How do I get a smoky flavour without a barbecue?

Smokiness comes from two different places: compounds created by charring, and compounds absorbed from wood smoke. Indoors you can produce the first easily and buy the second, and most dishes only need one of them.

Step by step

1. Char vegetables directly on the flame.Peppers, aubergines, onions and tomatoes held over a gas ring with tongs until blackened. It is the fastest genuine smoke flavour available in a domestic kitchen.
2. Use a dry griddle or a very hot pan.Spring onions, courgettes, corn, cabbage wedges and lemon halves all take a hard char that reads as barbecue. No oil in the pan — oil smokes instead of the food charring.
3. Use smoked paprika properly.Pimentón, sweet or hot, is oak-smoked and carries real smoke. Bloom it in fat for thirty seconds before adding liquid, which releases far more flavour than stirring it in at the end.
4. Use chipotle.Smoke-dried jalapeños, in adobo or as a powder. They bring smoke and heat together and suit stews, beans and marinades.
5. Use smoked salt or smoked oil sparingly.A finishing pinch or a drizzle. Both are potent and easy to overdo, and both are better added at the end than cooked.
6. Brew lapsang souchong.Pine-smoked black tea. Strongly brewed, it goes into marinades, braising liquid and stock and gives a clean woodsmoke note without chilli or paprika.
7. Start with a smoked ingredient.Bacon, pancetta, smoked ham hock, smoked mackerel, smoked cheese. Rendering smoked fat at the start of a dish spreads smoke through everything that follows.
8. Try smoking in a wok if you have extraction.Foil in the base, a tablespoon of rice, sugar and tea leaves, a rack above, lid on, high heat for ten minutes. It works well but it sets off smoke alarms — only with a strong extractor and an open window.
9. Use liquid smoke with caution.It is genuine condensed smoke rather than a synthetic flavouring, and it is effective. A few drops is enough; more tastes acrid and artificial.
10. Add acid alongside it.Smoke without acid tastes heavy. Vinegar, lime or tamarind lifts it, which is why every good barbecue sauce is sharp.

Tips

• Blooming smoked paprika in fat gives several times the flavour of stirring it in at the end.
• Charring on a gas flame takes two minutes and is the closest indoor equivalent to a barbecue.
• Smoke needs acid alongside it or it reads as heavy rather than appetising.

Common mistakes

• Adding smoked paprika at the end of cooking — Its flavour compounds are fat-soluble, so stirred into a finished dish it tastes dusty and sits on top. Thirty seconds in hot fat before the liquid goes in transforms how much it contributes.
• Overdoing liquid smoke — It is concentrated, and beyond a few drops it stops reading as smoke and starts tasting of ashtray. It is one of the few ingredients where half the amount is almost always better.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask