Chef Christopher Fernandes has always had the passion for smoked and cured meats, so when the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown hit, he took the opportunity to nurture this love for cooking meats into something more. “I built my own custom offset smoker and started researching and developing my own recipes and built my brand ‘Cravings by Chris’ on Instagram specialising in cured and smoked meats.” Today, Goa-based Fernandes is popularly known as one of India’s few pitmasters, creating dishes incorporating cured meats smoked at varying degrees in metros including Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

With the party season here and Christmas and New Year around the corner, different kinds of preparations of chicken, pork and beef are really popular. Interestingly, there is a silent celebration of smoked meats going on in various parts of the country apart from Mumbai, and the season only demands more of it. Ahead of the celebration observed by followers of Christianity in Mumbai, mid-day.com spoke to chefs who experiment with the cooking technique with meats, especially around this time of the year. In fact, Fernandes’s love for meats is visible when he reveals that his home usually boasts of either a roast chicken or smoked leg of ham – easily putting his passion into practice.