Cold smoking

haaammit

haaammit

haaammit

Soldato
Joined
22 Aug 2010
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On the Wagon-East Angular
Hey all - after attending a charcuterie course the other week and making (amongst other delicacies) back bacon I've decided to purchase a cold smoke generator to smoke some food. I bought mine from HotSmoked - they do a box as well, but seeing as I'd have nowhere to store a stinky, dirty box I'm going to use my Weber instead.

I'll be smoking my back bacon tomorrow. I also want to try some smoked cheese, so I'll be doing that at the same time. Pics to follow.

Here's the little smoke generator - 10 hours smoke time with that unit!!



£30.60 delivered
 
Don't forget to chuck some butter on there at the same time, it's one of my most favourite things in the world and will transform an ordinary bacon sandwich into a work of culinary art.

Also, you should cut blocks of butter and cheese to increase surface area and thus smoke flavour, cheese I cut diagonally into two, and butter I cut into quarters and then recombine when they're done.
 
Good tips by ganesh :)

I've not cold smoked for a while but cheese and bacon as already mentioned are great shouts. Not sure I ever got round to butter but I totally should dig out the ProQ and try it.

A few things to keep in mind - make sure you clean the cold smoker thoroughly to ensure that you don't get any flameout situations whilst cold smoking (obviously not an issue on the first use). Also, depending on how the wood dust is stored you may want to give it an hour in a warm oven to dry it out before use. Again, shouldn't matter for your first use but if you have the dust sat around for a few months it may be required.
 
It went really well. The meat I smoked for 12 hours and the cheese I popped in for about 2 hours. I used the oak wood, and the flavour is incredible. It really strikes home how crap cheaper "smoked" meat tastes. The flavour from real smoking shows up the chemical taste of smoke flavour, if that makes sense. Time to cure and smoke more meat. I want to try some salmon next as well - a quick 10 hour cure in salt and sugar then smoke it for a few hours. Yummy!!

The bacon came out really well. I also had an unsmoked gammon (as the shop had no smoked stuff in) which came out perfectly as well - so well that I much prefered the flavour of the home smoked gammon, and will smoke my own in future. The cheese was great too, but no pictures of that, sorry!

 
Looks good :)

One thing you may not have done which is recommended is to vacuum pack and leave to equalise for up to a week after smoking. I forgot to mention that before sorry. Anyhow, your results look great :)
 
Thanks - shame you can't taste it :D I don't have a vac packer, but I let it rest for a few days both after the initial cure and again after the smoking to let it stabilise, wrapped in foil the second time :)

Both the kids are scoffing it as fast as I can slice and fry it :D:D
 
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