Do-it-yourself wooden smoking cabinet drawings. Do-it-yourself smokehouse: theory, various designs (cold and hot), drawings, principles of smoking

The cost of making a smokehouse is negligible, you can use improvised materials and leftovers. A handmade smokehouse and the right smoking mode will allow you to cook delicacies that are unique in taste and surprise your family and guests.

Your own smokehouse is good. It's just wonderful. Freshly caught fish, right there, still fluttering, gutted and stuffed with ferns, a wild boar ham from a billhook, which he cut off exactly under the left shoulder blade, the beast just tumbled, but smoked ... saliva flows ... You need to make some kind of smokehouse with your own hands, but purchase prices unreasonable, but everything looks simple.

Indeed, the smokehouse is very simple, and making it yourself is as easy as shelling pears. If there is a kitchen with gas and an extractor hood, you don’t need to do anything at all - bring it and smoke it. But behind the apparent simplicity lies a rather complex process. Remember the old Soviet Riga sprats - plump, bright golden, with dense but tender meat? Where can you find these now? And the Balts, by the way, do not spray fish with liquid smoke, they smoke honestly.

However, the gastronomic advantages are only the tip of the iceberg. That's right, old-fashioned smoked products are completely devoid of harmful properties. But in the age of consumption, in the pursuit of profitability, many of the secrets of smoking are either lost or ignored.

Therefore, in this article, we will first of all tell you what you need to know and understand in order to make a smokehouse, the product from which will receive a delicate taste with an exquisite aroma, which are simply unknown to current smoked meat lovers. And at the same time, it will be completely devoid of carcinogens, oxidants, toxins and other things that frighten connoisseurs of smoked meat. And then we turn to the description of some structures.

Similarly. Not so long ago, his good friend wanted to visit the author. And he just got hold of real Frankfurt sausages, so he decided to please. Prepared as expected, with green peas. She tried, and ... she did not eat. She seriously thinks that sausages are what they put in a hot dog in the market.

Three smoked whales

Whales are not smoked whole; title is figurative. What does it mean - three whales, on which the whole process of smoking is right, old-fashioned, primordial. Incidentally, it is quite feasible in an ordinary urban kitchen. How exactly and what to smoke - we will also touch on this, but towards the end of the article.

1. The first is the uniformity of heating and fumigation. Both heat and smoke should evenly cover the semi-finished product from all sides. Otherwise, even along the length of a medium-sized roach or pig's ear, internal fractionation of the product components will go on, which will spoil the taste and add harm.
2. The second is light smoke. Heavy smoke fractions must condense and precipitate before reaching the product in any smoking method, see below. The presence of pyrolysis gases is completely unacceptable, they give what doctors justifiably scare. So “light smoke” means not only white and fragrant, without fumes, but also highly diluted with atmospheric oxygen, it neutralizes pyrolysis gases.
3. The third is gradual penetration. Proper pumping of the product bookmark requires not only time, but also a delay near it with a light haze. At the same time, all components of the smoke will evenly penetrate into the product, which gives the required quality. The scheme of smoking is as follows: the “working” smoke fumigates the bookmark until it is exhausted, then it must leave, and be replaced by fresh one. It is not difficult to provide such a cycle, because smoke produced at the same temperature is lighter and tends to go up. You just need to hold him near the product.

What is unimportant

But what has almost no meaning for the smoker is its size. All that is required to be observed during the design is gaps of at least 1-2 cm between the product and the walls and between pieces of products. An exception is small fish smoked on a grate in bulk: sprat, sprat, rudd, smelt, smelt, golden crucian carp - “penny”.

Also, the material doesn't really matter. But here, too, there is an exception: when cold smoking bear meat and other types of game with a specific flavor on the smoking chamber (see below), it is better to put an old oak wine barrel, or, in extreme cases, from under pickles. In combination with the right firewood for smoke, a smokehouse from a barrel will give out quite edible even skua, coot or martyn gull.

Types of smoking

The most delicate, exquisite bouquets of taste and aroma, combined with a long shelf life of the finished product, gives cold smoking, at a temperature of 30-50 degrees. The ham of a domestic pig, smoked in a cold way, will sag in a cool, dry cellar for a year or more, completely retaining its taste and aroma, only shrinking a little. And in the refrigerator for a maximum of a month, it will soften or freeze.

