Cold smoking question

[Rev_William]

I want to try my hand at some cold smoking this year but funds are a little short. I've seen them do the smoking in card board boxes but I want to kind of keep it out of the dogs reach and was wondering if I could use a canvas bag suspended from an overhang by the smoke source and still get the same result.

 

[Nifeman]

Guess ya could, but it wouldn't be the same. Muslin would be better. I built mine for about $15 and most of it was donated. Works great too. just damp wood gives a cold smoke add some lump charcoal to build heat for hot smoke...

Ribs after 5 hrs

 

[Woods Dweller]

I make a Teepee from 4, 6 foot pols, wrap them with a painters canvas, then smoke . You can tie sticks across the 4 pols to hang meat from or tie a grill rack to the 4 pols. Make sure the bottom of Teepee touches the ground and sealed. Now run a stove pipe into the Teepee to allow smoke go into the smoker.
Check this out. http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/263876/

 

[Loyalist Dave]

According to the chef that I know who makes cold smoked, dry cured bacon..., the basic idea is a chamber to hold the meat to concentrate the smoke and give it time to take effect, while at the same time drying the meat. I think the advice against the canvas was simply that the smoke should flow through the chamber, passing around all sides of the meat, and muslin will allow the smoke to escape, but you could always have some sort of vent at the top of your canvas..., and you also need to keep the temp down when you cold smoke.

So you should be able to make some sort of canvas chamber, that you can suspend away from Fido's reach, and pass smoke through it from the bottom and out a restricted vent in the top, to allow the smoke to slowly pass over the meat...

My chef buddy doesn't like using damp wood. He says the smoke is carried along by the heated air, and will carry moisture with it too..., which is what he's trying to get rid of by dry curing his bacon.

He regulates the temp by using a long tube (he uses a foil clothes dryer tube) between the fire/smoke source and the meat chamber. When he hot smokes he simply uses a commercial "smoker" but that cooks the meat while also smoking it.

LD

 

[Rev_William]

Thanks for the advice.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

The idea of cold smoking is to keep the temp well below room temp. Many of the old smoke houses on farms around here actually had fire boxes down hill from the smoke house and a masonry or metal flue under ground to carry the smoke to the smoke house. I toured an old farm down near Lovingston VA years back and their smoke house was actually a stone walled room that was mostly underground (similar to a cold cellar) As such it would not get much over 56 degrees. The old timer claimed that the hams were hung for a year down there. There is an above ground brick smoke house on a farm nearby with a small firebox underground under the masonry floor. I suppose in the winter some heat would be necessary for the smoking process, because I don't think frozen meat absorbs much smoke.

On my farm the smoke house was destroyed by a falling tree about 15 yrs ago. It had a fire chamber about two feet below the masonry floor and a wooden frame smoke chamber (looked like a 6 x 6 outhouse above.) I have been told that about 100 years ago, the farm had a blacksmith shop-butcher shop-saw mill & small distillery open to the public. The chimney for the forge is still there but is badly broken up.

 

[Billnpatti]

Cold smoking simply involves having the source of the smoke located so that only the smoke reaches the meat but none of the heat. I had a friend who had a 12' X 20' building with a dirt floor on his ranch that used to be a tool shed. It was no longer used to store tools so he used it to smoke meat. He had a hole dug in the dirt floor off to one side away from where he hung the meat. He would build a fire in the hole using good oak wood. Once he had a good fire, he would add Mesquite wood and cover it up with a piece of corrugated roofing so that the fire only got enough oxygen to smolder. The smoke that reached the meat was cool and just smoked the meat, not cook it. So, anyway that you can keep the heat away from the meat while allowing the smoke to reach it will cold smoke your meat. There is no one right way to do it. Use your imagination to tell you how to use what you have to do what you want. Good luck. :hatsoff:

 

[omarick1948]

I cure and cold smoke my own bacon, corned beef, Pastrami, cheese, fish etc. regularly and do it in a standing 55 gallon steel drum. Any temperature below 95 degrees is considered Cold Smoking. I usually do my bacon slabs at 90 degrees for about four hours.

I'm making my own Lacto-Fermented Kosher dill pickles as we speak, but that's another topic!

Rick :wink:

 

[Blizzard of '93]

my g-dad had a set-up as Knifeman's but bigger, built into the hill-side near his barn.
a terra cotta pipe about 10' long piped smoke from the 'stove' he made of bricks and an old cast iron stove door dug into the bank.
he stayed busy from autumn on till spring smokeing meat for folks.

 

[Hangfire]

Does cold smoking cure the meat to the point where nothing else is done to it to consume it? Or do you still have to cook it to consume?

