Cold smoked chocolate... churn into ice cream
Wow. A guy could cold-smoke some chocolate chips and then make toll-house cookies with them! Mmmmm. :biggrin:
Well I get awesome results just using the propane and wood chunks for the hot smokes. I don't have any problem with that. I got this just to cold smoke really. Another thing is, the pellets are not accessible around here other then on the internet so I kinda wanted to save them for just when I need them. Thank you everyone for the ideas! Chocolate sounds like something I would have never thought of however I'm not a big ice cream fan so I'll prob just make the wife use them in cookies or cake. Beer seems like a pretty cool idea but wouldn't it be flat by the time it was done? I also really like the vodka idea for bloody Marys. Bauchjw, those nuts seem delicious. I might have to give that a go as well . Thanks guys!
I'd worry that smoking vodka, you'd drive off the alcohol. Can't have that, now can we?
But I used vodka to clean the inside of the window on my smoker the other day, The ethanol in it really cuts the smoke residue. So we know that ethanol is a good solvent for the smoke residue.
So why not set up a little glass still, and run smoke through it until it's nicely coated. Then swish some vodka or everclear through it to remove that residue. Now you've got your own liquid smoke, and you could just add a bit to some vodka, the tomato juice, or directly to the Bloody Mary.
The only advantage of doing this versus buying liquid smoke would be that you could experiment with different woods and such. Plus, of course, it's always fun to experiment!
I just smoked some butter. I'll post back if I like it, but it smells awesome.
I did some a week or so ago. It's actually very good on a lot of things.
I made me some Brussels Sprouts the other night, just steamed them by nuking them with a bit of water in a bowl with a cover. Then I put a bit of the smoked butter, salt and pepper, and some parmesan cheese on them, and it was excellent. The smoke was a bit subtle, but it was there, and added a nice extra touch to them.
I had read that people had trouble getting the smoke to "penetrate" into the butter. So I sliced each stick of butter into quarters and arranged them so that they'd present a lot of surface area to the smoke. And I actively stirred the smoke at them using a small fan in the smoker. When they were done, I thought I'd overdone it. But I put it all in the refrigerator to get firm again, and then pushed the sticks of butter back together and vacuum sealed each stick separately.
The two sticks I've gotten out of the fridge and used I allowed to warm up to room temperature in the vacuum bags, and then kneaded it all thoroughly to mix it well. Then I squeezed it out of a cut-off corner of the vacuum bag to dispense it. It's been very good on a number of things.
We cooked some steaks just by pan-sauteeing them the other day, and I used half olive oil and half smoked butter to fry them in. Then I put a bit of it on top of each steak while they were resting. It did add a nice, but subtle smoky flavor to the steak that was great.
