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Adam, suggestion re. sponsorships: Since your audience is so international, maybe drop a quick “US only” or similar at the end, when you’re advertising things the rest of us can’t make use of. Just an idea, so we don’t have to mess around in terms and conditions on various websites to find out that it’s (once again) not for us.
Oh liquid smoke defiantly! Tastes different I wouldn't say bad not particularly worse than traditional smoking but to me it's like testing the difference between onions and garlic It's a completely different flavor profile (And yes I tried different brands and cooking methods and etc... I can always tell the difference.. always 100% of the time..) Idk if it's genetic if some people are more or less sensative to certain compounds which either lack or are concentrated more in the liquid smoke But never the less i can always tell the 2 apart
"I'd bet that if I worked on that recipe some more and kind of replicated the heating environment of a hot smoker, I could produce some liquid smoke barbecue that would fool a blindfolded purist." You know what you have to do, now.
Indeed. And the stuff is absurdly potent. You only need a few drops to turn a whole bottle of ketchup into some (really cheap and not recommended) barbecue sauce.
They probably don’t advertise how few carcinogens are in the product for the same reason Hershey’s doesn’t advertise how few bugs are in their product. Better for the consumer to just not think about it. But if you stamp “50% less carcinogens!” On the bottle now most consumers go “whoa, I didn’t know this had carcinogens in it”
I mean. By that logic you wouldn't have every food product in stores advertising 'low' or 'no' sodium, sugar, cholesterol, carbohydrates, fat, ect.. The whole point of bringing that up as a marketing strategy is in reference to how much more health conscious we are today and how much companies advertise their products having less of the stuff we believe to be bad.
@@117johnpar Yeah but those are all inherent in food. You can label a food as having all of the above and people wouldn’t think twice but try labelling a food as having cancer causing compounds…
My husband's Japanese aunt is famous for her chocolate muffins. She brings them to every family gathering, and they are always a hit. This past Christmas, however, my sister-in-law took a bite of one and found it so nasty she had to spit it out. Everyone else surreptitiously tasted the muffins and all agreed that something was horribly, horribly wrong with them. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that she must have mistakenly used liquid smoke instead of vanilla extract. Her husband was barbecuing at the time, which is probably why she didn't notice. We never had the heart to tell her, but the story of those chocolate liquid smoke muffins will go down in family history.
my mom would always tell this story of how one time she made sugar cookies on a cutting board she just diced some onions on and apparently discovered a new delicacy
A coffee-hating friend of mine once made cake for an event. The cake called for coffee, but he didn't have any, so he substituted gravy granules. I didn't get to try it, but heard it was vile.
I think one of the reasons liquid smoke gets a bad rep is because the stuff you get in bottles is actually super highly concentrated. So if you put it directly onto your meat or food, it overpowers everything else and gives an "artificial" taste. It's meant to be diluted first (like in the marinade for those chicken legs).
Maybe... but even still when diluting it to an absurd degree It doesn't necessarily tastes bad But I could always tell it apart from real smoke... Always 100% Blindfolded and etc.... It's just massively different then traditional smoking... Idk how many people are sensitive to the taste in such a degree But to me it's like the difference between onions and garlic As simple as that... a completely different taste
@@donotlike4anonymus594 It's worth noting that the liquid smoke you're tasting almost certainly used different wood than was used to make the smoked food you tasted it against, at the very least. The difference you're tasting might not have anything to do with the difference between liquid smoke and traditional smoking and could just be differences between what went into the two processes as inputs.
@@donotlike4anonymus594 maybe I haven't had good recipes with liquid smoke but to me, although tasting somewhat Smoky it tastes like a burned Smoky flavor. I don't get as much of the burned smoke flavor from real smoking. If Adam were my neighbor I would definitely be interested in having him try to fool me into thinking liquid smoked meat is wood smoked meat.
@@keithyinger3326 What he's saying is that if you are used to the flavor of a particular type of woodchip, you will notice the difference when you use liquid smoke made from a different wood. But if you got a brand of liquid smoke made from the same kind of wood, the difference might be smaller. It still won't taste identical in all recipes, but in a number of well-crafted recipes, it could easily be indistinguishable.
This is why Adam Ragusea's channel is so great. I had been avoiding liquid smoke for health reasons because that was just conventional wisdom. Now we just need some liquid smoke recipes.
To me, it feels like an argument I had with a friend. They told me that "cow milk is mislabeled, because in fact, it's cow's boob juice with pus and fat." And yeah, they're right, but... that's what milk is, this is why there's a word for it
@@MartinMurphy-lh9qb Yeah, no, agreed, she was really extreme vegan too and while there might be some truth to that, that's not a reason to not call it milk :p
I only wish there was a carcinogenic test or standard for liquid smoke. And it seems like a good marketing message to me as well "Meets or exceeds USDA "
hopefully if they did such regulation, they'd actually have a calibrated number based on specific evidence of harm, rather than just any contained amount. prop 65 in california isn't very useful
The studies done on PAHs causing cancer were done on mice and with doses that were thousands of times more than you would eat in a normal diet. You would probably have to drink a bottle a day of liquid smoke for 50 years before you got cancer from it.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology surely must have lab grade liquid smoke as a reference sample. They got samples for anything, like peanut butter or sewer sludge.
@@Yora21 we like it here too. But we don’t have any culture of smoking meat and using real barbecue. We mostly grill burgers and sausages and use disposable barbecue.
I've made liquid smoke before using that method. It's great - much prefer it over the bottled stuff, but that's because I can control what species of wood to use and thus can create a custom liquid smoke that suits the dishes I'm making. Bonus: A hint of liquid smoke frozen into an ice cube and placed in a bourbon drink is heaven on earth.
I literally dropped the phone, went to the fridge, and made a batch of ice balls with a drop of liquid smoke after reading this. Thank you my good sir.
As a southern vegetarian, liquid smoke is an amazingly useful ingredient for replicating the flavor of southern vegetable dishes without using smoked meats! Southern-style collard greens, and any kind of bean dish, are usually prepared with smoked ham or bacon. A dash of liquid smoke gets me most of the way there, without the ham.
Saw some people asking for the bbq recipe because apparently Adam wasn't specific enough. Can't find the comments now but I don't want my work to go to waste. Literally just do what he does in the video. Brine some chicken leg quarters with liquid smoke added to the brine (enough water to cover, then like 2% salt by weight, a splash of liquid smoke). Put them in any metal vessel and cover tightly with foil. 325 °F, pull them at like 45 minutes, test with a fork if they're done yet. If they aren't, recover and check again every 15 minutes. If you're fancy you can use a probe thermometer, target like 175 °F internal. They'll get hotter during phase 2. Once they're cooked remove the foil, bump the oven to like 400 °F, baste with barbecue sauce. If you don't like your results try again next week.
I have no idea what you're talking about, but you get an upvote for telling people to repeat something until they get it right. A key is to spend some time analyzing each result and thinking about new ways to improve it.
As an apartment dweller Liquid Smoke (the one from Texas) has been a game changer for me for like 20 years! I thought everybody knew that it's a concentrated liquid and you only need a little bit to add that 'smoked' flavor. It's a great addition to BBQ beans as well. 😋
I appreciate Adam’s choice to add the parenthetical and useful conclusions in the titles of his videos. One of the many reasons I enjoy watching his stuff.
What? Not -- THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT....? WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT.....? That is what hooks most lame brains.... I am with YOU on this topic.
I enjoyed reading the judgement, so clear and well reasoned. As someone from outside of the US I think one of the biggest reasons for your success in the 20th century was how well the law functioned in the US compared to other countries.
As a barbecue food truck owner I can assure anyone that liquid smoke is good stuff. I use it at home occasionally especially when I make beef jerky. Sometimes I don’t feel like tending a fire and just want to make jerky in the dehydrator. Liquid smoke is definitely the way to go with jerky.
I actually know the specific car wash company in the video, and nearly fell for the same thing myself lol. I believe my mom has gotten one of those subscriptions before, mostly because she is very particular about having a clean car as often as possible. She also vacuums about every day though so she is quite the clean freak.
My grandma has been adding liquid smoke to her venison jerky recipe for years. It makes it taste like it was smoked rather than just thrown in a dehydrator.
