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Slow and low the keys to successful smokin'.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Joel Reese Daily Herald Staff Writer

The grilled meal certainly sounded like it would be delicious: Minced smoked lobster meat added to a butter-based sauce, all ladled atop a smoked salmon.

And everything tasted fine, for the most part - the sauce was creamy and smooth, and the salmon was rich and flaky.

But as for the delicate smoky flavor that was supposed to be added by the hickory chips I'd put inside the grill's smoke box?

"Do you taste anything smoky? Any at all?" I hesitantly asked my wife.

She sampled another bite.

"Umm, maybe a little," she said, obviously lying to protect the ever-fragile male ego.

And so went my first feeble effort at smoking food on the grill: It was an abject failure.

As I learned the hard way, smoking food on the grill adds a complicated - though not impossible - step to the grilling process.

"Smoking food is difficult, but it's worth it," says Judith Fertig, one-half of the Kansas City-based cooking duo, The BBQ Girls. "You get that wonderful smoked flavor, and the food stays moister because you're cooking it at a lower temperature."

Becoming a capable smoker takes time, but you shouldn't be intimidated if you don't have top-notch equipment. A standard grill works just as well, says Larry Gerber, who runs a barbecue catering company in Wauconda and the Web site, www.barbequeman.com.

"I've got a high-end smoker that costs $30,000, but some of the best things I've smoked were on a 22 1/2-inch kettle grill," says Gerber, who also appears on the weekly WMVP AM-1000 radio show, "Outdoor Chicago."

Go slow

Grilling conjures images of food sizzling over an open flame. But smoking doesn't use the fire - rather, it's all about using the smoke to cook the food.

The first requirement for smoking is, of course, a good grill. Save the gas grill for burgers; charcoal works better for smoking, insists Steven Raichlen, who has penned several books on grilling and hosts the PBS show "BBQ University."

Why are charcoal grills better? For starters,...

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