Smokehouses & smoking

Factual Questions
1

As those of you know from the thread on “Power of the Grid” thread, in a couple of years I’m going to be living out in the nowhere. I want two build a smokehouse and my understanding is that there are two ways to smoke something: hot smoke which cooks the food (salmon, jerky, etc.) and cold smoke which leaves the food raw (like ham).

Two questions: do most smokehouses have two rooms, one with heat that smokes the wood (hot smoke) and a second connecting room that exhausts the smoke (cold smoke)? Also, would sausages be cooked using hot smoke, cured using cold smoke, or does it depend on the sausage?

2

I was quite intrigued by your question and had no answer, despite my mother having worked in a kipper smokehouse.

Here is a Wikepedia article to be going on with until someone with direct experience happens along.

3

The answer is…it depends. If you build a good-sized smokehouse, you can hang things that need a cold smoke high up over a low smudge. Those that need a hot smoke can hang low over a hotter smudge. You build your fire and hang your meats accordingly.

4

You do not want to hot smoke salmon, otherwise you end up with cooked salmon, not the delicate texture and flavor of smoked salmon. Smoking salmon doesn’t cook it as much as flavor it as it also removes moisture. The fish should already be cured in a sugar/salt brine.

5

I agree with you but by girlfriend loves it cooked a la hot smoke.

6

The Sausage Maker sells commercial smokers. As you can see from their web site, some of them have external smoke generators.

Cold smoking is much easier with an external smoke generator - it makes it possible to keep the inside of the smoker (where the food is) at a low temperature while still generating a good volume of smoke. An external generator isn’t as important for hot smoking.

Most hams and sausages are hot-smoked (i.e. they are cooked in the smoking process). Some raw hams (like Virginia country ham) are cold-smoked. Fish is sometimes hot-smoked and sometimes cold-smoked (lox is the best-known cold-smoked fish).

Anyone who smokes and cures meats needs to know how to do it safely. The curing process, which involves nitrites, retards the growth of the bacteria that cause botulism. The curing process usually isn’t difficult, but it is important to understand it and follow it. The Sausagemaker web site sells a pretty good book on sausage making and meat curing. It would be a good idea to get a book like this as a first step in your adventures with cured and smoked meats.