This was absolutely fascinating! I've been cooking since I was about 9 years old and cooking professionally for many years, and I love this channel because I always learn something new. Thanks, Adam!
I can't believe this video just posted. I just finished opening and using a bottle of liquid smoke that I have had for like a year because I wondered about the carcinogens!
Funny that you made this video. About a year ago, I got curious about what liquid smoke could be, because it just...sounded fake? So I went and looked it up, and lo, discovered that it's exactly what it says on the tin.
Wait before you buy a large bottle And make sure you like it... Adam's badly wrong today There is a massive difference Idk how many people can taste it But I can always 100% of the time recognize the difference It's as big of a difference as onions and garlic Not necessarily bad but completely different Some people seem to not be able to tell it apart and some may not like the taste.... Just make sure you do (Also yeah you should buy a large tin since it's crazy concentrated...)
This video kinda encapsulates everything I love about thia channel. There's no purism, no "you need to do the right thing", no assumptions about what you have available to you. It's just one home cook to another, who understands different people have different lifestyles, resources, ect. Dispelling the whole barbeque snobbery around liquid smoke is great for someone like me who lives in an apartment in the city where I can't grill on my balcony
Thanks for breaking that down. I honestly thought it was a bunch of weird chemicals tossed together in a lab that fooled our tongues into thinking it was smokey flavor. Turns out it's a bunch of weird chemicals combined together in a smoker. Still not sure I'll use it but I won't be as apprehensions as previously.
I love this video. Thanks for putting the message out there. We started buying liquid smoke by the gallon when we encountered a recipe for slow-cooked Carolina pulled pork. With the low price of pork vs beef, this recipe has become a mainstay in our home. Every batch uses between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of the stuff. The three brands we've used have all been excellent. Durkee is the latest. I'd guess a lot of liquid smoke these days is made in fast pyrolysis reactors, where the contact time of wood particles with the heat source is less than a second, and the reactions is immediately stopped to prevent the formation of undesirable secondary compounds. That, combined with the separation of phases according to solubility and polarity, makes a product that's SO MUCH safer than regular smoking!
It's not common I go through a Ragusea video where I know almost all the facts presented - I did my own dive on liquid smoke when I first bought it! Vegans and vegetarians often put a little bit of liquid smoke in their imitation meat broths - as my father (a meat eater) said when I made him a recipe with liquid smoke, it's crazy what a little liquid smoke does to make something taste a lot more like meat just by association. And he's right!
I bet that prosecutor was being paid under the table by some industrial producer of pyroligneous acid, who probably didn't have a patent to use for a conventional lawsuit.
I'm so used to learning that products like this secretly aren't what they claim to be. Kind of a nice surprise to learn the opposite for once - I always assumed liquid smoke was some sort of weird artificial flavouring, but it turns out that it's exactly what it says on the tin.
I believe it is commonly used poorly. Frequently when I’ve had it, the end product tastes like “fake smoke”. There are products that I can TELL are liquid smoke from the taste, and at the time, I assumed liquid smoke was in some way to blame, not knowing how it was produced and assuming it was some smoke-devoid process. Now that I know how it’s actually made, when I taste something that tastes like gross fake smoke, I just assume they used the product wrong
Yeah, imho it's like the "CGI is bad!" crowd. *Bad CGI* is bad, that's the stuff you notice. Good CGI you never notice. heh. Liquid smoke is the same. Use too much, which is easy to do, and it's..... not good. lol. But use it sparingly and it can be very tasty :)
Maybe some people are ejust more sensitive to certain compounds others aren't... I've tried a number of brands and I can always 100% of the time tell the difference between real and liquid (Not that it's necessarily bad... but it's like comparing onion and garlic a completely different taste)
They're likely going too heavy handed with the stuff, so you get a flavor that's a lot more intense and off-putting than real smoke because..... well smoke is diluted by air. I noticed with Adam's recipe, he diluted it with water, so that probably helps a lot.
@@donotlike4anonymus594 Liquid smoke and normal smoke are the same compounds. Unless you're inhaling the smoke, you shouldn't notice much when it's already in the dish. It's like saying "I can tell the difference between whether sea salt or table salt is used in a soup." Not saying you're lying, but I don't know what you're tasting that's different.
Hi. I work in company that sell USA smoke here in Europe. We provide machines that chsnges water condesed liquid smoke into the smoke cloud in smoking chambers using pressured air and nozzles. This is what we called smoking. Dipping or drenching product without regenerated smoke cloud is not the same process in our mind and mind of UE law. Our products are free from tar, ash and PAHs thanks to proces similar to decantation of wine. And filtration. But our products are not by products of charcoal production. The pyrolisis is different and different flavour components are made. Also, our smoke for rapidly fired wood chips is way more better in terms of color building. But this is for a long talk.
@@benny4legs yes. Like traditional smoke is a areasol/mist (solid and liquid particles handled im the air), cloud regenerated from liquid smoke is the same, apart from solid ashes and water-repelent unsoluble tar, that were removed during filtering. But particles size are under 1 micron, so please not to confuse it with spraying.
@@benny4legs for smoking in chamber yes. Imagine spraying water on your bed sheet with flowers sprayer. It will be wet. Now, imagine walking on meadow on misty day. Are you wet? No. But both phenomenons are made from water. But particles sizes of this water is different. This is why smoking in smoke chamber using cloud regenerated from liquid smoke is smoking, not wet spraying with splashing
This was a super cool in-depth entry, thanks! Wondering how it might be possible to replicate a smoke ring, given what you found with the dye in the marinade.
@@aragusea They probably don't filter them out, as they would not distill in the first place. Nitric acid can be distilled but not potassium nitrite or nitrate. If any gets through in the ash it is very soluble in water, so it could not be filtered in the usual sense. I doubt they are using reverse osmosis or ion exchange resins, which would be able to remove the nitrite/ nitrate but would also take with it a lot of the wanted flavor compounds.
One could probably do that with Insta Cure #1, but that mixture is something that one needs to highly respect, accurately weigh, and definitely not over-use.
My wife is vegetarian and I love that Colgin stuff. Nothing brings the flavors closer to meat than smoke and MSG. As a European I must say, it's hard to get them. I order mine via Britain, imported from USA... Highly recommended anyway, enhances so many dishes.
Depending on where you live, you can get it in vegan shops. This is where I first came across this stuff, by recommendation of a vegan friend, and I've been using it eversince. I can confirm, nothing beats it.
Y'know, I'm inspired to try something now. I've settled on my base rice recipe for the rice cooker being 2⅔ cups basmati (360g), 4 cups stock (950g), a stick of butter (115g), a tablespoon of MSG (17g). Rinse the rice a bit and drain well (so I don't have to worry if my rice source has undesirable chemicals or bugs that I can't see), plop it all in the rice cooker, fluff when done and let rest for a couple of minutes. That's delicious rice like that and goes with anything, but I'll also do things like mix in lemon juice or other acids after the rice is done (tried before, don't like as well) if it pairs well with things like fish or chicken. I've added onions I'd already sauteed with some garlic. The stock (or soupbase) that I use is inspired by what I'm pairing it with.... the variations are endless once you get into herbs and such as well. :) But now I want to add a few drops of liquid smoke and see what that does to the rice. I bet that will ramp things up another little step for some dishes. :) But yeah, you inspired me because I'm a huge MSG fan. It is magic stuff!
@@isaaceiland-hall425 Sounds good, but be sure to not give up too fast. It's very easy to use too much or too little smoke, which tastes more strange than smoky. I recommend do add it to many dishes which usually would contain cured meats like sausage, ham or bacon. If you want to go crazy, make a pizza, add smoke to the dough and tomato sauce, and use smoked cheese. It will taste like eating a wood fire.
I made burnt ends in the oven with liquid smoke for the 2023 superb owl, I recently smoked a brisket for my birthday, it took 16 hours on a weber kettle with charcoal & apple wood; They were both amazing, and had I not told the people I shared the burnt ends with that they had been done in an oven, they would not have known.
This "liquid smoke isn't real smoke" argument reminds me a lot of that water gag where people were calling it HOH instead of H2O to make it seem like a harmful chemical & claiming it's used in the production of yoga mats & industrial products... when it was just water. People love playing word games like the prosecutors did in that court case.