But cold smoking lasts a long time - from 6 hours for small fish in bulk on a grill to 3 days for the thigh of a well-fed boar. And it requires, in addition, careful preparation of the product, see at the end. It will take from 1 to 5 days, with the same variation depending on the product. Despite this, just a “cold” smokehouse is the easiest to install, but it requires a small piece of land, about 2x3.5 m.

Note: smoked meats by weight should be kept suspended on steel wire, and a safety circle should be put on the hook rod, like those that sailors put on mooring lines. Rats, they really respect smoked meat. And they hear from afar.

Hot smoking is carried out at a temperature of 70-120 degrees. Recommendations to bring the temperature up to 350 degrees (?) are taken from nowhere, it will come out not smoked meat, but a casserole. Hot smoking occurs quickly, from 15 minutes. up to 4 hours; the product fork is the same - sprat / ham. Preliminary preparation of the semi-finished product is not required.

However, in taste, smell and appetizing type, hot smoked meats are noticeably inferior to cold ones, and are stored at room temperature for outdoors usually no more than 36 hours. They freeze easily in the refrigerator, which completely destroys the gastronomic advantages. In a closed container, they easily "suffocate" and become rotten, which you need to keep in mind when taking them with you on the road.

Semi-hot smoking is carried out at a temperature of 60-70 degrees in the simplest smokehouses for cold smoking. In appearance and smell, only a connoisseur will distinguish a semi-hot product from a cold-smoked one, but in taste and keeping quality it is the same as hot smoked.

Without preparation in a semi-hot way, only completely fresh semi-finished products can be smoked: freshly caught fish, fresh meat. Therefore, semi-hot smoking is mainly used by individual hunters and fishermen, after 2-3 days of fishing they carry their prey immediately to the market, for preservation and giving it a marketable appearance.

There is another application: the homemade smokehouse described below from nothing, in the literal sense of the word, without quotes, acts in a semi-hot way. If you need to quickly prepare smoked delicacies for the holiday, and the store ones “bite” at the price, it can help out a lot. Especially if the celebration is with vodka-cognac libations: alcohol deafens the taste buds, and after the first one no one will make out the real taste, even if Lucullus himself is invited to the feast.

Cold home smoker

The cold smoked smokehouse, as already mentioned, is elementary simple. Its device is shown in the figure. The smoking chamber, so that it does not go through the soil that has become sour from condensate, is placed on bricks or wooden logs dug upright into the ground.

The principle of operation is as follows: the smoke, until it reaches the smoking chamber, cools down, all the harmfulness from it will precipitate and go into the ground. At the same time - and water condensate, from which the smoked product can become sour and rotten while it is being smoked. However, you need to use it wisely.

Firstly, the slate (or galvanized, it will only be hot, you can get burned) sheet farthest from the barrel - the smoking chamber is designed to adjust the smoke distribution. In the figure, it is highlighted in greyish-green. Before laying on the grate, or hanging on a hanger, a semi-finished product, it is moved until gray or blue-gray smelly smoke goes in addition to the chamber, and fragrant light smoke enters it.

Secondly, the smoke circulation and the delay in the light haze chamber are regulated by a slightly damp burlap thrown over the mouth of the smokehouse. With proper smoking, the smoke above the chamber should not be visible - its spent residues settle in the burlap, which becomes heavier and dirty. In order not to fall down and spoil the product, metal bars are welded into the mouth, or wooden bars are simply placed on it, and a loading and unloading door is made in the chamber.

As you can see, making a cold smokehouse may only require digging a hole for a fire with a chimney - if the safety grate is made of sticks at the mouth, then the door in the chamber is not needed. However, firstly, firewood for a fire must be chosen especially carefully, but more on that at the end.

Secondly, such a smokehouse needs constant supervision: as soon as the burlap dries out and wisps of smoke go through it, it must be sprayed immediately. Otherwise, the smoke will go through the duct and some of the substances necessary for taste, smell and benefit will fly out of it into the chimney.

Thirdly, the ground under a cold smokehouse from the condensate from the smoke becomes limp even in dry weather under a canopy. Before the next bookmark, the smokehouse must be allowed to dry. If this circumstance is neglected, then the earth, instead of absorbing the unnecessary from the smoke, on the contrary, will give it back. The product will become sour, acquire a vile taste, stink, i.e. - will disappear.

