Liquid smoke experiment
This is not a Liquid Smoke troll. I've been doing 'q since I got my first
offset and eventually even graduated to a laid up pit. Now that I'm
retired, I still have a Bradley smoker, which I use frequently, in addition
to a gas grill and IR cooker of char-rare food. The other day, I was
skewering up some shrimp to grill on the gas grill when an idea occurred to
me. I put it to the test and think I may have found a way combine the
convenience of liquid smoke with a pretty half-way decent flavor. Yes, I
know that a single puck in the Bradley would have given me a cold smoke for
the shrimp, but I wanted to see if I could do it some other way.
I got a bottle of liquid Mesquite smoke and fired up the gas grill, as I
always do. I let it get really hot, as usual, and placed the skewer of
shrimp in the holder to keep it just above the grates. I do my skewered
shrimp and scallops inside a closed hood, when grilling. When this
particular skewer of shrimp had begun to cook, I sprinkled some of the
liquid smoke onto the grates (not the food) and let it drip to the ceramic
flame tamer. I immediately shut the hood to hold the vapor inside the
cooker. I repeated this several times during the cooking of the shrimp. No
liquid smoke touched the food- just the smoky vapor from the evaporated
liquid smoke.
When I took the shrimp inside, both Mrs. Nonny and I could detect a light
smoke flavor, but none of the bitterness or off taste you'd expect with
liquid smoke.
You might want to give this a try sometime. If it works for you when
grilling, it saves a bunch of fiddling around and time.
Nonny
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