I love this video and I enjoy your channel. Thanks for the explanation that I have had questions about for years!!! I smoke meats all the time and have always wondered the difference.
I manage a local Hawaiian joint in Phoenix where we make a decently traditional Kalua Pig. We use liquid smoke to make it smoky before roasting it for 12 hours, low and slow. We ran an experiment where we traditionally smoked our Kalua pork instead of the liquid smoke and found that it not only was several times cheaper and easier to do it with liquid smoke, it flat out tasted better since the slight acidity in the liquid smoke brought out more of the pork flavor.
I was vaguely aware of Kalua pork, but saw a food historian's video on it recently and became much more interested. Smoky slow-cooked pork? Ummmmmmmm, count me the heck in! lol. I'm very very far away from Phoenix else I'd find out where you are more specifically. :)
As a Kansas Citian, admittedly I do use liquid smoke a lot in my cooking. It's no replacement for BBQ and smoking meat. But, it's perfect in a curing brine for beef; marinades; chili; tacos; stews; Chinese dishes; and pretty much everything else you can think to put it in. Smoke is the ingredient so many recipes are missing (especially old recipes) because it's how people used to cook. And yes, you can replicate (or surpass) BBQ by brining (corning?) beef in spices & liquid smoke for 1-2 weeks; then curing for 24 hours with pink salts; and then cooking 20 min/pound at 350 degrees. I cook roasts all the time using this method.
This video is well timed. I just finished curing a slab of bacon yesterday and hot smoked it in my weber. I am not game enough to attempt cold smoking because of food safety reasons. Maybe next time i'll incorporate liquid smoke in the cure to mimic cold smoking without bringing the food into the temperature danger zone.
My family has an aversion to liquid smoke. Mainly because my grandmother would gift us these smoked sausages that she would prepare with liquid smoke but then actually smoke them so it was like double smoked flavor and was the only thing you could taste.
mcdonald’s had a smoky blt quarterpounder last december and i got super sick from one. i was puking all night and since then i have not been able to handle smoky flavored things without retching. very sad cause i love smoked meats
Wow! I had several conversations with people in the recent past discussing the same topic of liquid smoke versus smoking food and the other people tell me that it's just not the same and that liquid smoke is "bad" for you. Thanks, Adam!
What i love about these videos of yours is that although you are very educated on cooking you aren't smug about. You're very down to earth and logical and i love that about you
My mother-in-law “discovered” liquid smoke back in the 1990’s and bless her heart, used it on EVERYTHING! The house she and husband built had an indoor electric grill as well as an built in gas grill on the patio. She grill something for every meal and added liquid smoke to most things. I was so glad to come home after visiting just to have some bland, non smoked food!
My only complaint with the off the shelf stuff is that there's extra flavors added. Has a distinct taste that I don't really like. Used it several times and it didn't taste like smoke, it tasted like liquid smoked. But making my own with old whisk(e)y barrel chips I have no complaints. Works better than one of those little portable smoke things too.
There are a lot of heroes in history who were just brave and/or stupid enough to put some weird smelling stuff in their mouth. Trying the weird-smelling old fruit and discovering alcohol, trying the rancid milk that smelled rancid in kind-of-a-good-way and discovering yogurt, or my favorite, the Chinese farmer who tried the weird, green-and-brown chicken's egg from the field after he'd laid down a layer of quicklime to enrich the soil and discovered century eggs. THAT guy had to be the bravest
@@djsnowman06 that's true lol. Tbh, the real unsung heroes were the ones who put weird-smelling stuff in their mouths and died as a result. Their sacrifice enabled their friends to go "okay, THIS one kills you. But maybe the other one won't" lol
I'm glad you did this one Adam cause I keep a bottle hidden in the back of the spice cabinet. Sometimes you just want to add a bit of flavor to something without setting up outside and waiting hours. 2 or 3 drops is enough to satisfy that urge without all the time and trouble. Oh and for anybody who hasnt experimented yet I find it to be one of those things to wait until just before serving to add. I am a bit concerned about the potential health effects of smoked foods so I only have it on rare occasions but there is something oh so good about meat cooked over an open wood fire. If you can use a cleaner artificial way to approximate that scent/aroma, great. You can even get most of the way there by just heating a pan and flashing off a few drops of liquid smoke to stank the place up in a good way without actually eating any of it.
Re: Your liquid smoke barbecue attempt, I do something similar via sous vide, using a recipe from ChefSteps. You cook chicken pinwheels sous vide in a simple marinade that includes liquid smoke and molasses (10 g liq. smoke, 30 g molasses, 5g black pepper (opt.), and salt). You just briefly finish it on the grill to sear the surfaces, starting skin-side up so the skin dries a bit before you flip it. Optionally sauce it on the grill, or just serve it with sauce. It comes out great! And no burnt skin from having to grill it too long to get the interior done. -Tom
In 2009 I had my fifteen minutes of fame that involved legal filings. My lawyer argued in his filings that the parody thing I did wouldn't be confusing to a "moron in a hurry". I've always loved that phrase and think of it from time to time - and try to remember it when I'm doing something that others will use - like a website or writing directions/instructions. I think "a blindfolded purist" gets added to a very short list of memorable and useful phrases along those lines now :)
Adam, the most common starting point for filtration is activated charcoal, as far as I know. There are also molecular sieves, although the only thing I know about them is that they exist. And there are zeolites and ion-exchange membranes and something else I can't remember right now. Since you know the chemistry, maybe you can devise the best homemade filtration for the liquid smoke. If I were filtering my own smoke, I might reserve 10% unfiltered, to add back to the filtered smoke, for a touch more authenticity, while maintaining the benefits of filtration. Great video, thanks so much for your content.
Adam's level of curiosity can seem almost encyclopediac, and that informs his wonderful investigative riffs. I like liquid smoke, and it would be fun to be able to make it myself. This was commendably concise. I wish I could say the same for his much longer videos, which are in desperate need of some serious editing.
I wonder if it would be possible to sous vide something like a brisket with liquid smoke and then finished in something like an oven just to see if it would have any similarities to the traditional thing.
I wonder if grocery stores will soon be asking "I wonder why everyone suddenly started buying liquid smoke this month?" (and other things that Adam educates us on)
@Adam Ragusea when forests like those in California have seasonal fires (they are necessary for some trees to reproduce). The smoke sticks to the bark and leaves, Bugs and fungi are killed by this smoke, and bugs also don't like the smell. So liquid smoke could be a safer pesticide fungicide that we could use. Using bamboo as the feedstock would be preferable due to its fast-growing nature.
I like to use powdered liquid smoke, which sounds like some sort of double oxymoron, but is just taking the liquid smoke and dehydrating it. It’s delicious
Living in Calgary, Smoke is the last thing I would like to hear about right now. But I think this is a welcome elaboration on your past smoking video Adam. Good stuff.
I like the aesthetic of running a smoker instead of pouring flavorings from a bottle. Home cooking is as much about enjoying the process as enjoying the results these days anyway, and I prefer the process that involves fire.
Wood vinegar also natural helps plants defend from pests after a fire because of wood vinegar coating everything after the smoke. It can be sprayed on apples and other things in the garden
(not checking my old books so i might be wrong) the difference between condensation and the process you showed is that in condensation you make the smoke itself precipitate, whereas in the other you make it bubble in some water to trap it. i reckon the second process might actually precipitate more unhealthy stuff (everything that's not water soluble enough) than the first but hey, it's not condensation
I get that it may deliver same result to BBQ, but how do you use liquid smoke for preserving/dry smoking tho? Isn't applying more moisture when you need to get rid of it counterproductive? Or do i just coat it with liquid smoke and leave in the oven on low setting for couple hours?
I’m from Texas and I’ve made some BADASS Brisket in the oven by coasting the briskets in Liquid smoke, mustard, salt and pepper. It’s literally the same thing as smoking on the pit but way easier.
Great judicial opinions are always fun to read. My favorite line in that one is, "Well, nobody could be deceived into thinking it was specifically what the indictment charges they are being deceived with."
I visited a charcoal producer last year, one of their side products was a spray on insect repellent got from the condensate. Some of my hiking buddies use it, smells just like a BBQ and keeps the mosquitoes at bay.
