The secret: It's not the creepy chemical additive you thought. A couple of weekends ago, I caught an episode of the public radio show "The Splendid Table" with soothingly voiced chef Lynne Rossetto Kasper. The topic was BBQ and I was shocked (Shocked!) to hear Lynne* and her guest recommend liquid smoke as the key to great crockpot pulled pork. In fact, Lynne seemed pretty surprised to hear herself suggest it.

But the truth, my friends, is that sometimes there is a little truth in advertising. And liquid smoke is one of those times.

*We're on a first-name basis like that. In my imagination.

You can be forgiven for wrongfully accusing liquid smoke of nefarious fakey toxic chemicalness. Even chemists have been confused on this one. Back in June, Slashfood interviewed NYU chemistry professor Kent Kirshenbaum, who--like you, me, Lynne Rossetto Kasper and everyone we know--had believed the worst about this cheap, sketchy sounding liquid.

Unlike the rest of us, however, Kirshenbaum actually went out and studied liquid smoke. He found that, despite its synthetic 1950's