Where there’s smoke there must be fire.
At Hudson’s we always cooked and smoked all of our meats with a wood fire using Pecanwood in our smokehouse and in our live wood fire grill in the kitchen. In the very early years in the kitchen we experimented with all woods and at the end of the trials, Pecanwood won out. Pecanwood, native to central Texas, is stronger than most fruit wood but milder than hickory and mesquite with a round yet mild flavor that works great with pork, poultry, small game birds, venison and beef when smoking or grilling.
Texas pit masters (BBQ masters) love the flavor of Oak but we found it too harsh for Hudson’s.
Texas BBQ masters also use Mesquite, burning it down to coals which eliminates the harsh green flavor caused by the creosotes of the burning Mesquite. Mesquite is fine for an open fire grill as it burns very hot and your food is exposed to the mesquite smoke for a very short time.
We always treated smoke as one of our seasonings. Sometimes we deviated from Pecanwood with our woods in the smokehouse to obtain a variety of flavors, but these were used only in the smokehouse never the grill in the kitchen as the inside grill was used to cook or finish cooking, not smoke.
In the middle of a busy night the grill cook could not flavor the food evenly, this all happened in the smokehouse prior to showtime. In the smokehouse we placed the heat source in the corner surrounded by fire bricks at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. When the Pecanwood burned down to coals, we would smother it with applewood chips, cherrywood chips, pecan shells, grapevines, aromatic cedar chips or dried herbs, the list goes on and on. My favorite was fruit wood, applewood landing at the top of the list.
The smoke flavor resides on the top ¼ inch of the meat and is called the pellicle or the red ring around a properly BBQed food, that is as far as the smoke flavor penetrates.
This smoky flavor in food acts as an appetite stimulant. Remember as a youngster when your dad cooked burgers on the grill in the backyard, nothing absolutely nothing tasted better! I’ll include charcoal briquets as a live fire, they are not my first choice, but better than gas. Gas fired grills are easy and clean but don’t impart smoke. The “outdoor” flavor comes from the fat dripping out of your food onto the gas fired hot grill. Not healthy and very messy but very memorable.
At Hudson’s we smoked the meats to rare and after removing from the smokehouse we would hold the meats in the cooler until evening service and then finish the cooking on a wood fire grill in the kitchen when it was ordered. This method accomplished two things; first the smoking of the meats extended the shelf life and secondly it gave the meats a more intense smoke flavor that was described as “double smoked”. Our ribeye steak would be smoked to rare as an entire roast and then sliced to a steak and finished on the grill, that’s double smoke.
The smoke house had four open wire shelves that were attached to chains hanging from the roof. Smoke and heat were a low-tech variable. Experience told you how hot to make the fire and which shelf to put the food on. Hot air rises so the top shelf would be the hottest. I knew that college education would pay off some day.
I was in the Jeffrey’s Restaurant kitchen and witnessed a great idea. They had two shelves mounted above their grill and used these shelves to hold food and finish cooking their grill items, perfect little carryover cooking spot with the smoke from the grill continuing to add flavor. That very week, I had Abel mount two open wire shelves above our grill. A live wood fire grill has an 8” hot spot where you begin the cooking process and make those fancy restaurant grill marks. The grill cook then places the food in a cooler spot to slowly finish the cooking. When the shelves are mounted over the fire you have opened up more space on your grill and you have created a forgiving area to hold the meat plus you get the bonus of more smoke. Thanks Jeffrey’s.
It takes a special cook to grill on an open fire and experience with the fiery grill is the best education. When Hudson’s cooked 200 dinners a night, the grill turned out 150 of those meals. You could tell you had a great grill cook when the food came off the grill in a timely manner and very few of those dishes were being returned to the kitchen due to being over cooked or under cooked. On a typical week night we had three cooks on the hot line: sauté cook, middle cook and grill cook. We had one to two cooks in the cold kitchen preparing salads and desserts.
One of my proudest moments was one busy week night I assumed the responsibility of the grill because our scheduled grill cook was out of commission at the last minute. We did 180 dinners and nothing was returned. I earned the respect of all the cooks.
We were years ahead of the “farm to table” that is so popular in today’s restaurant world. It was a theme that was natural for us and with smoke in our wheel house, live fire and smoke completed the “cook what’s in your backyard” theme.
Now that I have sold the restaurant and retired, I no longer have a smoke house at my disposal and to fire up a big barrel type of smoker is a lot of work for a small amount of food so I now get my smoke flavor from the stovetop smoker by Cameron. We used it at Hudson’s Cooking Schools to demonstrate how to smoke a small amount of beef, game, seafood or veggies. It is available at your local kitchen supply store or on the web. The Cameron Smoker is stainless steel and lasts for years. Best of all you can successfully use it indoors without setting off the smoke detector.
The recipe below is Smoked Duck Breast in a Red Chili Glaze. One side of duck breast per person is plenty. Smoking a boneless duck breast is simple. Duck is forgiving, it is moist and delicious when cooked to medium rare and unlike chicken it is safe when cooked rare. The smoker comes with a variety of wood chips to flavor your food. I like the applewood chip flavor the best. The Red Chili Glaze will hold in your refrigerator for weeks.
Smoked Duck Breast
Follow the instructions that come with your stove top smoker to prepare the smoker for cooking.
Remember to salt and pepper the duck before you smoke it.
To achieve a medium rare end result, cook for 8 minutes on high.
Duck breast is small, but it still needs to rest 5 minutes before you slice it. By letting it rest will allow the moisture to reenter the protein and insure a moist result.
Red Chili Glaze
It is fast and easy to prepare and is good with a variety of foods: seafood, pork, beef, etc. FYI, McDonalds made it as a dipping sauce for McNuggets, but please note, I made it years before Ronald ripped me off, don’t know if he changed three of the ingredients to make it his own, what a clown!
Ingredients
1 cup rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon red chili flakes, add more heat is desired
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced white onion
2 cups dark brown sugar
¼ cup tomato paste
½ cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 stick of butter, cut into 10 cubes
Method
Simmer vinegar, chili flakes, garlic and onion in a heavy saucepan until reduced by half.
Add brown sugar, tomato paste, soy sauce and salt and return to simmer for 3 minutes.
Remove from heat and whisk in butter cubes.