That is why in ordinary stores there are no delicacies smoked in a real cold way. And in which they happen - it’s better not to look there for those living on a salary for the sake of peace of mind. At any size.

Video: homemade “cold” smokehouse

Original

And now a little about the forgotten secrets. The most important thing: you can build a cold-smoked smokehouse, the products from which were eaten, rumbling and licking their lips, the old princes and boyars, you can do it yourself. And you don’t even need to look for a barrel of fuel.

• The first secret: the smoking chamber is a round or square shell of two wattle with an interval of two palms between them. The gap is covered with earth.
• The second secret: the smoke circulation of a light haze is regulated not by burlap, but by branches of trees or shrubs sketched on top with small frequent leaves, but not evaporating essential oils. It is easy to determine: if the leaves themselves do not noticeably smell, and the flowers do not have a strong aroma, then it will go. Lilac, for example, will not work, but raspberries, currants, hazel - easily.
  Also, trees that emit gum, sweet juice or contain a lot of tar will not work: birch, maple. The exception is cherry. All conifers are not suitable for sure. For game with a flavor on the tire, you need willow, willow, willow, ordinary willow and reddish. Salicylic return inside, of course, will coarsen the taste, but it will also beat off the taste.
• The third secret: the thickness of the lining of the branches of the tire - from the palm of your hand with a 12-hour smoking to 3/4 cubit (about 30 cm) with a 3-day smoke. The secret is that the upper leaves are used to judge the degree of readiness of the product without opening the chamber. Once the top leaves are dry and shriveled, it's done! At least, it is already possible to open it without the risk of knocking down the process, and check the degree of readiness. Of course, the branches must be fresh, freshly cut.
• Fourth secret: under the chimney they cover with a half-palm layer of fresh blackcurrant leaves. Yes, yes, the very ones that go to home canning. And for the same purpose. If harsh meat is smoked (old beef, for example), currants are given in half with horseradish leaves.

marching

A cold-smoked camping smokehouse from nothing is shown in the figure. It allows you to get a product that is not inferior to that of the previous one. She has her own secrets.

The first is to dig an adit with a trunk in clay or loam. The total length of the entire shaft is 2.5–4 m.

Note: the secret is in the secret - it is convenient, so as not to dig too much and hard, to arrange one in a cliff with holes of shore swallows.

The second is that you don’t need to drag a bucket without a bottom or a barrel with you on a hike. It is also not necessary to knit wattle for the smoking chamber. If you make the shaft deeper, then its mouth can simply be expanded under the bookmark, put a couple of fallen trees on top (they will also be hangers), and fill up with branches from above, as described above.

Third - smoke generation is regulated not by a damper, but by fresh leaves of wild currant, raspberry, strawberry, hazel, laid on a fire. For a tart taste - oak, ash, elm, willow, willow. For soft - linden. If consumers are not from the category of Roman patricians, then simply meadow grass. But God forbid - birch, sage, St. John's wort, celandine and others medicinal herbs! And the requirements for firewood are the same, which are discussed below.

hot

The hot smoked smokehouse is more complicated. Because smoke circulation and the whole process are much faster, the requirements for the “three smoked whales” indicated at the beginning must be fully observed. The device of hot smokehouses is shown in the figure. What do they have in common?

First, the smoking chamber is placed in a smoke casing. It narrows at the top. This is necessary so that, as the smoke supplied to the chamber is consumed, it penetrates into it evenly through the holes in the walls.

The second is a smoking chamber with a blank bottom. The fact is that the fat dripping down during hot smoking will fall either on the fuel tab or on the bottom of the smoke casing. Which, by the way, unlike the cold smoking chamber, must have sealed seams and joints.

In the first case, the fat will burn, and the combustion products will penetrate into the smoked bookmark. Inexperienced gourmets may not determine this by the taste of the product, but chemical analysis will show exactly what competent doctors shy away from with wide eyes.

In the second - in the presence of moisture vapor, at a temperature of incoming smoke of about 150 degrees, the fat will instantly go rancid and then evaporate. By harmfulness - the result is the previous one, and a nasty sugary aftertaste may appear.

