Smoked Foods

If you have a grill with a lid and a bag of hickory chips you can smoke a turkey. Braising the bird first in a mix of coffee, apple cider vinegar and cane syrup or brown sugar results in marvelously complex flavors—sweet, bitter and herbaceous.

A pinch of cayenne pepper adds a spicy kick to these savory cookies, flavored with both sharp cheddar and smoked Gouda cheese. If you prefer, you can replace the smoked Gouda with Gruyère.

F&W's Marcia Kiesel loves the juicy ham from Karl Ehmer Quality Meats (karlehmer.com).

One bite of these shrimp and a swig of vodka will instantly transport you to Scandinavia.

In his gorgeous In.gredienti cookbook, Massimiliano Alajmo includes a dish called "pasta butter and smoke," made with smoked pasta and smoked butter and served with smoked hen broth. In this much-simplified version, the smoky flavor is all in the butter; it's mixed with cheese and chopped fresh herbs to make a rich sauce for silky pappardelle.

Turks call these sandwiches balik ekmek and make them with grilled fish—like mackerel—from the Bosphorus. For his version, Mehmet Gürs spreads grilled bread with a creamy roasted-garlic puree and tops it with smoked mackerel, arugula and slices of red onion and tomato.

"This recipe looks like a doozy, but it really delivers," says Andrea Reusing. "The chickens are just so reliably juicy, even when they're cooked longer than they should be." Smoking the birds quickly over anise-scented tea makes them wonderfully fragrant. If you prefer to cook one chicken instead of two, smoke it in a wok or a pot rather than a roasting pan.

Cold-smoking salmon usually requires an elaborate setup. Jason Alley's brilliant trick of quickly smoking the fish, then curing it like gravlax, is a great option for the home cook.

Because stovetop smoking is so fast, lean pork tenderloin won't become too dry.

This clever sweet-and-savory brittle gets its unusual flavor from smoked almonds. The texture is light, crisp and almost honeycomb-like.

Inspired by the classic combination of bagels with lox and cream cheese, Tory Miller devised this variation using smoked, locally raised trout and homemade English muffins. It would be equally good on other breads, such as a baguette, or even the bagel that inspired it.

F&W's Marcia Kiesel likes to whiz smoked mozzarella in the food processor with sun-dried tomato pesto and olive oil.

When presenting their lemony smoked-fish salad, Animal co-chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo spread out the colorful ingredients—avocados, grapefruit, radishes, arugula and chunks of smoked trout—on plates. For a garnish, the pair ingeniously bake the smoked-trout skin until it's crisp, then break it up into shards.

"You can 'turn' the artichokes, but that's a bit fancy and laborious," says Richard Blais about the chef technique of trimming the hearts down. It's much easier to serve the steamed artichokes whole; their nutty flavor is especially delicious with the smoky, herb-flecked mayonnaise.

"The fish we eat in Denmark—mackerel, herring, salmon—have beneficial omega-3 oils," says Trina Hahnemann. Any smoked fish will work well in the sweet-salty salad here.

Simmering the broth with a Parmesan rind gives the soup an even richer taste than sprinkling the cheese on top.

These ultra-crispy fries are a favorite at Proof on Main in Louisville, Kentucky, where Michael Paley goes through roughly 500 Idaho potatoes a week making them. Use very firm potatoes to ensure optimum crispness.

This creamy pâté from Gabriel Frasca and Amanda Lydon, chefs at Nantucket's Straight Wharf Restaurant, has an amazingly rich, smoky flavor.