Smoking Chicken or Pork with Tea

Michael,
I'd think tea might work just fine. I've not heard of that before. What smoker are you using?
I hope somebody has tried it. If you're using the SM models, you wouldn't want to use moist tea leaves.
I like to experiment with different smoking material and I usually have to try them on our cheap little home smoker. I can use green wood and such there.
Peggy

maybe some of the loose tea in a foil packet with a few pin holes then laid on top of the wood

Michael,

This is a Chinese way of smoking chicken. It is first marinated with rice wine, salt, green onion, Szechuan peppercorns and ginger then steamed in a bamboo steamer til done. The smoking is done in a foil lined wok using loose tea(1 1/2 tablespoons to 1/2 cup depending on the recipe) and brown sugar (anise and/or Szechuam peppercorns can also be added.) The chicken sits on a metal rack or chopsticks over this mixture. The wok is covered and heated over moderately high heat for 5-7 minutes or til it begins to smoke. Heat can then be turned off and chicken left covered to smoke 5-15 min more. Some recipes say to smoke it breast up for 6 min, turn it over and smoke 6 min more. This is mostly for color. The flavor is mild and is not the same smoke flavor we are used to with BBQ. It is also a great way to test your smoke alarm especially if you open the wok to turn the chicken over. The Epicuirious web site would probably have several of these recipes for Tea-Smoked Chicken.

The Szechuan peppercorns have an interesting flavor and might give a different kind of heat in a rub. They are usually toasted in a dry skillet first and then crushed. May have to try this...

Mudgie

I like to tea smoke duck, goose, and the occasional pheasant. Tea smoking works well with dark poultry meat to my taste, and tea smoked duck is very traditional. I'm not a fan of it with pork.

I brine in a simple salt/sugar mix. If you want to use other flavorings like ginger, five spice, etc, you could try putting it into the brine or in a rub. I'd put it into the rub.

For the smoking blend I use a mixture of 2 parts tea, 1 part sugar, and 1 part rice. Wrap it up in foil, poke a few holes in the package, and drop it right into the wood box.

I usually use about 2 cups of smoking material total. This gives me about 1.5 to 2 hours of smoke. You might want more or less depending on your taste.

Sometimes I'll tea smoke muscovy duck breasts instead of whole birds. Score them, sear them, then smoke them. Expensive but good.

I don't use the most expensive tea around either. I haven't found it makes much difference. There are some traditional teas, lapsang being one, but I settled on a supermarket brand orange pekoe that I can get in bulk at a good price. It adds a hint of citrus.

For some different ideas on tea smoking blends google up "tea smoked". There are lots of recipes out there.

When all else fails,try the Cookshack recipes,at the page top.

Tea Smoked Duck

Tea Smoked Duck

Tea Smoked Chicken

Great suggestions thanks everyone - Tom for some reason when I searched for "tea" in the archives before startng the post the recipes you came up with did not show. I am going to try a simple brine salt sugar and ginger then smoke in my model 55 with a tea sugar mixture before starting I will line the smoker box with tinfoil so I can get rid of the burnt sugar left over with out too much trouble.

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Macdonald:
[qb] Great suggestions thanks everyone - Tom for some reason when I searched for "tea" in the archives before startng the post the recipes you came up with did not show. [/qb]

That's because the recipes at the top of the page have been around CS for many, many years and aren't part of the forum. That's why the search didn't find them. I actually did that work years ago to create those recipes in their current form. It would probably be too much work to transfer 100's of recipes.

Maybe you could add a "permanent" post to the top of the recipe forum,to direct folks to the old recipes section?

I'm not sure how that would work,but am confident you could figure it out.

The down side would be to get people to use it for recipes and then use the forum for cooking techniques.

We just smoked some shrimp with green tea and basmati rice. The smoke has a different smell than wood but the flavor of the smoked shrimp was great.