The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Food & crafts => Food processing => Topic started by: Plantoid on June 29, 2011, 11:58:32 pm
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Has anyone got a link to tested and tried hot & cold smoking for cheeses , pork olive oil and such like.
Info that has weight losses per pound/kilo etc in the information
I have just had a brick built BBQ completed made from cmortared engineering bricks and two 3 foot by 2 foot paving slabs ..I designed it to have the facility for making it a hot smoke chamber in the bottom half and a cold smoker in the top one if I add a " small wooden smoking shed " over the platform area .
The fire box area should be able to hold two days of smouldering oak etc at a time.
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Nope, meat weight loss figures can be had from websites and books about dry curing, but not about smoking.
As a guide, hot smoking a large slab of bacon takes several hours and the meat is supposed to come up to 65 degrees inside (though since it's already been cured chances are it'll last long enough already anyway). Cold smoking a slab of bacon takes 10 hours or so. Less if you don't like a strong smokey flavour.
As your system is home made, it'll take some experimenting at first, but that's all part of the fun ;)
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I'm not sure that the process of cold smoking itself causes any more weight loss than would be achieved by air-drying alone for the same length of time?
In most cases the weight loss comes from any curing and drying that takes place before smoking.
Good luck with it, let us know how you get on.
Any chance you could post some photos? We've got a Bradley smoke generator, but I've a hankering to incorporate a BBQ/oven and smoker somewhere outdoors too. ;D
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Last months Home farmer mag had an article on making a smoker from a filing cabinet but there was no info no weight loss etc
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Have a look in the 2 Jan 2014 post about smoking for pictures and info of what I ended up doing with my redundant BBQ stand as well as two very useful and interesting modern books I've got on my Kindle-lite .