Back in the late ’70s, when the Berkeley lab that was hosting my postdoctoral work fell apart before my eyes, I took a job as chef at a place called Poulet. (A friend had a pile of money and an obsession with roast chicken; Poulet was the result.) My menu there consisted mainly of salads, most of them featuring, as you might imagine, one manifestation or another of our namesake bird. But as time went on I also started offering charcuterie. I have Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume Two to thankfor the range of pâtés, sausages, galantines, and ballottines that eventually made their way onto the menu.
Having become mildly fanatical about this stuff, I started looking constantly for good sources of meat and poultry. At one point, I heard about an eastern European family up in Petaluma that was rearing its own chickens and smoking a few of them every week. It was a small operation, and they only smoked to order, but these were such wonderfully moist and subtly flavored creatures that I was happy to go out of my way to get them. So I’d climb into my yellow VW Rabbit every other week and make the 30-mile drive to Petaluma to get my hands on some of those beloved birds.
Back at Poulet, I’d turn the breasts and thighs into elaborate salads and braise the legs and wings with sauerkraut and sausage to make a poultry version of choucroute garnie. Needless to say, I was pretty devastated when the Petaluma operation closed its doors a few years later.
It was around the same time that I made a trip to New Orleans, where I first tasted gumbo and jambalaya. I was so taken with the smoky depth of these dishes that I talked a local chef into showing me how to make the andouille sausage on which they were based. When I got back to California, I immediately set about making my own, and before I knew it local chefs were showing up at Poulet just to buy my sausages.
It wasn’t long before I’d built my own smoker in the backyard. Well, I called it a smoker. It was actually a 1950s Frigidaire into which I’d cut a big hole, to which I’d fastened some flexible stovepipe and aluminum foil with a bunch of duct tape. I’d rig the contraption up to a flowerpot filled with wood chips and then smoke anything I could get my hands on, from sausage to salmon.
One day I was visited by a burly guy named Jim Reichardt, whose family had been raising ducks in Petaluma since the turn of the century. In his soft-spoken way, Jim persuaded me to buy all the excess legs and thighs that had been plaguing him for months. It wasn’t long before I was getting a good portion of his surplus breasts as well. My love for smoked fowl has only grown since then.
Over the years, I’ve honed and simplified my smoking methods, and while I’ll admit the process takes some time, it really is the easiest thing in the world. And, once you’ve tasted the results, you’ll have no doubt it was worth the effort. For unlike their store-bought counterparts, the duck and chicken you smoke at home will be moist and only slightly salty, kissed by the hauntingly delicious taste that only real smoke can impart.
The first step in any smoking process is curing, which involves soaking the meat or poultry in a brine—generally a mixture of water, salt, sugar, and curing salt. After several hours, depending on the thickness of the flesh, the brine will be absorbed into its center.
Next comes the actual smoking. For this you’ll need a covered container or box; a kettle-type barbecue will do just fine. For cold-smoking (a process that involves only partially cooking the meat), you’ll want the temperature in the smoker to be somewhere in the 80 to 90°F range. It should never exceed 120°F. (The process of smoking and cooking simultaneously—generally at temperatures in the 200 to 250°F range—is known as hot-smoking.)
I find hardwood sawdust to be most effective at keeping the wood smoldering just enough to produce smoke without getting so hot that it actually cooks the meat. Don’t go for the plain old sawdust you see in lumberyards; instead, experiment with different products made from such aromatic hardwoods as hickory, apple, alder, oak, cherry, and mesquite, all of whose flavors vary widely. Hickory is commonly used for foods like bacon, ham, and salmon, but it can be a little strong for poultry. I find apple and cherry provide a good flavor for duck, while the milder oak and alder seem particularly well suited to chicken and turkey. Some backyard smokers like the way that mesquite complements duck and chicken. All of which is to say that there really are no rules when it comes to smoking—just play around until you find things that suit your style.
As you’ll discover, controlling the smoke density is not an exact science. Generally, the denser the smoke, the more intense the flavor of the food. I prefer smoke gently rising from (rather than billowing out of) the vents. Every one and a half hours or so, stir the sawdust so that the unburned particles can be heated and burned. Add an additional cup or two as the original dust is consumed, and continue the smoking process for the minimum time stated in the recipe. If the resulting flavor is too strong, next time decrease the smoking time by an hour or two. Not strong enough? Increase it by an hour or two.
You can finish cooking the meat in any of several ways. I like to slice duck breast thin and then fry it up like bacon to use on warm salads. Roasting in a 350°F oven also works well for duck (aim for an internal temperature of 145°F) and for chicken and turkey (shoot for an internal temperature of 160 to 170°F). Poultry roasted this way will keep for up to a week.
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