Saveur June - July 2015

Recipes don’t usually appear in an editor’s letter. But then, this isn’t a recipe so much as it is a general theory about the pleasures of grilling things that don’t usually get grilled, in this case strawberries. The theory goes something like this: The best thing about cooking with fire isn’t the bright, mesmerizing dance of the flames or the hiss and pop of the wood as it burns. The best things happen when the fire’s died down. When the charcoal’s burnt to embers and a bit of oak or apple wood smolders, releasing its faint curls of smoke—this is when things get interesting. The aftermath of a blaze offers angles and opportunities. I wrap heads of garlic in foil and bury them to slow-roast in the coolest part of the ash.…

Our sense of smell is strongly connected to the part of the brain that governs memory and emotion—a bridge between neuroscience and poetry. That would explain the flood of feeling that comes over us when we smell smoke, the seductive aroma of food being cooked on a fire. It reaches back to our earliest memories and possibly further back still, to some primal part of our psyches that knows: This is how the world smelled when our ancestors made dinner. When I try to imagine the lives of the cave dwellers, or the daily routine of a postlapsarian Adam and Eve, what comes to mind is the scent of meat roasting over a flame, calling the hunter home from the hunt, the gatherer home from the wild berry patch: Food’s…

Smoke is a funny thing. Light as air, it floats up in a fragrant plume and then drifts away, bestowing the taste of wood in its wake. So what exactly is this aromatic, elemental thing that can deeply flavor meat or subtly transform coldsmoked salmon? We asked noted food scientist Harold McGee to shed some light on its strange alchemy. How it behaves “In combustion, very large molecules break down into lots of very small ones. Those tiny aromatic products fly through the air and end up in our noses and on the surface of food. Just the same way moisture condenses on a cold glass in summertime, the volatile molecules of the smoke vapor condense on the food.” How it preserves “In the combustion cocktail of hundreds of volatile molecules in smoke, there…

Smoked beers are not entirely new. Time was, before coal and gas kilns, all brewers cured their fresh grains over burning wood. As production modernized, beer’s heady fumes dissipated, except in the German city of Bamberg, where rauchbier, as it’s called there, lived on, made in ovens fired with fragrant beech. Today’s new smoked beers are made the same way, with wet kernels of barley slowly dried over wood fires. The difference is that instead of using only beech, American brewers are smoking with local hardwood to create beers as varied as the nation’s regional barbecue styles. Fullsteam brewery, in Durham, North Carolina, makes a brown porter, Hogwash, with grains that are smoked using the state’s trademark hickory. Most pitmasters would never pair their meticulously smoked meat with strong, full-flavored brews,…

Stone Smoked Porter 5.9% ABV Escondido, California Stone's was one of the first Americanmade rauchbiers when it debuted in the ’90s. Today, the company offers experimental spinoffs flavored with chiles or vanilla. Fort Point Manzanita 6.3% ABV San Francisco German tradition with a homegrown twist: A classic tawny, malty-sweet brew, called an “alt” (old) for its long, mellow aging, gets some local flavor from charred manzanita branches. Alaskan Smoked Porter 6.5% ABV Juneau, Alaska This dark beer from Alaskan Brewing Co. has hints of spicy alder smoke that mellows with time. Vintage bottles are bacony and sweet like charred plum. Uncommon Bacon Brown Ale 6.8% ABV Santa Cruz, California Nutty and crisp, thanks to roasted buckwheat, this experimental beer gets its smoky character not from grain but from a cured hog leg steeped in each batch. Fullsteam Hogwash 5.4% ABV Durham, North Carolina For…

First manufactured as “condensed smoke” in 1895 by Missouri pharmacist Ernest H. Wright, liquid smoke is bottled magic: It adds a quick hit of grill flavor, no gear necessary. And you can make it (or fake it, rather) at home. The industrial method for producing it is a cross between the strange wonder of a chemistry lab and a barbecue—wood is burned, the smoke vapors are caught in a chamber, and then they’re cooled into a liquid. Chris Young, one of the founders of science-y cooking website ChefSteps.com, has a smart way to bypass the need for a big smoker. The trick is to use smoked salt and a mixture of solvents that will extract the smoke aromas . Young starts by mixing a neutral oil into the smoked salt…