If the fat remains in the smoking chamber, then there is no excess moisture, and even that quickly disappears, because. exit from the cell is actually free. Fat will then have to be scraped off from the bottom, unless a drain is provided, but the product will not deteriorate. The smoked fat will have to be thrown away: all the smoked "muck" has gathered in it.

The third is a thermometer with a scale of up to 250 degrees. It controls the smoking temperature. Going beyond 70-120 Celsius is fraught not only with spoilage of taste, but also with the accumulation of harmful substances in the finished product.

Now for the differences. The left smokehouse in fig. - on self-care. Fuel - exclusively special wood chips for smoking. It is on sale, and the consumption is small: two handfuls per ham. Throwing sawdust, as most RuNet sources recommend, is a gross mistake. In a dense mass of sawdust, pyrolysis will inevitably go, and pyrolysis gases from it, the “benefit” of which has been repeatedly mentioned above. It is useless to arrange pressurization, it will not blow through a bunch of sawdust through. Is it possible to supply pure oxygen, but this is for lovers of expensive and dangerous techno-exotics.

Air access to the fuel is provided by a blower, and the total smoke circulation is regulated by a moistened burlap thrown over the mouth, as described above. But the branch secrets of cold smoking, alas, will have to be abandoned: at this temperature they will have the opposite effect.

In no case should fuel be ignited by kindling, even modern “ecological” gel. The fuel is heated to the beginning of smoldering from the outside through the bottom of the casing. The methods are different: by installing a smokehouse on a household gas stove, blowtorch, a propane burner, an electric stove with a heating element - a pancake and a thyristor regulator. Heating is given constantly all the time of smoking; its degree is regulated by the temperature in the casing.

A self-burning smokehouse has a serious drawback: moisture from the fuel inevitably enters the smoking chamber. There is no sense in drying wood chips “to gunpowder” - moisture is formed as a result chemical reactions burning. Therefore, the mention above of a ham for a smokehouse on self-smoldering is purely symbolic: it will become sour before it is smoked. The maximum that can be smoked in this is pieces the size of a herring 30+.

On right - hot smokehouse powered by a smoke generator. Special for smoking, not for self-diagnosis. If a cooling coil or radiator and a condensate collector with a drain are provided on the chimney from the generator, then it can also work in a cold way. More precisely, pseudo in a cold way, because smoking masterpieces obtained from a real earthen cold smokehouse will not come out of it. But the ham will still be smoked.

The highlight of this smokehouse is a lid with a serrated bent edge lowered into a water seal. This ensures a constant slight overpressure in the chamber and a quick, uniform pumping of the bookmark. The mouth can also be covered with burlap, as in the previous case, but the taste will come out harsh, and the meat, especially fish, is flabby.

Compare: everyone knows that when preparing liqueurs or homemade wine, it is wrong to put a condom or a balloon on the neck of a jar of sourdough. You need to smear a rubber tube and bring its end into a smaller jar of water to gurgle. Then you get a drink, not a badyaga.

Smoke generators

A smoke generator is essential for successful hot smoking of meat. The device of the simplest smoke generator for smoking is shown in fig. The heater is shown tentatively; he, as mentioned above, can be anything. If a bonfire or a stove, then any fuel for it. But for the generation of smoke smoke - special. What, again, further.

But boost is not conditional. A natural draft smoke generator (for this it is necessary to place the smokehouse 2-3 m above it) will fit only for pseudo-cold smoking. Real hot requires excess pressure in the chamber, and draft, as you know, gives a vacuum.

An interesting smoke generator circuit is shown in the figure below. The principle is this: a wooden block, pressed by a spring with an adjusting screw, rubs against a steel pulley until it starts to smolder and smoke. Right there, on the motor shaft, there is a fan that drives smoke into the chamber. It would seem that pure pyrolysis with all the ensuing harmfulness, but!

The other end of the engine shaft rotates a low-power magneto (even from an old Soviet "hole" moped), giving a voltage of 2-4 kV. Its plus is fed to the grid, through which smoke is driven, and the minus is fed to smoked products. The author of the article does not know whether the author of the design knows that all the harmfulness of smoke is concentrated in negative ions (anions), and all the benefits are in positive cations.

The former in this case immediately settle on the grid (which will often have to be cleaned), while the latter are forced into the smoked food with force. Without any hassle of monitoring the smoke circulation and maintaining it.