Thanks for this Adam... Here in the Philippines it is very rare to encounter Wrights Liquid Smoke on grocery shelves but I have it and as much as I wanted to flavour every meal I have, most people loved it. They frequently ask me how I managed to put a good smokey flavour into our dishes without the nasty tastes but I do not share with them that this product is my secret. Yeah it did save much time and effort preparing foods especially when you are in a condo or if someone you know has asthma. But many times I just do the old school of smoking given that I am in an open space. ❤
I just discovered that within my area, Gaisano mall sells liquid smoke and i couldn't be more excited. Bought wrights liq. smoke Applewood. I used half spoon of it on marinated chicken. Tried it on air frying bbq chicken. Tastes like bbq without the burnt parts. It tastes unbelievable. Its the first time i tasted a "smoky" flavor.
Wood tar creosote (another product of destruction distillation of wood) is also useful for persevering food. Or, at least it can be used for that. It has also not been found to be toxic-unlike coal tar creosote-has antiseptic properties, can be used to preserve wood (although less effectively than coal tar creosote) and apparently is effective in treating a number of GI issues
Company in Wisconsin called Red Arrow has made liquid smoke for major food companies for decades. It is now part of the Kerry Group. When I worked there aprox. 30 yr ago, they produced it by heating sawdust and pulling the smoke through columns of circulating water; later they changed to a different process more like the distillation mentioned. If a product says "natural smoke flavor", it likely from them.
At LONG last, Adam, you agree with me! My Mom use to say that Liquid Smoke was FAKE smoke, and I told her, nope, Liquid Smoke is REAL smoke....looks like I was right, after all. Thank you, so much, Adam, for your videos! I probably learn more, from your videos, than all of the other videos, on you tube!
Fascinating. Two points to your end position: 1) Liquid smoke in a bottle is not, just, that original distillate, at least not commonly. It also contains additional sugars, flavourings, and colourings to be 'More real and reality'. 2) The process of "Smoking", or really brining with Liquid smoke makes a far more watery end product. Bacon that has been properly smoke cured cooks very differently than bacon that has been soaking in a smokey solution, necessitating very different cooking methods. For me, liquid smoke as an additive I'd throw into something like a stir fry to simulate wok'hey, or a drop on a stew or sauce that something like smoked paprika would ruin. But in cured meats I find the real deal, hung, dried, and coated in carcinogens, just better. It doesn't have as much waste water, or odd discharge as it cooks, and the texture tends to be firmer and more forgiving to over cooking. Still, a wonderful history and science lesson.
A very Alton brown-y episode! Love it. I use destructive distillation to make biochar. It's a great process. Love to see your cooking audience get exposed to pyroligneous acid!
My grandmother had a brisket recipe with chili sauce and liquid smoke. She then made cold sandwiches with leftovers on potato rolls. People literally fought over them.
Is the difference between this and methanol distillation just temperature? I don't think I've ever had real liquid smoke. I find the fake vinegar added stuff repulsive though, unfortunately. I don't smell or taste the smoke, just the vinegar and a sweetness.
Is liquid smoke related to creosote oil? Edit: quick google seems to suggest that creosote oil is the by-product of liquid smoke production, or the other way round. although I'm not 100% sure.
I once figured out that liquid smoke gave me headaches, and haven't tried any for years. But I do like smokey smells. I shall buy a bottle and try small amounts. Thanks, Adam. (I was once given an expensive whole smoked duck that was purchased at a genuine smokehouse. It tasted like cheap ham.)
As a kid, I always thought liquid smoke was just a type of flavor enhancer, to give you the taste of barbecued food. I've never thought about it since, but it's actually an amazing product.
question: with your DIY liquid smoke, does yours still contain the same level of PAHs? is there some way to reduce that with simple processes, or is a full distillation required?
Check out rocketmoney.com/adamragusea or scan the QR code on the screen to start managing your personal finances today. Thank you to Rocket Money for sponsoring today's video! #rocketmoney #personalfinance
Adam, suggestion re. sponsorships:
Since your audience is so international, maybe drop a quick “US only” or similar at the end, when you’re advertising things the rest of us can’t make use of.
Just an idea, so we don’t have to mess around in terms and conditions on various websites to find out that it’s (once again) not for us.
I love the smokey flavor of wood oven baked pizza. Do you think your pizza recipe could work with liquid smoke? Maybe you could do a recipe video 👀
Oh liquid smoke defiantly! Tastes different
I wouldn't say bad not particularly worse than traditional smoking but to me it's like testing the difference between onions and garlic
It's a completely different flavor profile
(And yes I tried different brands and cooking methods and etc...
I can always tell the difference.. always 100% of the time..)
Idk if it's genetic if some people are more or less sensative to certain compounds which either lack or are concentrated more in the liquid smoke
But never the less i can always tell the 2 apart
Interesting Silicon Valley references in the ad today... Saw both Hooli and Pied Piper, not a big enough nerd to tell if the rest are references too
Hmm... There's no caption.
"I'd bet that if I worked on that recipe some more and kind of replicated the heating environment of a hot smoker, I could produce some liquid smoke barbecue that would fool a blindfolded purist." You know what you have to do, now.
Up the ante- do brisket.
it's pretty obvious he has a video in the works and this is his way of signaling it.
Agreed, we are almost definitely getting a BBQ video in the future. Summer's just around the corner, too...
next week's video, then, is about Jell-O Salad
Wood smoked chicken leg is on the right? New shirt idea?
Of all the bottled flavorings you could get these days, liquid smoke being literally smoke in a liquid is quite a surprise to me.
Indeed. And the stuff is absurdly potent. You only need a few drops to turn a whole bottle of ketchup into some (really cheap and not recommended) barbecue sauce.
You'd expect it to be something HEAVILY industrialized right? My mom thought so when I first told her of liquid smoke lol
Wait until you hear of vinegars and virgin oils
@@lonestarr1490 the orange blossom water of the americas
@@yuviaro3511 time to unvirgin some oil
They probably don’t advertise how few carcinogens are in the product for the same reason Hershey’s doesn’t advertise how few bugs are in their product. Better for the consumer to just not think about it. But if you stamp “50% less carcinogens!” On the bottle now most consumers go “whoa, I didn’t know this had carcinogens in it”
Everything has carcinogens in it it seems. lol
I mean. By that logic you wouldn't have every food product in stores advertising 'low' or 'no' sodium, sugar, cholesterol, carbohydrates, fat, ect..
The whole point of bringing that up as a marketing strategy is in reference to how much more health conscious we are today and how much companies advertise their products having less of the stuff we believe to be bad.
so california hasn't sued them yet for no prop 65 warning?
@@117johnpar Yeah but those are all inherent in food. You can label a food as having all of the above and people wouldn’t think twice but try labelling a food as having cancer causing compounds…
@@konstantly3645 Most people dont know that peanutbutter is like 30% sugar.
My husband's Japanese aunt is famous for her chocolate muffins. She brings them to every family gathering, and they are always a hit. This past Christmas, however, my sister-in-law took a bite of one and found it so nasty she had to spit it out. Everyone else surreptitiously tasted the muffins and all agreed that something was horribly, horribly wrong with them. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that she must have mistakenly used liquid smoke instead of vanilla extract. Her husband was barbecuing at the time, which is probably why she didn't notice. We never had the heart to tell her, but the story of those chocolate liquid smoke muffins will go down in family history.
She found a new delicacy
@@Zyme86 Thousand Year Muffin!
my mom would always tell this story of how one time she made sugar cookies on a cutting board she just diced some onions on and apparently discovered a new delicacy
A coffee-hating friend of mine once made cake for an event. The cake called for coffee, but he didn't have any, so he substituted gravy granules. I didn't get to try it, but heard it was vile.
@@Doorisessa
Just use dark chocolate at that point...
I think one of the reasons liquid smoke gets a bad rep is because the stuff you get in bottles is actually super highly concentrated. So if you put it directly onto your meat or food, it overpowers everything else and gives an "artificial" taste. It's meant to be diluted first (like in the marinade for those chicken legs).
Maybe... but even still when diluting it to an absurd degree
It doesn't necessarily tastes bad
But I could always tell it apart from real smoke...
