Smokin’

Now that I have had my ‘Egg’ for a couple of years, I thought it was time that I overcome my apprehensions and learn a new trick. I knew that the Egg could be used as a smoker, but I’m embarrassed to admit I had never actually smoked anything on it. Of course, I had thrown in the special wood chips to impart some extra smokey flavour to my grilled meats and vegetables and I had certainly slow roasted my share of pork shoulders and whole lambs. But smoking is a whole other thing.

The key to smoking is temperature. You have to get the temperature of the egg down low enough that it doesn’t cook the food too quickly, but instead infuses it with a deep, smokey flavour. I also knew that there was the additional step of brining or rubbing your meat or fish first. The recipe I found called for a mixture of ginger, kosher salt, garlic, sugar and herbs.

So, armed with the required components, I embarked on my smoking journey. I was spending the weekend at my Riverhouse, and visited the Wakefield Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning to stock up on ingredients. I had already procured some lake trout, but also picked up some local, organic pork chops from one of the local farmers.

I rubbed both the trout and the chops with my mixture of salt, sugar & aromatics. As the trout was small and thin, I let them cure for a couple of hours. The chops can cure for much longer (up to 24 hours according to the recipe). I stoked my Egg with charcoal and ‘fired er up’. Once the coals were burning nicely I closed down the dampers and waited for the temperature to come down to under 200 degrees. This took quite a while as the egg is so efficient at retaining heat.

Once the temperature was achieved, I threw on my hickory chips as well as the fish. 30 minutes later and voila! It was spectacular. The flavour was smokey & sweet, the texture was light, not overcooked. And the colour was spectacular.

So, armed with my newfound confidence, I was ready to tackle the chops. The process was pretty much the same. Because they were big, meaty chops I smoked them for a little over an hour. Then when the chops were firm, I removed them from the Egg, and cranked up the heat so I could sear them on both sides to get some added colour and flavour.