On the wiring diagram an AC commutator motor is shown, and it is correct. In this case, you will need its power of 200-300 W, because. external characteristic collector motors of sequential excitation is soft: when the power take-off shaft is braked, the torque increases. If you put an asynchronous engine with a capacitor start (for such an external characteristic is quite tough), then it will take 1.5-2 kW to turn the shaft before the tree starts to smolder.

Note: because magneto almost idling for it gives large surges of voltage pulses, then the operating voltage of the capacitors should not be 2 kV, as the author recommends, but 6.8-10 kV. Such capacitors are used in horizontal scanning circuits for kinescope televisions.

About fish

But what about a smokehouse for fish? It is smoked the most. Are there any "fishy" nuances here? For cold smoking - not the slightest. A cold smokehouse absolutely does not care what is put into it, even cucumbers.

But in hot and semi-hot (see next) for fish, it is necessary to provide for the outflow of flowing fat outside the smoke casing or its immediate removal in another way. Low-melting fish oil is endowed with all the harmful properties of flowing smoke oil in a double or even fivefold degree.

About materials

Before moving on to household homemade products from anything, we should talk about something else.

Many country restaurants, clubs, recreation centers, commercial fishing and hunting farms are acquiring their own stationary unit for preparing meat and fish delicacies. Usually it is combined in and smokehouse. A solid building immediately gives prestige to the institution, but is it worth building such a complex entirely of brick? Certainly not.

It's not so much that the brickwork of the actual multifunctional oven is complex and expensive. Moreover, the brick is porous. When smoking, smoke emanations are introduced into the masonry, and semi-finished products are laid differently, and the taste finished products it turns out unstable, but it's not so bad.

And trouble often comes with downtime in the offseason. The masonry absorbs atmospheric moisture, the organic matter that has penetrated into it earlier begins to rot. It comes to the fact that from the brand new smokehouse built by the beginning of the autumn season, by the next summer it begins to carry rotten meat. What is the prestige...

In earthen cold smokehouses, this effect is not observed. Apparently, microscopic soil microfauna, nimble, nimble and ubiquitous, manages to clear the soil passages in the intervals between two production cycles. But for suburban recreational establishments, this is not well suited - the blanks simply do not have time to be smoked before the guests leave after the weekend

Therefore, in such cases, it is better to weld a smokehouse made of sheet iron with a thickness of 4 mm or more so that it does not burn out quickly. And for the sake of appearance and respect to veneer it decorative brick- it is cheaper than refractory and the work is easier. This design has another advantage: a solid metal structure can be transported to another place. Facing will have to be sacrificed, but it is incomparably cheaper than a solid smoke-culinary brick unit.

Semi-hot

The vast majority of home-made household smokehouses are of the semi-hot type. They produce a fairly high-quality and appetizing product, and making them on your own is elementary. Therefore, we will touch on some structures in more detail.

From nothing to nothing

For the simplest home smokehouse, you don’t need to do anything extra at all. All that is required is a gas stove with an extractor hood and a steel bowl or a wide tin can cut to a height of 5-6 cm, for example. from under the tomato paste. A bowl from a jar is better, because. its bottom is very thin, and the smoker immediately reacts to changes in heating. And the enameled bowl is the worst: it warms up more slowly, and spoils with smoldering wood chips forever.

The technological procedure is also elementary: smoked food is hung in the hood. Any vessel is substituted under the workpiece, fat will drip into it. A handful of smoke chips are placed in a bowl, the farthest, most low-power burner is turned on to the smallest fire, and a bowl is placed on it. They intensify the fire until the smoke goes out, and then slow it down so that there is no escaping smoke, and the whole light goes into the hood. Smoked until cooked, its degree is immediately visible.

The trick is that the smoke has time to cool enough and feel better until it reaches the hood. Fat dripping past the smoker immediately freezes, without having time to harm anywhere. The disadvantage is that you can’t accumulate much in such a device.

From an old household

Smokehouses from the refrigerator are popular, see fig. They are quite capacious, and it is not difficult to do this: they remove the compressor with pipelines, the freezer, peel off the inner plastic lining with thermal insulation. It remains a suitable shape and size of the steel case. You yourself only have to make a smoking chamber out of galvanization (item 3 in the figure), and a chimney at the top, item 4.

