Why Does Everything Taste Better on the Grill?
Have you ever wondered how smoked and grilled food can possibly taste so good?
Grilled food is the world’s most ancient dish, 2 million years of mankind in one recipe. It appeals to all our senses, sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, and triggers our imagination. A sizzling piece of your favourite dish over open fire, with deep grill marks, the scent of wood smoke, mellow potatoes, juicy sausages, crisp chicken skin, tender vegetables, the flickering light of embers, and back come the memories of a party on the beach, a cozy night at the open chimney, a bonfire celebration at summer solstice with your friends.
Tapping all flavour profiles
Salty, sweet, tangy, spicy, and recently umami form the flavour profiles most relevant to great tasting BBQ. Great BBQ is creating a balance between those five elements. Some come from the dish itself, some you would add with sauces and rubs, spices and brines, and some are brought by the side dishes. A balanced composition makes the great chef.
And yet, grilling has a sixth element: the wood smoke. Smoking wood adds its very particular fragrance to a dish. And smoking woods are not all the same, oh no. Like flowers and herbs, smoking woods have their special perfume.
Smoking woods
In the Mediterranean region, for eons people used the local woods for their kitchen. And what a difference that makes. Sweet and nutty almond and walnut, tangy, intense olive, light and fresh orange and lemon, earthy holm oak. We all have a memory of those tastes. Used for grilling and smoking, those mediterranean woods add exactly what makes Mediterranean dishes special: in Valencia, paella is traditionally cooked on an open fire of orange and lemon wood; in Málaga, skewered sardines sizzle next to big blocks of glowing olive tree roots; holm oak acorns make the earthy taste of the finest Spanish cured hams, and holm oak wood and charcoal is used in the best barbecue restaurants in Madrid; pizza ovens are traditionally heated with a mix of local woods including olive, walnut and almond.
Enhance your cooking
As a service to good taste, we make Fuego&Sabor Mediterranean Smoking Wood Chips available to your BBQ. Enjoy the taste of the Mediterranean, bring back those memories from the best holidays you ever had, and push your cooking to the next level. You are in good company of top Chefs.