Always 100%
Blindfolded and etc....
It's just massively different then traditional smoking...
Idk how many people are sensitive to the taste in such a degree
But to me it's like the difference between onions and garlic
As simple as that... a completely different taste
@@donotlike4anonymus594 It's worth noting that the liquid smoke you're tasting almost certainly used different wood than was used to make the smoked food you tasted it against, at the very least. The difference you're tasting might not have anything to do with the difference between liquid smoke and traditional smoking and could just be differences between what went into the two processes as inputs.
@@donotlike4anonymus594 maybe I haven't had good recipes with liquid smoke but to me, although tasting somewhat Smoky it tastes like a burned Smoky flavor. I don't get as much of the burned smoke flavor from real smoking. If Adam were my neighbor I would definitely be interested in having him try to fool me into thinking liquid smoked meat is wood smoked meat.
@@keithyinger3326 What he's saying is that if you are used to the flavor of a particular type of woodchip, you will notice the difference when you use liquid smoke made from a different wood. But if you got a brand of liquid smoke made from the same kind of wood, the difference might be smaller. It still won't taste identical in all recipes, but in a number of well-crafted recipes, it could easily be indistinguishable.
@@donotlike4anonymus594 Different brands of liquid smoke tastes wildly different imo
This is why Adam Ragusea's channel is so great. I had been avoiding liquid smoke for health reasons because that was just conventional wisdom. Now we just need some liquid smoke recipes.
Seems like it's still bad you for, just not AS bad.
Compared to real smoke it is healthier. Compared to not using smoke based compounds it is still considered unhealthy.
@@alexk3352 should definitely be used in moderation just like "real" smoking
@@Jake-xe1wu Why does everything that makes food taste better kill us
@@alexk3352 It's way better than smoking marijuana.
To me, it feels like an argument I had with a friend. They told me that "cow milk is mislabeled, because in fact, it's cow's boob juice with pus and fat." And yeah, they're right, but... that's what milk is, this is why there's a word for it
Milk from a healthy cow should not have pus in it. That means the cow’s mammalian gland is infected
Your friend sounds insufferable.
I mean there definitely isn’t supposed to be pus in milk. But cow boob juice is accurate.
Highly nutritious, just like pasteurized bee vomit.
@@MartinMurphy-lh9qb Yeah, no, agreed, she was really extreme vegan too and while there might be some truth to that, that's not a reason to not call it milk :p
I only wish there was a carcinogenic test or standard for liquid smoke. And it seems like a good marketing message to me as well "Meets or exceeds USDA "
hopefully if they did such regulation, they'd actually have a calibrated number based on specific evidence of harm, rather than just any contained amount. prop 65 in california isn't very useful
@@blarghblargh it has become just background noise at this point.
The studies done on PAHs causing cancer were done on mice and with doses that were thousands of times more than you would eat in a normal diet. You would probably have to drink a bottle a day of liquid smoke for 50 years before you got cancer from it.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology surely must have lab grade liquid smoke as a reference sample. They got samples for anything, like peanut butter or sewer sludge.
I live in the UK. No culture of barbque like in America. Even I, by mememic osmosis, was wary of buying liquid smoke until this video. Thanks Adam.
Really? Over here in Germany, firing up the grill once it gets slightly warm outside is basically a religion.
@@Yora21 we like it here too. But we don’t have any culture of smoking meat and using real barbecue. We mostly grill burgers and sausages and use disposable barbecue.
I've made liquid smoke before using that method. It's great - much prefer it over the bottled stuff, but that's because I can control what species of wood to use and thus can create a custom liquid smoke that suits the dishes I'm making. Bonus: A hint of liquid smoke frozen into an ice cube and placed in a bourbon drink is heaven on earth.
that sounds amazing
I enjoy a drop in a ceaser alongside the Worcestershire sauce.
this is brilliant, I bet this would work with tequila too if you're a mezcal fan, ooo or like a smokey marg HMMMM
I literally dropped the phone, went to the fridge, and made a batch of ice balls with a drop of liquid smoke after reading this. Thank you my good sir.
So you just whiskey-fied that bourbon lol
The real wonder of this video is the fact that, at some point in time, the US government actually gave a shit about false advertising.
Now, they ARE false advertising.
It's never given a shit about anything except collecting taxes and starting wars.
@@samuraibat1916 You forgot oil
@@iamacatperson7226 You're right. That's only been since the US was taken off the gold standard, though.
probably another company greasing palms attempting to maintain a monopoly on a certain market
As a southern vegetarian, liquid smoke is an amazingly useful ingredient for replicating the flavor of southern vegetable dishes without using smoked meats! Southern-style collard greens, and any kind of bean dish, are usually prepared with smoked ham or bacon. A dash of liquid smoke gets me most of the way there, without the ham.
Saw some people asking for the bbq recipe because apparently Adam wasn't specific enough. Can't find the comments now but I don't want my work to go to waste.
Literally just do what he does in the video. Brine some chicken leg quarters with liquid smoke added to the brine (enough water to cover, then like 2% salt by weight, a splash of liquid smoke).
Put them in any metal vessel and cover tightly with foil. 325 °F, pull them at like 45 minutes, test with a fork if they're done yet. If they aren't, recover and check again every 15 minutes. If you're fancy you can use a probe thermometer, target like 175 °F internal. They'll get hotter during phase 2.
Once they're cooked remove the foil, bump the oven to like 400 °F, baste with barbecue sauce.
If you don't like your results try again next week.
@@SimuLord Same but at age 15. At the time I didn't even know how to boil potatoes 😭
I have no idea what you're talking about, but you get an upvote for telling people to repeat something until they get it right. A key is to spend some time analyzing each result and thinking about new ways to improve it.
As an apartment dweller Liquid Smoke (the one from Texas) has been a game changer for me for like 20 years! I thought everybody knew that it's a concentrated liquid and you only need a little bit to add that 'smoked' flavor. It's a great addition to BBQ beans as well. 😋
I appreciate Adam’s choice to add the parenthetical and useful conclusions in the titles of his videos. One of the many reasons I enjoy watching his stuff.
What? Not -- THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT....? WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT.....? That is what hooks most lame brains.... I am with YOU on this topic.
I enjoyed reading the judgement, so clear and well reasoned. As someone from outside of the US I think one of the biggest reasons for your success in the 20th century was how well the law functioned in the US compared to other countries.
As a barbecue food truck owner I can assure anyone that liquid smoke is good stuff. I use it at home occasionally especially when I make beef jerky. Sometimes I don’t feel like tending a fire and just want to make jerky in the dehydrator. Liquid smoke is definitely the way to go with jerky.
Low key the most shocking thing about this video is learning the existence of car wash subscriptions.
Cory Doctorow would have an aneurysm
That's older than cell phones!
I found this out the other day getting a car wash. They offered me a monthly fee. Who's getting their car washed more than one time a month on average
@@themodernshoe2466 Then only thing I can think of is some kind of corporate/government fleet vehicles, taxis, police, rental cars, etc.
I actually know the specific car wash company in the video, and nearly fell for the same thing myself lol. I believe my mom has gotten one of those subscriptions before, mostly because she is very particular about having a clean car as often as possible. She also vacuums about every day though so she is quite the clean freak.
My grandma has been adding liquid smoke to her venison jerky recipe for years. It makes it taste like it was smoked rather than just thrown in a dehydrator.
This was absolutely fascinating! I've been cooking since I was about 9 years old and cooking professionally for many years, and I love this channel because I always learn something new. Thanks, Adam!
I can't believe this video just posted. I just finished opening and using a bottle of liquid smoke that I have had for like a year because I wondered about the carcinogens!
A little tends to go a very long way, though. :)
I'm so glad you covered this. I've been using it for years, but always kind of hesitant about the chemicals in it. I feel better now.
Funny that you made this video. About a year ago, I got curious about what liquid smoke could be, because it just...sounded fake? So I went and looked it up, and lo, discovered that it's exactly what it says on the tin.
Wait before you buy a large bottle
And make sure you like it...
Adam's badly wrong today
There is a massive difference
Idk how many people can taste it
But I can always 100% of the time recognize the difference
It's as big of a difference as onions and garlic
Not necessarily bad but completely different
Some people seem to not be able to tell it apart and some may not like the taste....
