advantage is that this brand has an installed thermometer.
Emerilware $100 22”x10”x5”
This smoker is made by All-Clad, and it’s cast iron. It sure won’t warp under heat. It’s called a 4-in-1 because it can be used as a smoker, grill, roaster and fryer. But realisticly, once you start using it as a smoker, it will soon become unuseable for other purposes. As with all cast iron cookware, it should be seasoned to prevent rust, but burning wood on the floor of the smoker will remove the seasoning. This brand is expensive (Emeril has to get paid, after all), but it gets consistently good reviews.
Demeyere Resto ~$68-160 11” diameter
Another round smoker, this time based on a deep skillet design. It is smaller, shallower and more expensive than the round Nordic Ware smoker. It’s well-constructed of 3-layer stainless, so it’s warp-proof and oven-proof. This is a Belgian company known for quality cookware, which may explain the price.
When using a stovetop smoker, it’s important to provide ventilation. Ordinarily, the range fan should be adequate, though when you open up the smoker at the end, a ball of smoke might roll out. If you turn off the stove and let it cool for a couple of minutes, this helps a lot. Also important, you don’t want to smoke on high heat. You should put the smoker on high heat to begin with, but as soon as a wisp of smoke starts to come out, you should bank it down to medium-low, and then monitor it every few minutes so that only a tiny bit of smoke comes out. That way the smoke chips will last for 40 minutes or more. If you try to smoke on high heat, the smoker will put out a lot of smoke at once, and it will overwhelm the kitchen fan and smoke up your house.
- Derrick Snyder