Smoking/flavoring meats or fish with bamboo?

[Adobo]

Can thick walled bamboo be used to give flavor to foods via smoking or a foil bad in the grill with bamboo chips etc?

[Mark Meckes]

If bamboo is cooked inside large green bamboo culms, it imparts a pleasant flavor to the food.
Bamboo smoke can be somewhat sharp or acrid. I 've grown to like it, in small doses during crafting, though others may differ.

Bamboo charcoal is also used for cooking. In some countries where bamboo charcoal is made commercially, a bamboo vinegar bi-product is produced which "has been widely used in the fields of deodorant, agriculture ,feed, medicine, cosmetics, food and drink processing......"

See products at ... Bamboo Vinegar & Bamboo Charcoal Industry (http://www.bamboovinegar.com/) website

I would imagine there'd be some differences in flavor using different types of bamboo.

Mark

[Henry Lee]

I had a dish call "Rice cooked in Bamboo" in a Chinese restaurants some time ago. The rice was seasoned with spice, some meat and other ingriedience then stuffed inside a 5 inch by 10 inch moso with the nodes on the ends and open on one of the long sides. The whole thing then is steamed in the steamer. It was quite good with a special fragrance that only associates with bamboo.
Henry

[Adobo]

Thanks to all!

I've seen the Rice cooked in Bamboo on a television program about Beijing. There must be something to it.

I'll have to experiment more when I get back to the Philippines next year. Not much bamboo here in Michigan..

Evidently the field and market is wide open :)

[Mark Meckes]

When the culm surface of Phyllostachys atrovaginata (aka P. congesta) is rubbed it gives off the aroma similar to sandalwood (especialy younger culms), which is why it is sometimes called `Incense Bamboo'.

I can't imagine sandalwood flavored jerky as being very appealing, but who knows, the bamboo isn't really sandalwood, and it might smoke to a different flavor.

The aroma of bamboo smoke varies considerably with it's moisture content and composition of the wood. For example, old dry bamboo smells different then green dried bamboo smoke.

Different suitable (?) smoke flavors may depend on species selection along with harvesting and drying procedures.

Mark