Chips in the smoke generator 2 at the site of the former vegetable compartment are heated with a household electric stove 1. Air enters it through openings from pipelines.

There are two drawbacks to such a smokehouse. The first is high power consumption. A tile with a pancake through a rather thick special steel heats up the wood chips badly, and its power is needed at least 1.5 kW. The fact is that the cases of household refrigerators are made of steel with poor thermal conductivity.

The second drawback is due to the same circumstance, it is the long inertia of the heating control. Light smoke does not go and does not go, an annoyed inexperienced owner brings the heat to the maximum. Suddenly, gray acrid smoke billowed out. The tile is pulled out by the cord, the chips are quickly raked out with a spatula, but the product has managed to get bitter.

For small bookmarks, an almost perfect smokehouse is obtained from an old round washing machine. The motor with the activator and the time relay is removed. The former tank serves as a smoking chamber. The hole into which the motor shaft passes is expanded to the diameter of the activator, smoke will go into it, and fat will drain into the drain.

If the top cover is made of metal, I regulate the smoke flow with it. The plastic one is completely removed, and the smoke is kept in the chamber with moistened burlap, as described above.

The smoke generator can be used either outside, or arranged in a motor niche, at least a hearth of two bricks. In the same niche, a miniature wood chip stove made of two cans will also fit. In order for it to give the correct smoking smoke, its combustion chamber is removed from the casing, filled, without stuffing tightly, with smoke chips, kindled from under the bottom with a torch, and only then inserted back into the casing. Smoke generation is regulated by fresh leaves as described above.

The smokehouse from the washing machine has two more pluses. The first is the wheels on which it is easy to roll. And let's remember the second when it comes to barbecues with a smokehouse.

Video: semi-hot smokehouse from a barrel

mobile mini

A mobile mini-smoker, which can be carried with you in the trunk, carried in a backpack or bag, is very useful on the road. Especially - to create exclusive tops of cold smoking. Here the first condition is not like the first, zero freshness of the product. Which can be small loose, and not only of animal origin, which will be discussed later.

A drawing of a smoking chamber, which can be hoisted over any suitable source of smoke, is shown in fig. On the grills, you can lay a mesh or, in cold smoking, a loose fabric. Have you ever tried cold smoked seeds or nuts? I'm not kidding. Digging a hearth with a chimney is a matter of half an hour or an hour, and bulk fines are smoked quickly. And at the same time, the size and volume of the box make it possible to accumulate up to 15-20 kg of medium-sized fish in a cold way over the weekend and the same amount of semi-hot meat or lard.

Barbecue smoker

Fire, as you know, is the enemy of barbecue, and its best friend is the very light smoke necessary for smoking. And any kebab man probably had a thought more than once: but in vain, after all, good smoke disappears!

To make sure that it does not go to waste is not at all difficult. The simplest way quite similar to that described above for a smokehouse from nothing, see fig. There is only one difference - the smoking chamber should be with a bottom and, highly desirable, with a drain for fat for the barbecue. Alien fat is also the enemy of barbecue. Especially if fish oil.

If in the pantry there is a tank from an old washer that has not yet been adapted for a shower, then this is an almost ready-made brazier-smokehouse. It remains to expand the hole for the activator shaft to the diameter of the brazier chimney, put the tank on the chimney - and the smokehouse is ready. There is no problem with fat, it will drain into the drain. Hanging for blanks - from any wires or rods, smoke adjustment - with burlap.

Note: The “meat” smoke rising from the brazier with barbecue will not spoil any product with any type of smoking. It will only add spice. Smokers of the old time kept it a secret that the best smoked fish or vegetables are obtained by smoking them over meat along the way.

Stationary

Here, for comparison, in Fig. a diagram of a stationary smokehouse combined with a barbecue is given. The highlight, and even then very relative, is only that the free space under the barbecue is used for the smokehouse. Thermal radiation from its hearth allows you not to worry about the uniformity of heating the bookmark. Any chamber can be placed in the smoking compartment, even the box described above. That, perhaps, is all.

How to smoke?

