Easy Smoking with Smoker Bags

Hello everyone! A little while back, I received an email from Jennifer Honeycutt of Realm Enterprises, Nashville, Tennessee asking me to take a look at her smoker bags.

Now, I’ve never heard of a smoker bag, I’ve never seen a smoker bag so I was quite intrigued by the concept. I readily agreed to do a product review and promptly received a packet of smoker bags together with some very interesting reviews and a large pile of recipes that are to die for. I looked at these with great surprise!

A smoker bag is a heavy duty foil packet. It measures 11×19 inches so it’s quite large and it is 3-ply. Between the 1^st and 2^nd plies are hardwood chips, hardwood syrup and natural sugars. These are sealed between the 1^st and 2^nd layer. The 2^nd and 3^rd layer would be the pouch where you’d seal your food in. Now, these can be used in the oven, on your barbecue or grill. They can also be used in a campfire – what I mean by campfire is the coals of the campfire, just put them right on the coals.

These bags are imported from Finland and have several reviews in various magazines such as Cooking Pleasures, Cooks Illustrated, Mercury News – Food & Wine Sections, The Nibble’s Great Food Finds, and others. I have absolutely no idea how I missed this.

The smoker bags come in two flavors – (1) Alder, which is great with fish and (2) Hickory, which is great with pork or lamb. You could use both of them for chicken, turkey or vegetables. Each bag holds approximately 2 1/2 pounds (1 kg) of food.

The smoker bag itself is designed for you to smoke your food in a very convenient manner. The concept is super simple – put your food in the bag, place it in your grill, oven or coals and in the cooking process the wood chips start smoking up into the food, creating an intense smoked food flavor. For those of you that love smoked foods, this is a great way to go without having to smoke for 6-8 hours to get that flavoring. It’s very fast and very convenient.

The bag itself is recyclable. You just put your food in there, you take it, you roll up the aluminum foil and you recycle it. That’s it for clean up, it’s that simple.

Every smoker bag comes with how-to instructions. Very simply, you fill your bag with your food, put it on a pre-heated oven or grill, smoke it for the recommended time for fish, pork chops, chickens, ribs, brisket, roast, potatoes, vegetables, etc. The recommended cooking time is included in the how-to instructions. Once cooked, you open up the bag and you serve it when it’s done. It’s extremely simple.

The concept I like most about it is you can do the “meal in the bag”. Basically, you can take pork chops with zucchini, onion, broccoli bell peppers, cut up some potatoes, put all of them in the bag, cook for 40-45 minutes, and your meal is done! It’s an all in one bag and cleaning up is simple – just wad up the foil and put it away.

The packet is filled with recipes. For Hickory, they have included smoked barbecued pork ribs, hickory smoked chicken, smoked garlic stuffed lamb with rosemary, and Scandinavian honey salmon. For Alder, they have included Scandinavian honey salmon, easy smoked chicken, delicious pork loin or pork chops and healthy smoked vegetables. There are even more recipes on their website – www.savu.fi.

Just to tempt you more, here are some other ideas, smoked paprika chicken with blackberry relish, chipotle red pork with peach salsa, lemon pepper pork chops, Texas beef brisket, Creole grouper, smoked corn pudding, tomato basil bisque, maple-glazed pork tenderloin for just a starter.

For part 2 of our review, I will be sharing with you my cooking experiences with the smoker bag where I use both the barbecue and coals so stay tuned and we’ll be bringing that to you shortly.