Just make sure you do
(Also yeah you should buy a large tin since it's crazy concentrated...)
@@donotlike4anonymus594
One of the differences is that liquid smoke has less carcinogens. That is likely much of the difference that you perceive.
I can't taste any difference myself. I can taste the difference between butter and margarine, though.
@@donotlike4anonymus594 the difference is wood type and you don't dilute it.
This video kinda encapsulates everything I love about thia channel. There's no purism, no "you need to do the right thing", no assumptions about what you have available to you. It's just one home cook to another, who understands different people have different lifestyles, resources, ect. Dispelling the whole barbeque snobbery around liquid smoke is great for someone like me who lives in an apartment in the city where I can't grill on my balcony
Thanks for breaking that down. I honestly thought it was a bunch of weird chemicals tossed together in a lab that fooled our tongues into thinking it was smokey flavor. Turns out it's a bunch of weird chemicals combined together in a smoker. Still not sure I'll use it but I won't be as apprehensions as previously.
I love this video. Thanks for putting the message out there. We started buying liquid smoke by the gallon when we encountered a recipe for slow-cooked Carolina pulled pork. With the low price of pork vs beef, this recipe has become a mainstay in our home. Every batch uses between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of the stuff. The three brands we've used have all been excellent. Durkee is the latest.
I'd guess a lot of liquid smoke these days is made in fast pyrolysis reactors, where the contact time of wood particles with the heat source is less than a second, and the reactions is immediately stopped to prevent the formation of undesirable secondary compounds. That, combined with the separation of phases according to solubility and polarity, makes a product that's SO MUCH safer than regular smoking!
It's not common I go through a Ragusea video where I know almost all the facts presented - I did my own dive on liquid smoke when I first bought it! Vegans and vegetarians often put a little bit of liquid smoke in their imitation meat broths - as my father (a meat eater) said when I made him a recipe with liquid smoke, it's crazy what a little liquid smoke does to make something taste a lot more like meat just by association. And he's right!
I use it all the time in weeknight veg chili. If you're not doing the proper thing with charring whole chilis, it gets you some of that.
Homemade bean and bacon soup is better with liquid smoke added.
Adam Ragusea "The original liquid smoke controversy"
California Pot Commission: "Adam, you're adding more smoke to the fire"
Take my angry upvote! lol
I bet that prosecutor was being paid under the table by some industrial producer of pyroligneous acid, who probably didn't have a patent to use for a conventional lawsuit.
I'm so used to learning that products like this secretly aren't what they claim to be. Kind of a nice surprise to learn the opposite for once - I always assumed liquid smoke was some sort of weird artificial flavouring, but it turns out that it's exactly what it says on the tin.
I believe it is commonly used poorly. Frequently when I’ve had it, the end product tastes like “fake smoke”. There are products that I can TELL are liquid smoke from the taste, and at the time, I assumed liquid smoke was in some way to blame, not knowing how it was produced and assuming it was some smoke-devoid process.
Now that I know how it’s actually made, when I taste something that tastes like gross fake smoke, I just assume they used the product wrong
Yeah, imho it's like the "CGI is bad!" crowd. *Bad CGI* is bad, that's the stuff you notice. Good CGI you never notice. heh. Liquid smoke is the same. Use too much, which is easy to do, and it's..... not good. lol. But use it sparingly and it can be very tasty :)
Maybe some people are ejust more sensitive to certain compounds others aren't...
I've tried a number of brands and I can always 100% of the time tell the difference between real and liquid
(Not that it's necessarily bad... but it's like comparing onion and garlic a completely different taste)
They're likely going too heavy handed with the stuff, so you get a flavor that's a lot more intense and off-putting than real smoke because..... well smoke is diluted by air. I noticed with Adam's recipe, he diluted it with water, so that probably helps a lot.
@@donotlike4anonymus594 Liquid smoke and normal smoke are the same compounds. Unless you're inhaling the smoke, you shouldn't notice much when it's already in the dish. It's like saying "I can tell the difference between whether sea salt or table salt is used in a soup." Not saying you're lying, but I don't know what you're tasting that's different.
There's a more recent liquid smoke controversy?
Like people saying it's really cancerous?
probably purists saying using liquid smoke is cheating
hipsters
@@chagglenough2892 that's as much as a controversy as saying the earth is flat.
@@jeremyphaeton1520 Why are you asking me
Also that's like almost certainly next week's video
And even if it isn't you can probably figure it out
Hi. I work in company that sell USA smoke here in Europe. We provide machines that chsnges water condesed liquid smoke into the smoke cloud in smoking chambers using pressured air and nozzles. This is what we called smoking. Dipping or drenching product without regenerated smoke cloud is not the same process in our mind and mind of UE law. Our products are free from tar, ash and PAHs thanks to proces similar to decantation of wine. And filtration. But our products are not by products of charcoal production. The pyrolisis is different and different flavour components are made. Also, our smoke for rapidly fired wood chips is way more better in terms of color building. But this is for a long talk.
Pls go for an interview with him! That would be awesome.
I may have misunderstood but it sounds like you're creating a mist from the liquid smoke. Is that what you mean by regenerated smoke cloud?
@@benny4legs yes. Like traditional smoke is a areasol/mist (solid and liquid particles handled im the air), cloud regenerated from liquid smoke is the same, apart from solid ashes and water-repelent unsoluble tar, that were removed during filtering. But particles size are under 1 micron, so please not to confuse it with spraying.
@@CampanelliCMP so its the particle size that makes a difference?
@@benny4legs for smoking in chamber yes. Imagine spraying water on your bed sheet with flowers sprayer. It will be wet. Now, imagine walking on meadow on misty day. Are you wet? No. But both phenomenons are made from water. But particles sizes of this water is different. This is why smoking in smoke chamber using cloud regenerated from liquid smoke is smoking, not wet spraying with splashing
What about the caramel color on the specific liquid smoke you showed off at the end? Doesn't that contain known carcinogens?
This was a super cool in-depth entry, thanks! Wondering how it might be possible to replicate a smoke ring, given what you found with the dye in the marinade.
All depends how many of the nitrogenous compounds they filter out, I imagine!
@@aragusea They probably don't filter them out, as they would not distill in the first place. Nitric acid can be distilled but not potassium nitrite or nitrate. If any gets through in the ash it is very soluble in water, so it could not be filtered in the usual sense. I doubt they are using reverse osmosis or ion exchange resins, which would be able to remove the nitrite/ nitrate but would also take with it a lot of the wanted flavor compounds.
One could probably do that with Insta Cure #1, but that mixture is something that one needs to highly respect, accurately weigh, and definitely not over-use.
I love how you go through the whole process to teach us! very good journalism!! 👏👏😍
My wife is vegetarian and I love that Colgin stuff. Nothing brings the flavors closer to meat than smoke and MSG. As a European I must say, it's hard to get them. I order mine via Britain, imported from USA... Highly recommended anyway, enhances so many dishes.
Depending on where you live, you can get it in vegan shops. This is where I first came across this stuff, by recommendation of a vegan friend, and I've been using it eversince. I can confirm, nothing beats it.
Y'know, I'm inspired to try something now. I've settled on my base rice recipe for the rice cooker being 2⅔ cups basmati (360g), 4 cups stock (950g), a stick of butter (115g), a tablespoon of MSG (17g). Rinse the rice a bit and drain well (so I don't have to worry if my rice source has undesirable chemicals or bugs that I can't see), plop it all in the rice cooker, fluff when done and let rest for a couple of minutes.
That's delicious rice like that and goes with anything, but I'll also do things like mix in lemon juice or other acids after the rice is done (tried before, don't like as well) if it pairs well with things like fish or chicken. I've added onions I'd already sauteed with some garlic. The stock (or soupbase) that I use is inspired by what I'm pairing it with.... the variations are endless once you get into herbs and such as well. :)
But now I want to add a few drops of liquid smoke and see what that does to the rice. I bet that will ramp things up another little step for some dishes. :)
But yeah, you inspired me because I'm a huge MSG fan. It is magic stuff!
@@isaaceiland-hall425 Sounds like a plan.
