Vegetarian/Vegan Smoking

So many of you know that I turn my Weber grill into a smoker on a regular basis and smoke a lot of meats! But I also smoke mushrooms and tofu for my little veggie eaters. However, I hadn’t really experimented with a lot of vegetables. So I decided to do a complete vegetarian smoke. Here’s my review of the things I tried:

Corn on the cob was delicious, but I opted to smoke them in the husks, and I think the taste was not much different than when you grill it this way. It didn’t really pick up the smoke except near the tip where it may have been a bit out of the husk or the husk opened. I will be retrying this without the husks to see how that works. However, the corn was sweet, delicious and the perfect texture.

Smoked mushrooms were a hit with the 9-year old. I’ve done portobella mushrooms in the past. This time, I found some larger baby portobellas. I skewered them and coated them with olive oil and some salt. I don’t like mushrooms, so I have to trust the kid’s opinion here. She said they picked up a lot of smoke.

Smoked red, yellow and orange bell peppers were delicious, and my tiny food critic agreed. They were sweet as you’d expect, but they also picked up a substantial amount of the smoke.

Zuchinni also picked up a substantial amount of smoke. It was not squishy soft like squash can get, so some might like it cooked longer, but I loved it. It was no longer “crisp” like eating it raw, but not to the squishy point either. It had the zucchini flavor along with the nice amount of smoke. As a note, I cut them in half length-wise and added olive oil and salt before putting on the grill.

Smoked red onion is delicious! The 9-year old wouldn’t try it. She has a fear of spice, and at the mention of the word “onion,” she acts like a vampire around garlic. Someday, I’ll get her to see the beauty in onions. Luckily, she doesn’t recognize that they are in a lot of the foods we eat and does not realize shallots are in the same family!

Smoke cauliflower was not good. I followed an online post I found, but I may not have done it right. However, to both myself and my husband, there was an intense smoke flavor but it completely overwhelmed the cauliflower. Also, the cauliflower did not soften the way it does when you roast it.

Overall, I would say dinner was a success. (Just a disclaimer, I grilled a few bratwurst after the veggies were all off the grill which us meat eaters had with the vegetables.) I would definitely be willing to try more vegetables in the smoker. I’m also considering trying cold smoking in the near future, and I think tofu may react well to such a process!

Ten Things I’ve learned about food and cooking

This could be a multi-edition posting, as I’ve learned so much over the years. However, these are just a few valuable things I have learned about creating amazing flavors.

