Putting Food By - Janet Greene [166]
If you use sawdust or fine chips or chopped corncobs, the smoke might also be maintained well enough by using an electric hot plate to fire a tin pie pan that’s filled with the smoke-making material. Set the hot plate on high to start the pan of stuff smoldering, then reduce the heat to medium or low. Experiment.
SMOKING MEAT
Because bacteria in meat grow faster between 70–100 F/21–38 C, you should smoke meat in fairly cold weather, in late fall or early spring, when temperatures are between 30 and 50 F/ −1 and 10 C during the day. However, really cold weather, down to Zero, is not for the beginner.
Smoking should be as sustained as is reasonably possible, simply because you want to get it over with and get the meat cooled and wrapped in moisture/vapor-proof material and stored in a cool, dry place (or frozen). But it won’t suffer from the hiatus if you can’t smoke at night: the weather will probably keep it cold enough without freezing so you can leave it in the smokehouse and just start your smoke-maker again in the morning.
If you have a sudden sharp drop in temperature, though, you had better bring inside to cool storage any meat that shows danger of freezing without the warmth of the smoke. Resume counting the total smoking time when the smokehouse is operating again.
Preparing the Meat for the Smokehouse
Remove the meat from the salting crock, scrub off surface salt, using a brush and fresh lukewarm water. Then hang the meat in a cool, airy place for long enough to get the outside of it truly dry—up to 24 hours.
Run several thicknesses of food-grade cord or a stainless steel wire through each piece of meat several inches below one end; tie the string or double-twist the wire to form a loop that will hold the weight of the meat. Hams are hung from the shank (small) end.
Small Homemade Smoke-Boxes
Plans for a small smokehouse can be obtained from Department of Food Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. Here are our variations of the barrel smoke-box.
A Barrel
You can get the smoking parts of half a 200-pound pig in a 55-gallon steel barrel that you make into a “smokehouse.” This means that one ham, one shoulder, and one side of bacon cut in pieces can be smoked at the same time.
Wooden barrels large enough to do the job are hard to come by these days, and their staves shrink when dried out (as they’d be after several days’ worth of warm smoke) and open. So use a metal barrel with one head removed. If it’s had oil in it, set the residue of oil on fire and let it burn out; then scour the drum thoroughly inside and out with plenty of detergent and water; rinse; scald the inside, and let it dry in the air.
TO SMOKE OUTSIDE ON THE GROUND
In the bottom of the barrel cut a hole large enough to take the end of an elbow for whatever size of stovepipe you want to use (see the sketch). Set the barrel on a mound of earth—with earth banked high enough around it to hold it firm and steady—and dig a trench from it down to a fire pit at least 10 feet away, and inclining at an angle of something like 30 degrees. Via the trench either connect the barrel to the pit with stovepipe, or build a box-like conduit (stovepiping is easier to remove and clean). You should have the length in order to cool the smoke on its way to the meat, and the pitch to encourage the draft.
Put a cover of close-fitted boards over the fire pit, arranged so it can be tilted to increase the draft when necessary.
TO SMOKE ON THE PORCH, OR IN A GARAGE
The electric-plate/pan-of-sawdust arrangement should be used only in a dry place with fire-retardant material underneath it. This can be sheet metal, or a concrete floor.
Set your barrel on supports—cinder blocks or trestles of some sort—to hold the elbow well away from the floor. Connect the stovepipe, and lead it from the barrel to the electric smoke-making unit. Make a wooden box, lined with fire-retardant material, to house the hot plate and the pan of sawdust, cut adequate slits for regulating air intake, and merely lift off the box when you