@@isaaceiland-hall425 Sounds good, but be sure to not give up too fast. It's very easy to use too much or too little smoke, which tastes more strange than smoky. I recommend do add it to many dishes which usually would contain cured meats like sausage, ham or bacon.
If you want to go crazy, make a pizza, add smoke to the dough and tomato sauce, and use smoked cheese. It will taste like eating a wood fire.
@@switzerland I already tried mac'n cheese with liquid smoke added into the sauce. Definitely tasted good.
I made burnt ends in the oven with liquid smoke for the 2023 superb owl, I recently smoked a brisket for my birthday, it took 16 hours on a weber kettle with charcoal & apple wood; They were both amazing, and had I not told the people I shared the burnt ends with that they had been done in an oven, they would not have known.
This "liquid smoke isn't real smoke" argument reminds me a lot of that water gag where people were calling it HOH instead of H2O to make it seem like a harmful chemical & claiming it's used in the production of yoga mats & industrial products... when it was just water. People love playing word games like the prosecutors did in that court case.
Can’t believe I haven’t noticed this channel earlier! This is pure gold!
Smoked paprika and liquid smoke were the first two ingredients that elevated my cooking and made me take interest in cooking
I love this video and I enjoy your channel. Thanks for the explanation that I have had questions about for years!!! I smoke meats all the time and have always wondered the difference.
I manage a local Hawaiian joint in Phoenix where we make a decently traditional Kalua Pig. We use liquid smoke to make it smoky before roasting it for 12 hours, low and slow. We ran an experiment where we traditionally smoked our Kalua pork instead of the liquid smoke and found that it not only was several times cheaper and easier to do it with liquid smoke, it flat out tasted better since the slight acidity in the liquid smoke brought out more of the pork flavor.
I was vaguely aware of Kalua pork, but saw a food historian's video on it recently and became much more interested. Smoky slow-cooked pork? Ummmmmmmm, count me the heck in! lol. I'm very very far away from Phoenix else I'd find out where you are more specifically. :)
@@isaaceiland-hall425 I think I saw that video too, was it tasting history?
@@xahalo8355 It was, indeed. He's also got a fun channel :)
As a Kansas Citian, admittedly I do use liquid smoke a lot in my cooking. It's no replacement for BBQ and smoking meat. But, it's perfect in a curing brine for beef; marinades; chili; tacos; stews; Chinese dishes; and pretty much everything else you can think to put it in. Smoke is the ingredient so many recipes are missing (especially old recipes) because it's how people used to cook. And yes, you can replicate (or surpass) BBQ by brining (corning?) beef in spices & liquid smoke for 1-2 weeks; then curing for 24 hours with pink salts; and then cooking 20 min/pound at 350 degrees. I cook roasts all the time using this method.
My friend is allergic to something in it so im interested to learn more about it
Thanks for looking out for me pal
The real stuff is basically liquid cancer; it contains formaldehyde precursors and I'm pretty sure you can use it to make phenobarbital.
@@Stop_Gooning you only live once. cancer is a small price to pay for great food
@@Stop_Gooning lol ok got any sources besides pseudoscience?
@@Stop_Gooning That is what's in regular smoke. 🤷♀️
This video is well timed. I just finished curing a slab of bacon yesterday and hot smoked it in my weber. I am not game enough to attempt cold smoking because of food safety reasons. Maybe next time i'll incorporate liquid smoke in the cure to mimic cold smoking without bringing the food into the temperature danger zone.
My family has an aversion to liquid smoke. Mainly because my grandmother would gift us these smoked sausages that she would prepare with liquid smoke but then actually smoke them so it was like double smoked flavor and was the only thing you could taste.
I bet she was a smoker.
mcdonald’s had a smoky blt quarterpounder last december and i got super sick from one. i was puking all night and since then i have not been able to handle smoky flavored things without retching. very sad cause i love smoked meats
As a vegetarian I love liquid smoke because it makes meat flavored snacks taste incredibly similar to the flavors I miss
Wow! I had several conversations with people in the recent past discussing the same topic of liquid smoke versus smoking food and the other people tell me that it's just not the same and that liquid smoke is "bad" for you.
Thanks, Adam!
What i love about these videos of yours is that although you are very educated on cooking you aren't smug about. You're very down to earth and logical and i love that about you
He might get aggressive if you get smug about the shape of a macaron, smugness is his trigger.
Adam isn't smug, LMAO?!? He's one of the smuggest people on the internet.
My mother-in-law “discovered” liquid smoke back in the 1990’s and bless her heart, used it on EVERYTHING! The house she and husband built had an indoor electric grill as well as an built in gas grill on the patio. She grill something for every meal and added liquid smoke to most things. I was so glad to come home after visiting just to have some bland, non smoked food!
Honestly, I can't imagine having enough money that I could have a whole-ass monthly payment without noticing.
My only complaint with the off the shelf stuff is that there's extra flavors added. Has a distinct taste that I don't really like. Used it several times and it didn't taste like smoke, it tasted like liquid smoked. But making my own with old whisk(e)y barrel chips I have no complaints. Works better than one of those little portable smoke things too.
You gotta admit, Wright was a very brave man seeing some unknown brown liquid on a pipe, touching it, then smelling it, then tasting it.
It's an old human tradition to put unknown substances into our mouths to taste it.
There are a lot of heroes in history who were just brave and/or stupid enough to put some weird smelling stuff in their mouth.
Trying the weird-smelling old fruit and discovering alcohol, trying the rancid milk that smelled rancid in kind-of-a-good-way and discovering yogurt, or my favorite, the Chinese farmer who tried the weird, green-and-brown chicken's egg from the field after he'd laid down a layer of quicklime to enrich the soil and discovered century eggs. THAT guy had to be the bravest
Imagine the ones that documented mushrooms and all their toxic effects.
@@djsnowman06 that's true lol. Tbh, the real unsung heroes were the ones who put weird-smelling stuff in their mouths and died as a result. Their sacrifice enabled their friends to go "okay, THIS one kills you. But maybe the other one won't" lol
We all do this when we are little.
Is just human nature.
With is why you can't leave medicine and cleaning supplies where kids can reach.
How did I get blessed to see a video from you less than 10 minutes after upload? Timing was good today
Good to know prosecutors haven't changed in a hundred years. Wasting tax payers money chasing what they think is an easy win.
I'm glad you did this one Adam cause I keep a bottle hidden in the back of the spice cabinet. Sometimes you just want to add a bit of flavor to something without setting up outside and waiting hours. 2 or 3 drops is enough to satisfy that urge without all the time and trouble. Oh and for anybody who hasnt experimented yet I find it to be one of those things to wait until just before serving to add. I am a bit concerned about the potential health effects of smoked foods so I only have it on rare occasions but there is something oh so good about meat cooked over an open wood fire. If you can use a cleaner artificial way to approximate that scent/aroma, great. You can even get most of the way there by just heating a pan and flashing off a few drops of liquid smoke to stank the place up in a good way without actually eating any of it.
Re: Your liquid smoke barbecue attempt, I do something similar via sous vide, using a recipe from ChefSteps. You cook chicken pinwheels sous vide in a simple marinade that includes liquid smoke and molasses (10 g liq. smoke, 30 g molasses, 5g black pepper (opt.), and salt). You just briefly finish it on the grill to sear the surfaces, starting skin-side up so the skin dries a bit before you flip it. Optionally sauce it on the grill, or just serve it with sauce. It comes out great! And no burnt skin from having to grill it too long to get the interior done. -Tom
“A blindfolded purist” is my new favorite idiom
In 2009 I had my fifteen minutes of fame that involved legal filings. My lawyer argued in his filings that the parody thing I did wouldn't be confusing to a "moron in a hurry". I've always loved that phrase and think of it from time to time - and try to remember it when I'm doing something that others will use - like a website or writing directions/instructions. I think "a blindfolded purist" gets added to a very short list of memorable and useful phrases along those lines now :)
Adam, the most common starting point for filtration is activated charcoal, as far as I know. There are also molecular sieves, although the only thing I know about them is that they exist. And there are zeolites and ion-exchange membranes and something else I can't remember right now. Since you know the chemistry, maybe you can devise the best homemade filtration for the liquid smoke. If I were filtering my own smoke, I might reserve 10% unfiltered, to add back to the filtered smoke, for a touch more authenticity, while maintaining the benefits of filtration.