And now it's time for a few more, but very important, smoking secrets. In general, there are only two of them: the choice with the preparation of firewood and the preparation of semi-finished products for cold smoking. Under hot preparation is not needed, and for semi-hot salting and drying time is reduced by three to four times. If the product is consumed within a day after semi-hot smoking, then preparation is not required here either.

Firewood

firewood from coniferous tree absolutely not suitable for smoking. The product will turn out not only nasty in taste, but simply poisonous. Harvesting of suitable firewood (below) is carried out with minimal sap flow in the trees, but before freezing, i.e. in autumn during leaf fall or in summer, in the very heat and dryness, but this will go already the second grade. Harvesting smoking firewood during the spring riot of greenery is strictly prohibited. Wood chips should be firewood after at least a month of air drying in clear weather.

The queen of smoking firewood is cherry, her closest nobles are fruit trees from the rose order: apple, pear, plum, apricot. Also - dogwood and medlar. Trees for smoking chips are allowed to be old, fruit-bearing, but still strong and healthy. Cherries and others that exude gum are barked to a clean sapwood.

Note: store-bought wood chips are best. Trees are already unprofitable, but not yet decrepit, i.e. just the way you need it. And the thinning of the gardens is carried out according to the results of the harvest, just at the right time.

From forest trees light, low-ash and non-tar (non-smoking) will go: alder, aspen, poplar, linden. For hard or natural-flavored meat - oak, beech, walnut, elm. For fish from very muddy reservoirs - willow, willow, willow. But the taste and aroma of the product will be of the second category.

Within a radius of 30-50 m from the place of harvesting, there should not be any trees affected by tinder fungi. A perfectly healthy-looking tree may already be pierced by their hyphae, and its wood will give off harmful smoke. An indicator of the excellent smokeability of a tree is an anthill of red wood ants nearby, and for coastal trees - red earth ants. They are small, do not build heaps on the surface, are entirely bright red and bite unbearably painfully.

Special mention should be made of birch. In fact, according to the original rules, birch chips are used to smoke bear meat, elk, wading birds, i.e. especially rigid or with a natural smell products. It is necessary to debark birch logs very carefully: not only remove the birch bark to a clean sapwood, but also plan off its upper smooth layer. This is not as tiring as it might seem, because. little wood chips are required for smoking.

Training

Blanks for cold smoking are first salted in brine - a saturated solution of table salt. By weight, this is 37.5 g per liter of water, but practically the brine is “pounded”, adding salt until it stops dissolving.

Salting lasts from 4 hours for sprat and smelt to 3 (ham of a domestic pig) or even 5 (bear, wild boar, beef ham) days. After salting, the workpiece is soaked from an hour to a day, respectively. Homemade pork ham - 12 hours, medium-sized fish - 4-6 hours. The degree of soaking is controlled by touch: as soon as upper layer meat / fish will begin to be easily pressed through with a finger - ready, soaked.

Then the workpiece is blotted with waffle or paper towel and dried until completely dry and some stiffness of the top layer. Dried in diffused light at room temperature, in a wire cage, covered with gauze or fine window mesh without cracks and holes. One fly that has penetrated inside, having managed to lay its eggs, spoils the whole batch: at a temperature of cold smoking, maggots develop perfectly. This completes the preparation, you can smoke.

What else is being smoked?

Prunes and smoked cheese familiar to everyone. But cold-smoked cherries are a real delicacy. Especially if it is smoked on cherry wood. The eastern rulers once considered a delicacy worthy of no less than emirs and viziers, slices of bas-olda melon (oblong, in green stripes), dried and smoked. In Russia - smoked apples of white filling.

From vegetables, boiled young potatoes are suitable for cold smoking, and for hot and semi-hot - zucchini, eggplant, squash, green pea. Seeds and hazelnuts have already been mentioned. About smoking walnuts and pine nuts no information.

Finally

Finally, there is no need to draw any wise conclusions: everything is said in the text. But advice can be given: arrange a real old-fashioned earthy cold smokehouse in the country and start a highly profitable individual business with zero investment and minimal labor costs.

Smoking may well be followed by a grandmother or a schoolchild, while adults are engaged in a vegetable garden. And the taste and aroma, compared even with super-elite store products, are simply amazing. If you manage to get in touch with the manager or chef of an expensive restaurant and offer to taste it, then it is very possible that they will take you under their license, and then you are a completely wealthy person.