Your Smoked Vegetables Are Desperate for a Small Amount of Fat.
We are living in a kind of golden age of artificial meat products. Meat-free products have flooded the market, making it easier than ever to find Soirizo at the grocery store or the Impossible Burger at Burger King. These foods give vegetarians and vegans something that is easy to grill, but that doesn’t mean we have to ditch vegetables altogether.
Relying heavily on these mainstream meat substitutes won’t “save the environment,” whatever the fake meat food giants tell you – check out Alicia Kennedy’s article for In This Times on the green water wash trend – but more importantly: Vegetables are good and how meat or eggs, they taste great when cooked properly, but not as good if cooked without the care and thought they deserve.
The words “carrot dog” can drive the average BBQ daddy into a frenzy, but smoked, grilled carrots spiced with a little fat aren’t just a fancy hot dog substitute, they’re a delicious way to enjoy carrots. (I love grilled carrots and love whims, so I don’t mind the term “carrot dog.” However, I draw the line on “ bread steak .”)
And while the Michelin-starred restaurant received a lot of affectionate reviews for removing meat, fish and dairy from its menu, Chef Amanda Cohen has been incredibly creative and delicious in the way she prepares and serves vegetables at her Dirt restaurant ever since. Candy. 2008. Her broccoli doggy is one of her most iconic dishes, but other vegetables (such as carrots, beets and mushrooms) have received dog treatments, as well as pastrami and undoubtedly gourmet mousse.
In short, Chef Cohen has been thinking about vegetable dogs (and vegetables in general) for much longer and more intently than I have, so I reached out to her to see if she had any tips on how to cook smoked vegetables. they are carrots, broccoli or cabbage, the taste is delicious. (Spoiler alert: It all comes down to fat and surface area.)
“The difference between smoking vegetables and smoking animal protein is that vegetables do not contain their own source of fat,” Chef Cohen explained to me via email. “When you smoke animal protein, it absorbs the smoke and mixes with the fat, and you have this truly delicious, intoxicating product. When you smoke a vegetable, it is not porous. It will not be saturated with smoke. And the smoke itself basically just sticks to the outside. You want the surface to be very large so that you can smell the scent in as many places as possible. But even in fat, it still needs to be completed. You have to add fat to the vegetable – as you have already added a chunk of animal protein – to make it so delicious. “
Smoked carrots can take a few more steps than a pork butt, but these are simple steps that even a novice home cook can follow. Cohen’s Nashville hot dogs are prepared using several methods to achieve the delicious effect you want.
“We only cook them to make them a little soft and easier to shape,” she explained. “It’s not fun to eat a carrot dog in a bun if there is a sharp end. We want everything to be the same size and so you can shape it. And we know from what we do with it that it won’t cook enough when smoked and will have to be fried for too long, like a whole carrot. So I have to start this process and move it forward. So we’re going to boil it so it’s soft enough to shape it, and then we smoke it and then dip it in the batter and deep-fry it, and end up with hot oil, because it’s a Nashville hot dog. … “
If smoking and deep-frying seems too time consuming for a backyard barbecue, don’t worry. Cohen’s dog broccoli recipe is a little more affordable for the average home cook, but you can also apply these principles to all of your vegetarian grilling and smoking activities.
Chop large vegetables into slices to increase their area, cook stronger foods like carrots, and develop flavor with different cooking methods such as smoking and then grilling for an extra lump of charcoal. And, perhaps most importantly, always add a little fat to vegetables by quickly frying them, dipping or sprinkling with butter or other fragrant oil. It may not be as easy as tossing an impossible burger on the grill, but thinking about cooking vegetables this way will help you cook better no matter your diet.
It’s worth noting, though, that Chef Cohen isn’t opposed to occasionally releasing Impossible or Beyond, especially if he’s leading them along a path full of vegetables. “They eat less meat because they try different types of foods, which hopefully leads to the dark side of eating more vegetables, which is what I do.”