Question: How to Smoke Cooking Fats?

Charleston Dave

A question for the more advanced Eggers with an interest in experimental cooking...

I would like to try flavoring cooking fats with the flavor of wood smoke.

I would use such a flavored oil or fat as a regular pantry item, in subsequent cooking for applications like sous vide poaching, confits, or flavored mayonnaises or vinaigrettes, just to give a few examples off the top of my head.

How could this infusion of smoke flavor into a cooking fat be done?

It seems to me that one approach would be to rig the Egg for indirect cooking with wood chips and platesetter, make doubly sure startup smoke is clean, and then maintain a temperature below the smoke point of whatever oil I'm using, for several hours. I would pour the oil to be flavored in a shallow layer (thus maximizing surface area exposed to smoke) in a roaster pan atop the grill. Perhaps a quick tamis filtration at the end to clear out any soot, as well.

Does anyone have any suggestions about especially happy fat + smoking wood marriages, or techniques that might be helpful?

How long a smoke would be reasonable to let the liquified fat pick up favorable woodsmoke essence without becoming bitter? For example, do you cold-smoking experts have guidelines as to how long a lump of alder is allowed to stay in the smoker before it adversely impacts flavor?

Could it be done with rendered lard (pork fat) or tallow (beef fat) or schmaltz (chicken fat) or duck fat, by keeping the smoking temperature above the melting point of these solid-at-room-temperature fats?

Celtic Wolf

Two words. Liquid Smoke.

Tallow, Lard and Schmaltz are already rendered from their base fats. So rendering the base fat in a smoke environment would give you what you want.

Ohhh Schmaltz can also be pork or goose fat. Most times it's not pork, but it can be.

Charleston Dave

I willingly defer to your expertise in Yiddish but not to Liquid Smoke...I find that stuff desperately, horribly, terribly BAD!

Besides, Liquid Smoke is water-based.
...runs to rinse mouth out from mere thought of Liquid Smoke

Anybody have thoughts on oil/wood combos?

Anyone? Anyone?

Bueller?

Celtic Wolf

As I said.

Render the base fat in smoke. I would think hickory, or pecan would be good for beef and pork. Apple might be good for the chicken or goose fat.

lowercasebill

see the naked whiz for smoking cheese.. possible leave the ice tray out so the egg temp is in the low 100's put the fat in a pizza type pan so you have a large surface area exposed to the smoke,, take pics lets us know..

stike

liquid smoke is nothing more than, um, smoke. it's wood smoke, collected on lined chimneys (sorta), and washed off with water.

there are no chemicals (other than what's in smoke of course), and no artificial flavorings. the problem with liquid smoke is generally that people use way too much.

it's literally nothing more than liquid smoke. i know, i know.... i like to get on a high horse about "fake" stuff too. but in this case, it is what it claims to be.

fishlessman

i think i would just collect the drippings in a double pan under a duck or goose cooked low and slow in the egg. plenty of greese comes out of a goose. how about smoking mushrooms and adding it to the oil, might be able to get a good flavor with a light oil that way

Charleston Dave

I do not argue that Liquid Smoke is artificial.

I merely argue that it tastes bad.

My ruminations about ideal smoking time come from the concept of fractional distillation. Some flavor compounds are distilled first, others later. It might be that the best-tasting ones are released from burning wood at some particular time during the cook, while the stinky ones are released at a different time. Think of the wait-30-minutes-after-lighting-charcoal-to-eliminate-VOCs rule, for example; it's the same concept.

Thanks to Celtic for the suggestion of hickory or pecan with beef or pork, and apple with chicken fat.

Thanks to bill for the cite of Whiz on smoking cheese, I will definitely follow up on that.

Fishlessman, I'm not so sure about adding mushrooms to oil that would be set aside as a pantry ingredient. I have tried making my own truffle oil with disappointing results. It's an interesting flavor concept but I suspect it might make the oil turn rancid more quickly. It might be useful for something that was to be cooked immediately, but in that case I would likely use the fresh mushrooms or grind dehydrated mushrooms to make a powder that enhances umami.

Wow, put a few Platinum Eggers in one room together and it's like turning on that Large Hadron Collider thingy....

fishlessman

i was thinking more on the lines of smoking the mushroom heavily, then putting it into a warmed up oil so the smokiness gets transfered along with some mushroom flavor, then removing the mushrooms. i remember seeing an article once were someone was actually making liquid smoke from smoked mushrooms, not really sure of the procedure.

stike

sounds like you pretty much have it figured out.

don't know what you were hoping we could help with. ...but let us know how the experiment turns out.
and say hello to umami for us.