Here’s my improvised towel wrap for the tea smoked chicken. Worked well at keeping the room from filling up with smoke.
I’ve long wanted to make a tea-smoked duck at home, though decided early on it would be smart to start with tea-smoked chicken because of the cost factor. I am tempted by the birds hanging in the window when I visit a Chinatown and typically buy half a duck each time I go to San Francisco. They chop it up and put it in a plastic tray with a tiny cup of sauce and I can’t resist snitching a prime breast piece from the container and munching it while I am waiting for the 30 Stockton bus. So good!
Well, turns out that is not a smoked product at all according to the generally trustworthy Woks of Life. It’s Cantonese Roast Duck, which offers “layers and layers of flavor from a water/vinegar bath and two marinades for the cavity—one that is a seasoning paste and one that is a cooked, cooled sauce.” Hats off to you if you want to try this in your kitchen: in addition to the prep steps described above, you need to inflate the bird like a balloon at one point to lift the skin off the meat (which produces the delicious crackly skin, so worth it).
For reference, here’s the Tea-Smoked Duck from Y&Z Restaurant in San Francisco.
But tea-smoked duck is definitely a thing; the venerable Y&Z Restaurant in SF Chinatown is one of several places serving it according to a Yelp search, and that’s what we are going to make except with chicken. The general idea, according to many online sources, is that you put a bunch of flavorsome substances in a tray or pan or wok, place a marinated and seasoned bird on top, then heat to the smoking point in a wok or oven or an indirect fire in your grill with the cooking area sealed so the bird will get maximum exposure to the smoke.
The smoke has been our point of resistance, until now. I am currently residing in a townhouse with sprinklers in the ceiling and don’t care for a dinnertime shower, but also don’t have access to an outdoor grill (plus it’s getting colder here, though not cold like in the old days). So I was intrigued by a recipe that suggested wrapping wet towels around the lid of the wok rather than the usually recommended aluminum foil.
Here’s the Tea Smoked Chicken as it came out of the wok, ready to go in the oven.
It worked! I placed my flat bottom wok on the “smart” burner of my induction range (it adjusts the size of the heating surface to match whatever is placed on top of it) and lined it with aluminum foil. Placed tea leaves, rice, brown sugar and aromatics (recipe to follow) then an inverted collapsible steamer basket with the (previously marinated) chicken stabilized by its three legs pressed into the back from below. Turned on the heat to high and smoke started oozing out from under the lid in a minute or so. Then I wrapped it in two very damp dog towels and nervously monitored the process. 45 minutes later I turned off the heat and lifted the lid (after the wok had cooled down a bit) and walla! Beautiful tea-smoked chicken. It went in the oven for a final roast then rest and carve.
The result was terrific: crispy flavorful skin, tender delicately seasoned flesh pronounced “buttery” by my taster. (I’ll share the recipe in the next post.) And I’ve found an indoor smoking method I’ll put to work on other smaller cuts.