 

[Nifeman]

If you smoke long enough, you shouldn't have to do anything else to it. I generally brine my stuff if I want it to last longer than a couple days (what a joke that is :wink: ). But most of the time I just smoke what we're going to consume at a family gathering. Cold smoking pretty much dries the meat from the outside/in and you have to brine it so it will keep, like jerky or pemmican...Bud

 

[Free Plunder]

I cure and cold smoke my own bacon, corned beef, Pastrami, cheese, fish etc. regularly and do it in a standing 55 gallon steel drum. Any temperature below 95 degrees is considered Cold Smoking. I usually do my bacon slabs at 90 degrees for about four hours.
!

Rick :wink:

Same way fer us plunders too. Just set a lectric hotplate in bottom and set a big coffee can on it with yer wood chips in it. Use some round grates salvaged from some weber grills and pop some sheet metal screws thru the drum to hold the grills. Cover with some wood or cloth or sheetmetal and plug the hot plate in. 4 to 8 hours depending on smoke etc...

FP

 

[54ball]

Does cold smoking cure the meat to the point where nothing else is done to it to consume it?

Smoking does not cure the meat. The only thing smoking or cold smoking does is make the cured meat unattractive to hungry bugs.

Now small thin slices of meat and even fish can be dried or jerked in cold smoke but this is for jerky and is not the same process for truly cured meat. You could do the same in dry sunlight.

 

[54ball]

Rev William,

Cold weather was "hog Killin time". Here in Alabama it was traditionally around Thanksgiving. The weather had to be cold enough that meat would not spoil during the the curing process.

This is the dry cure for Virginia or Country type hams....

The hog was killed. After the hog was killed it place in boiling water to make scraping the hair easier. After the hair is scraped the hog is processed.

The hams,shoulders,and sometimes slabs of bacon were cured with the skin on. The meat was cured in a salt box usually located in the smokehouse. This salt was non iodized salt known today as canning or pickling salt.

The salt was rubbed into to meat with special attention to the bone ends and the flesh side. After the salt was thoroughly rubbed in the meat was buried in the salt box.

Through the process of osmosis the salt penetrated down to the bone. The weather had to be cool enough especially the first few days to allow the salt to penetrate to the bone before bacteria started to rot the meat.

Every so often the meat was checked. If the bone was loose in the ham it was discarded as that was a sign that the ham was rotting around the bone.

After the ham was fully salt cured it was smoked. Smoking actually plays no part in the actual curing. What it does do is make the meat unappealing to critters like rodents and bugs. The meat was cold smoked for several days in the smoke house sometimes in a closed barn or even makeshift shelter.

There is really a lot to this. If the smokehouse or smoke shelter is located in the wrong location due to the prevailing wind the meat could take on a bitter taste from too much smoke. If the smokehouse was too hot and wet it could cook the meat making it spoil.

After a few days the smoked meat was wrapped in cheesecloth or muslin to prevent bugs that are not deterred by the smoke from making a new home. Then the bagged ham is placed in a cool dry place for storage. Some hams cured this way still hang after a century are are still good to eat.

To prepare a Country ham to eat, it must be soaked to dilute the salt. The water is poured off and though osmosis the salt is drawn out of the meat. This is why you see hams at the grocery store and it says "water added". After the salt is diluted from the meat it can be boiled or baked. The ham can be sliced and cooked without out soaking and many folks do this as breakfast food but it is very very salty.

This is a description of how it was done before electricity. With the invention of electricity meat was able to be cured year round. Since there were ice houses or refrigerators in the city the ham could be cured in a cool liquid brine instead of a dry salt box.

In this brine sugar could be used along with the salts or nitrates. These are known as Sugar Cured Hams. Since this method was done with refrigeration, these Hams became known as "City Hams" the hams done the old dry way in rural areas became known as "Country Hams".

Smoking alone does not cure the meat. If you try to eat meat that has just hung in a smoke house for a few days you stand the risk of food poisoning. A lot of folks get this confused. Hot smoking is nothing more than a method of BBQ and will not preserve the meat.

To do this one really needs to do the research because if done wrong there is risk of poisoning.

Edit...Sugar cured hams or city hams require refrigeration to keep. They cannot be stored dry hanging like salt cured Virginal Hams.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

to add a bit to my post my g-dad had a large box in his cellar that he packed the meat in for some days before smokeing it. he used salt, brown sugar, black and a bit of red pepper mixed up for this. you could smell the odor the ham made when frying by my g-mom from 100yds away. slobber, slobber.
he also smoked beef, geese and turkeys. he didn't 'soak' them in the salt mix just rubbed them good w/it then into the smokehouse for days seems he built the fire hotter for them so maybe it was 'hot smoked'? I was hardly more than a rugrat when he was doing this - he stayed busy doing this for folks and his family never lacked for meat. the turkeys you could pull apart, very tasty.
there is an original old timey smokehouse near here upon Becky Mtn I'll try to post fotos later.