Great video, thanks so much for your content.
Adam's level of curiosity can seem almost encyclopediac, and that informs his wonderful investigative riffs. I like liquid smoke, and it would be fun to be able to make it myself.
This was commendably concise. I wish I could say the same for his much longer videos, which are in desperate need of some serious editing.
I wonder if it would be possible to sous vide something like a brisket with liquid smoke and then finished in something like an oven just to see if it would have any similarities to the traditional thing.
Better yet, build a smoker with sous vide-like temperature and smoke control.
Adam: here’s how I made mine
Also Adam: industrial processing can filter out the carcinogens
what a valuable comment
????? yes ?
I literally grew up with liquid smoke, browning sauce and msg. I love that you removed some of the mystery around liquid smoke, it's a great product!
I wonder if grocery stores will soon be asking "I wonder why everyone suddenly started buying liquid smoke this month?" (and other things that Adam educates us on)
@Adam Ragusea when forests like those in California have seasonal fires (they are necessary for some trees to reproduce). The smoke sticks to the bark and leaves, Bugs and fungi are killed by this smoke, and bugs also don't like the smell. So liquid smoke could be a safer pesticide fungicide that we could use. Using bamboo as the feedstock would be preferable due to its fast-growing nature.
I like to use powdered liquid smoke, which sounds like some sort of double oxymoron, but is just taking the liquid smoke and dehydrating it. It’s delicious
isn't that solid smoke?
@@cfv7461 "Hrrrngh... Colonel, this is Solid Smoke"
smoke is a suspension of solids in gas, so I guess you could call it a settled smoke?:p
@@Tinky1rs Precipitate smoke! That's the solution! Well, I mean, it's not a solution, that's the point… ;-)
I like to freeze my liquid smoke for smoke-ice. And then put it in the blender for a smoke snow.
Living in Calgary, Smoke is the last thing I would like to hear about right now. But I think this is a welcome elaboration on your past smoking video Adam. Good stuff.
I like the aesthetic of running a smoker instead of pouring flavorings from a bottle. Home cooking is as much about enjoying the process as enjoying the results these days anyway, and I prefer the process that involves fire.
0:52 hemi is pronounced like demi (e.g. demi-god)
1:55 furan and pyran are also pronounced differently (fyur-anne; Pire-anne)
Wood vinegar also natural helps plants defend from pests after a fire because of wood vinegar coating everything after the smoke.
It can be sprayed on apples and other things in the garden
(not checking my old books so i might be wrong) the difference between condensation and the process you showed is that in condensation you make the smoke itself precipitate, whereas in the other you make it bubble in some water to trap it. i reckon the second process might actually precipitate more unhealthy stuff (everything that's not water soluble enough) than the first but hey, it's not condensation
I had to watch that scroll to the Furans again, because that was marvellous!
I get that it may deliver same result to BBQ, but how do you use liquid smoke for preserving/dry smoking tho? Isn't applying more moisture when you need to get rid of it counterproductive? Or do i just coat it with liquid smoke and leave in the oven on low setting for couple hours?
I’m from Texas and I’ve made some BADASS Brisket in the oven by coasting the briskets in Liquid smoke, mustard, salt and pepper. It’s literally the same thing as smoking on the pit but way easier.
Not exactly, you’re losing out on some flavor, presumably due to the lack of carcinogens. Damn tasty cancer
Ok, so how do I turn this into homemade lox? Paint on before traditional salt/sugar/dill cure in a normal gravlax recipe?
Great judicial opinions are always fun to read. My favorite line in that one is, "Well, nobody could be deceived into thinking it was specifically what the indictment charges they are being deceived with."
I've been confused about liquid smoke for a while, so thank you for this video.
I visited a charcoal producer last year, one of their side products was a spray on insect repellent got from the condensate. Some of my hiking buddies use it, smells just like a BBQ and keeps the mosquitoes at bay.
Yes, indeed. Pyrolignic acid has been show to be an effective pesticide/repellent
Thanks for this Adam...
Here in the Philippines it is very rare to encounter Wrights Liquid Smoke on grocery shelves but I have it and as much as I wanted to flavour every meal I have, most people loved it. They frequently ask me how I managed to put a good smokey flavour into our dishes without the nasty tastes but I do not share with them that this product is my secret.
Yeah it did save much time and effort preparing foods especially when you are in a condo or if someone you know has asthma. But many times I just do the old school of smoking given that I am in an open space. ❤
I just discovered that within my area, Gaisano mall sells liquid smoke and i couldn't be more excited.
Bought wrights liq. smoke Applewood.
I used half spoon of it on marinated chicken.
Tried it on air frying bbq chicken. Tastes like bbq without the burnt parts.
It tastes unbelievable. Its the first time i tasted a "smoky" flavor.
Wood tar creosote (another product of destruction distillation of wood) is also useful for persevering food. Or, at least it can be used for that. It has also not been found to be toxic-unlike coal tar creosote-has antiseptic properties, can be used to preserve wood (although less effectively than coal tar creosote) and apparently is effective in treating a number of GI issues
Thanks for all your work Andy!
Adam* lol
Company in Wisconsin called Red Arrow has made liquid smoke for major food companies for decades. It is now part of the Kerry Group. When I worked there aprox. 30 yr ago, they produced it by heating sawdust and pulling the smoke through columns of circulating water; later they changed to a different process more like the distillation mentioned. If a product says "natural smoke flavor", it likely from them.
At LONG last, Adam, you agree with me! My Mom use to say that Liquid Smoke was FAKE smoke, and I told her, nope, Liquid Smoke is REAL smoke....looks like I was right, after all. Thank you, so much, Adam, for your videos! I probably learn more, from your videos, than all of the other videos, on you tube!
Fascinating. Two points to your end position:
1) Liquid smoke in a bottle is not, just, that original distillate, at least not commonly. It also contains additional sugars, flavourings, and colourings to be 'More real and reality'.
2) The process of "Smoking", or really brining with Liquid smoke makes a far more watery end product. Bacon that has been properly smoke cured cooks very differently than bacon that has been soaking in a smokey solution, necessitating very different cooking methods.
For me, liquid smoke as an additive I'd throw into something like a stir fry to simulate wok'hey, or a drop on a stew or sauce that something like smoked paprika would ruin. But in cured meats I find the real deal, hung, dried, and coated in carcinogens, just better. It doesn't have as much waste water, or odd discharge as it cooks, and the texture tends to be firmer and more forgiving to over cooking.
Still, a wonderful history and science lesson.
A very Alton brown-y episode! Love it. I use destructive distillation to make biochar. It's a great process. Love to see your cooking audience get exposed to pyroligneous acid!
My grandmother had a brisket recipe with chili sauce and liquid smoke. She then made cold sandwiches with leftovers on potato rolls. People literally fought over them.
Is the difference between this and methanol distillation just temperature?
I don't think I've ever had real liquid smoke. I find the fake vinegar added stuff repulsive though, unfortunately. I don't smell or taste the smoke, just the vinegar and a sweetness.
Thank you! I've often wondered about that stuff.
This video is why I watch this channel. Brilliant and informative
Good explanation, Adam! Couldn't help but see "Indiana" in the close=up of the text--what was that about?
This homemade liquid smoke recipe I didn't know I needed or wanted is why I absolutely LOVE this channel!!!!
Is liquid smoke related to creosote oil?
Edit: quick google seems to suggest that creosote oil is the by-product of liquid smoke production, or the other way round. although I'm not 100% sure.
I just wish it came in more flavors besides hickory, mesquite and applewood. Those aren't really my favorite smoke profiles.
I once figured out that liquid smoke gave me headaches, and haven't tried any for years. But I do like smokey smells. I shall buy a bottle and try small amounts.
Thanks, Adam.
(I was once given an expensive whole smoked duck that was purchased at a genuine smokehouse. It tasted like cheap ham.)
Thank you for making these videos Adam.
As a kid, I always thought liquid smoke was just a type of flavor enhancer, to give you the taste of barbecued food. I've never thought about it since, but it's actually an amazing product.
question: with your DIY liquid smoke, does yours still contain the same level of PAHs? is there some way to reduce that with simple processes, or is a full distillation required?