The Power of Smoked Foods

Smoking food is a very ancient method of cooking that offers two main advantages: preservation and taste. Most anthropologists believe hominids were roasting their food on home-built fires around 250,000 years ago, approximately 50,000 years before our species emerged.

Cooking with smoke and over coals is a way to connect with our ancestors and it means a lot more than just bringing out the rusty BBQ.

The resurgence in interest is seen in the popularity of authors such as Steven Raichlen of the Barbecue Bible and Project Smoke, who argues that cooking with fire was one of the greatest technological advances in the history of humankind.

There is also a growing band of interesting approaches to smoked and BBQ foods in London which show us a lot that is new such as Cue Point, which is a British-Afghan smoked food restaurant 

Melissa Thompson, writer, cook and author of Motherland, recently talked on BBC radio about the central role smoke plays in Jamaican cuisine, and why food and history in the Caribbean are so intertwined.

There are two basic approaches to smoked foods: hot and cold. 

Hot smoking food involves a combination of heat and smoke used in a controlled manner to create meats, fish and cheese that are full-flavoured and ready to eat. Hot smoking both cooks and smokes the food.

Cold smoking foods like Scottish salmon, smokes the food without cooking it. The fire is well away from the heat chamber which gives you that soft silky finish to cold smoked foods such as smoked salmon.

Generally, the best meats for smoking are those which are fatty and less expensive. The smoke flavour will embed itself in the fat, giving you delicious taste, while also tenderizing the meat–so there’s no need to empty your wallet on a pricey cut.

We also have a wonderful range of smoked foods:

Try our award winning Sugar Pit Cured sweet smoked Bacon Chops - made with free range British pork.

There is our Organic Nitrate Free Smoked Back Bacon. Cured without the help of chemicals - just sea salt and brown sugar as dry curing agents followed by some time in a smokehouse for a natural woodsmoke taste. 

Our Wild Smoked Salmon has extra flavour because it has a natural diet and swims freely in the open ocean before returning to its native river. The flavour is gamey and the texture creamy. The texture is creamy and melt in the mouth with a complex, deep flavour enhanced by just a hint of pure oak smoke. This is the rare treat that smoked salmon always used to be.

And finally, there is our sliced smoked ham

And don’t think it is just food that gets smoked. Whisky is smoked, Lapsang Souchong tea and Mexican Mezcal are all smoked as well.