Smoking food adds a delicious aroma. The smoky depth of flavour adds a new dimension to cooking at home, it allows you to cook like a chef.
It's all about the smoky aroma from the charcoal and wood-fired cooking.
The aroma is all the additional flavour you get when you bite into food … when aroma compounds are released.
When you cook with charcoal and wood there’s a world of flavour waiting for you to capture. The challenge is to harness all those smoky notes, rather than just letting it all escape into the air. Some equipment like kamados and kettle bbq allow the smoke and heat to escape when they are opened.
Some ovens are designed as smokers only – and can be made out of just about anything from a homemade kettle drum to a state-of-the-art piece of kit. The key here is finding an effective way of infusing food with that smoky aroma, without drying it out or compromising its cooking. And there are three main ways to do it: cold smoking, hot smoking (low’n’slow) and fast smoking (often the hardest to achieve).
Most, if not all food benefits from smoking … if you do it right:
Consider the type of food: the last thing you want to do is only taste the smoke, so treat the smoking process carefully in relation to the food. For something like scallops, go gently, so as to not overpower the delicious, sweet flesh.
Choose your fuel wisely to create the smoke. We recommend using sustainable charcoal like Whittle & Flame. Charcoal which doesn’t have additives and retains some of the lignin from the wood. A key consideration is a clean flame, to avoid the need to burn off the nasty additives you get from cheaper charcoals, where the initial burn smells bad and produces lot of smoke. Good charcoal tends to produce less smoke. Choose wood to complement the charcoal base. Again, make sure the wood is dry, seasoned wood.
The unexpected superstars of smoking are seafood like lobsters and mussels. As well as broccoli and cauliflower. The smokiness adds a totally new depth of flavour. Often the use of charcoal alone is sufficient to add flavour. It is important to be careful with heavy woods like oak as it can overpower the taste of the food.
Outdoor charcoal cooking is becoming a year-round activity.
Traditionally, smokers are front opening and, once set up, you can leave them alone and let time do the work for you. So, compared to a top opening BBQ, it figures that smokers are easy to use all year round, regardless of the weather. The Charlie Charcoal Oven has a front opening door which gives you the best of both worlds. Our bbq oven/smoker stops the heat and smoke escaping, we all know that heat rises and top opening bbq ovens lose more heat and smoke as soon at the top is opened. Goodbye heat control, goodby smoke.
Honour your food with smoke and heat...
Smoking and tightly controlling the heat honours food, taking your time to achieve perfection👌
Adding smoky flavours at home elevates the taste of food to restaurant level. It allows you to cook like a chef at home. Best of all, it’s easy and forgiving to do. If you consider traditional barbeque as direct heat, hands-on cooking, smoking and indirect cooking within an enclosed, outdoor oven is the opposite. Smoking honours food: it takes cuts of meat which need tender love and time, and transforms them
How does the Charlie Oven do it all?
The Charlie Oven satisfies all your smoking needs and your barbeque needs at the same time. All the smoke created stays within the oven chamber, the temperature is easy to control, you can choose between indirect and direct heat. Also, the capacity of the oven is so large that you can cook much more at any one time. A beginner can make outstanding food. It is so simple to use.