Smoking Meat and Fish

Smoke both flavours food and helps preserve it — its compounds slow bacteria and its warmth and airflow dry the surface. There are two methods with very different rules: cold smoking (flavour and preservation without cooking, which demands a cure first) and hot smoking (which cooks the food as it smokes). Both are done in a smokehouse over hardwood.

중급

1-2 days

안내

Cure the food first

Salt-cure the meat or fish before smoking (see Salt Curing Meat). This is ESSENTIAL for cold smoking, which flavours and preserves without cooking and would otherwise hold raw food in the bacterial danger zone. Use curing salt (nitrite) for anything cold-smoked.

이 단계의 재료:

Salmon1 kg

Coarse Sea Salt30 g

Curing Salt3 g

Dry to a pellicle

Rinse off the cure, pat dry, and air-dry the surface in a cool, airy spot (or uncovered in the fridge) for a few hours until it feels tacky. This skin — the 'pellicle' — is what the smoke sticks to.

Choose the wood

Burn seasoned HARDWOOD or fruitwood — oak, hickory, apple, cherry, alder, beech, maple. NEVER resinous conifers (pine, fir, spruce) or treated/painted wood: they give an acrid, sooty taste and harmful compounds.

이 단계의 재료:

Hardwood Logs (Oak, Maple, Beech)5 kg

Cold smoke or hot smoke

COLD SMOKE below 30 °C for cured preservation and flavour — the food stays raw, so it MUST be cured first; smoke for several hours up to a day or more. HOT SMOKE at 60–90 °C to cook as it smokes — take meat to 71 °C internal and fish to 63 °C — it's safe to eat but keeps only a few days refrigerated.

Store

Cold-smoked cured products keep for weeks hung in a cool, dry place or refrigerated. Hot-smoked food is like any cooked food — refrigerate and eat within a few days, or freeze. Discard anything that smells off or grows mould.

이 단계의 재료: