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Can we talk about smoked / dried fish in here too or does that not really count since you don't (or at least I don't) cook it after preparation?
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Sep 22, 2011 18:13
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| # ¿ May 1, 2024 23:44 |
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Errant Gin Monks posted:Why not. Salting, smoking, preserving meat is all good in here. Gravlax away! Cool, thanks. I posted this in my DIY thread regarding my country life and the GWS smoker thread back in the day, but I like to think this is appropriate for this thread too. I'm taking pictures from about 3-4 different smoking sessions so please don't get upset because the meat quantity keeps changing. About a year ago I made a smoker out of cast iron pipe fittings and some leftover fireplace bricks.  The chamber has a little grate in it that holds the fire up off the cap on the bottom, and allows air to flow. The grate is just some 1/8th steel wire I bent into a spiral with a handle at the bottom so I can knock it around. Bolts that I put through the chamber wall keep the grate up off the bottom. Sorry the image is janky, it's hard to get a good picture of a dark tube in a dark shop. The grate was meant to be temporary, but it works so well I didn't want to gently caress with it.  The smoker body is just fireplace ring brick. I put wood over the top to keep the smoke in.  I tend to freeze my fillets first. From what I understand, the damage that the cells undergo when frozen help the water to escape and the curing chemicals in.  I cure my salmon in a simple brown sugar / pickling salt mixture for at least 24 hours. The liquid at the bottom of the jar is what leeches out of the fish.  Pellicle forms after cleaning off the salt and drying in the fridge, again over 24 hours.  Action shot 1. I like this picture, it looks like a little smoke hose.  Action shot 2.  Smoked up.  After it's smoked, sometimes I will just cut the skin off and leave it in the fridge and eat it with bagels and cream cheese. Or, if I want to keep it a little longer (hah, like it sticks around for long) I cut it into little strips and dehydrate it like jerky. I just use a floor fan and put it in my basement overnight.  So how hot does the chamber get? I honestly have no idea, but it's cold enough that I can do cheese in it with no problem. Always turns out really well, even if it is just supermarket cheddar.  So far I have done sockeye salmon, steelhead trout, farmed salmon (it was given to me for an experiment, it wasn't bad but I would never buy it for that purpose) and cheddar cheese. I've tried a brine cure, which worked well but was a massive pain. Dry curing seems to work much better. Makes sense, since you're trying to remove water, not marinate the flesh.
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Sep 22, 2011 22:10
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The body is made of a 3x10 (maybe 3x12? can't remember exactly) pipe nipple, so it's just some 3" pipe that's been threaded on each end. To that I attached a 3" cap for the bottom, a T fitting that has a reducing outlet at 1" on the side, a 3" plug for the top, and a 1x4 nipple + bushing for the smoke outlet and to keep it from falling out of the gap in the fireplace brick. The V groove in the brick is pretty good at holding this short length of pipe in place, fortunately. I drilled a total of four holes in the chamber, three for the bolts to hold the grate, and one small one to put in a little tube for the air supply. The air supply is just a hose from an adjustable aquarium air pump, the inlet is between the cap and the grate near the bottom of the chamber. So air gets forced in the bottom and up through the wood chunks in the chamber and out into the main smoker. You can see the little blue tube here:  I use the propane torch to start the charcoal. The fire is usually just a little bit of lump charcoal or a single briquette that sits on top of the grate. I prefer the lump, it's much easier to light a few small bits of that than a single briquette. I dump the wood chunks on top of the charcoal, and every 45 minutes or so I open up the plug on top of the chamber, knock down the wood (tends to stick to the chamber wall and doesn't fall down, as it forms a little dome above the fire), and add some more chunks. In this picture I am using chips/dust sized bits of wood, they don't work quite so well, they tend to clog more, but this is what I had left when I did it this day. Small chunks the size of a coin tend to work the best as the smoke and air circulates better. 
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Sep 22, 2011 22:55
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Isn't that just the water and enzymes that get sucked out by the salt?
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Sep 29, 2011 20:13
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