When sauteing mushrooms, you need to sweat them first. You need them to release all their natural juices, and then you can sear that off for an amazing sauteed flavor. Put your mushrooms in a pan with your oil or butter (butter is always better, but it’s okay if you want to be healthier) and cover with a lid. Wait until you have a pool of juices bubbling, then remove the lid and cook away the liquid.
Fresh ground spices are better. This isn’t always easy to do, and for some spices it makes more of a difference than others. Grind your own cumin. It adds a couple of minutes to the process, but the amazing smell and flavor will take you to new places. Pepper is another one. Pepper starts losing flavor immediately after grinding. It is well worth it to invest in a pepper grinder. Talk at length to your spice dealers. There is a reason they carry some spices whole.
Chicken fat is gold. I know, I know, we are all supposed to be low-fat and all. But chicken fat is delicious. You can use this to flavor anything. Don’t drain it off when making broth. I freeze the chicken broth and leave the fat in with the broth. This adds rich, amazing flavor to soups and stews. You can also cook anything in chicken fat. I’m telling you that it is almost as good as bacon.
You can roast any vegetable. We frequently roast broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and potatoes. Cut them up and toss them with olive oil and kosher salt. I usually add rosemary, garlic, onions or shallots, depending on my mood and what is lying around. Put in an oven preheated to 450 degrees and let it roast. For most of them, I roast until there starts to be a little blackening, so just past where I’d have thought them done. It’s a delicious side dish to anything!
Potatoes are not just potatoes. It really does matter what kind of potatoes you use, depending on what you want to make. For a nice scallop dish, you really want Yukon gold. Also, I’m pretty sure russets are not good for anything other than a baked potato because you can cover it with everything in the fridge. Yukon golds make way better mashed potatoes. Red potatoes are great for roasting and homefries. And any of the tiny potato varieties are great for roasting!
An instant read thermometer is invaluable. I really knew very little about cooking when I first left my parents’ house. There were some pretty awful disasters as I began to self-teach. My biggest frustration was chicken. I swear it would look beautifully golden brown, but we’d sit down to eat and cut into raw chicken. My instant read thermometers are also invaluable for smoking and grilling all sorts of foods. Also, when a recipe calls for a certain temp on the milk or water, it really does help if you get it right.
Patience. Those that know me will tell you that this is not my strong suit. My first cooking adventure that began to teach me patience in the kitchen was alfredo sauce. You cannot rush it. Hollandaise also had some lessons to share on that subject. I’ve had to develop lots of coping techniques to force myself to allow my flavors to develop and certain foods to come out as they should. Smoking meat has by far been my Yoda of teachers on this subject.
Some people think it is possible to have too much garlic or onion. I am not one of those people. Well, not if your using raw garlic or onions. Dried, granulated, jar stuff you find in the spice aisle can definitely be overdone.
Mise en place is for real. I’m a terrible person about following directions in life, and my mother will surely tell you I tend to dive in headfirst and then worry about whether there are hazards in the water. But all those chefs on Food Network are not making it up. Making sure you have everything before you start will save you so many headaches. There is nothing like being halfway into a dish and discovering you forgot a key ingredient. Going all out, including measuring out spices and such, is also super helpful if you are cooking with a tiny human.
Balance is key. I like hot. I don’t mean I’m a crazy fanatic eating all the ghost peppers and such. Frankly, my stomach couldn’t handle it. But I like spice. However, you want flavor, not just heat. At some point in adulthood, I just stopped liking sweets most of the time. However, if you balance heat, sweet, acidic, etc., you get amazing flavors.

These are just a few things I’ve learned. Most of these more recently (like last decade). I could write a novel on some of the more basic concepts I had to figure out early on in learning to cook. But there are all kinds of cooking for beginners books out there that probably cover those. I probably should have picked up a few!

Oops, I totally botched dinner!

I love to cook. I pride myself on being an excellent home cook. I can cook lots of different cuisines, though Asian has mostly alluded me. I am working on that one. But last week, I totally botched the easiest possible dinner. I had purchased a couple of bags of frozen pasta dishes from Trader Joe’s. This is an easy dinner, right? All you have to do is heat and eat. Somehow, I messed that up, and it worked out great!

I steamed cauliflower to go with the pasta, which was a basic tomato sauce penne type dish. We had cauliflower, and it was going to go bad if not cooked soon. I normally roast it, but it was hot out, and I try not to run the oven. The cauliflower turned out to be the star of the evening.

We sit down to dinner and start to dig in, and the pasta is cold. I cooked it for more than the recommended times. It looked warm. The bowl felt warm. But I didn’t try it before putting it on the table. (All the Food Network judges would be cringing about that one.) I don’t mean it wasn’t quite warm enough. It was cold. It was like I took it out of the refrigerator and put it on the table. But here’s the good part. The sauce was also spicy. It had a zing that I knew the youngest kid was going to be extremely “anti” about. But because it was cold, that never came up. She ate all her cauliflower and then had two more helpings. She claimed she just didn’t really like cold pasta.

I seriously did some victory laps here. Don’t get me wrong. She eats cauliflower. She loves cauliflower and pretty much most vegetables. Getting her to eat a veggie you put in front of her is not a problem. But she also is a breaditarian. She would take pasta, bread of any ilk, and rice, over all other foods. We struggle to make sure she isn’t just carb loading on a daily basis. I messed up pasta in a way that made it so that she ate it like it was the side and devoured the veggies and fruit. I am calling that a big win.

Sometimes we all really mess up dinner. I could tell you some stories about my early days of cooking. But sometimes, a mistake leads to a victory or a great work of art, so we shouldn’t beat ourselves up. Also, as a side note, never trust the package instructions. Taste your food, even if it wasn’t your own creation before putting it on the plate!