Charcoal bites
Recipe
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90 minutes
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15 minutes
-
105 minutes
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60-80 pieces
You’ve probably seen it before, the Big Green Egg in a professional kitchen. At chef Jeroen Achtien‘s restaurant kitchen, the charcoal in the EGG glows for about 10 hours a day. For this recipe, the chef grilled the vegetables for the salpicon and smoked the salpicon itself in this kamado. Want to cook like a celebrity chef? Then make these surprising charcoal bites. Adding activated charcoal – a 100% natural ingredient – to the batter for the coating makes the bites look like pieces of charcoal.
Ingredients
Salpicon
- 150 g carrot
- Sunflower oil, for spreading and frying
- 100 g leek
- 300 g shallots
- 100 g butter
- 5 g salt
- 12 g smoked paprika
- 120 g flour
- 700 ml cold chicken stock
- 100 g mustard seeds
- Cornflour
Coating
- 300 g tapioca flour
- 150 g water
- 3 g black food colouring powder (activated carbon)
Garnish
- Dill cream
- Sprigs of dill
IN ADVANCE
- Light the charcoal in the Big Green Egg, and heat, with the Cast Iron Grid, to a temperature of 200°C. Meanwhile, for the salpicon, peel the carrot and cut it in half lengthwise. Coat the carrot with sunflower oil and sprinkle with sea salt. Clean the leek and cut the stem into pieces of about 10 centimetres in length. Make sure you have 150 grams of carrot and 100 grams of leek.
- Place the carrot and leek on the grill. Grill a nice stripe on both sides of the carrot. Grill the leek all over until it is dark brown on the outside and has a cooked core. Close the lid of the EGG after each action.
- Remove the carrot and leek from the EGG and let them cool. Meanwhile, remove the grill from the EGG and reduce the temperature to around 100°C. Remove the dark exterior of the leek and cut the core and root into small cubes. Set aside.
- Melt the butter on medium heat in a pan. Peel and chop the shallots. Add them to the butter and fry until the shallot is golden brown.
- Add the salt and smoked paprika and fry for 1 minute longer. Stir in the flour to form a roux. Turn down the heat and let the roux cook for about 10 minutes.
- Little by little, while stirring, pour the chicken stock into the roux to make a salpicon. Reduce to a thick sauce.
- Stir the mustard seeds, carrot and leek into the salpicon and spoon into a bowl. Sprinkle a small handful of Pecan Wood Chips on the glowing charcoal, insert the convEGGtor and Stainless Steel Grid and place the bowl with the salpicon on the grid. Close the lid of the EGG and let the mixture smoke for about 10 minutes.
- Spread the salpicon over a shallow dish lined with cling film and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour to stiffen.
- Heat the sunflower oil to fry to a temperature of 175°C. For the batter coating, carefully mix the flour with the water in a blender. Do not mix longer than necessary. Finally, mix in the activated carbon and add to a bowl. Cut the salpicon into cubes of about 2½ centimetres.
METHOD
- Before serving, reheat the sunflower oil for frying to a temperature of 175°C.
- Deep-fry the charcoal bites for about 2 minutes. Drain well and garnish with the dill cream and dill.
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