Hot or Cold, Wet or Dry?


 
Steve_A (Tatoosh)

Steve_A (Tatoosh)

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Well, I'm a newbie at smoking to be sure. And right now my favorite thing to smoke is bacon, followed closely by cured pork chops. And I did some of both today. Normally I give my bacon a few hours at least in the fridge to form a pellicle. Sometimes I am in a hurry and I cheat a bit by sitting on a table and pointing a fan at it, provided it is a cool day. But I have been reading some test results posted by Greg Blonder, who is occasionally quoted over at Amazing Ribs. Anyway, his testing found that wet surfaces grab more smoke than dry or oily surfaces. Not exactly a comparison between a pellicle and a wet belly, but it got me to thinking that maybe the pellicle is not as necessary provided the surface of the bacon is wet. So I decided to give it a try today. Not a scientific test, just a small belly done without waiting for a pellicle to form, smoked while the surface was still wet.

He tested to see if bringing food to room temperature or warmer enhanced smoke capture. Surprisingly, it is the opposite, or so his tests seem to show. Starting your food cold seems to promote smoke adherence. He tested with ceramic tiles, not bacon or chops. But it was pretty visual comparing white glazed tiles that were smoked for the same amount of time and temperature. The one started after refrigerating was much smokier. So you can guess what temperature my bacon and chops were. Cold, reefer cold, 37F according to my little refridgerator thermometer.

And I can't quite report the results yet. The bacon, two small pieces, are in the ice chest chilling down to be sliced. Tomorrow morning I'll know if I have some smoke on them or not. Of course, being utterly unscientific, these have been done with coffee, using a recipe I found in the archives of the New York Times. Made with salt, cure #1, honey, and a couple tablespoons of cold, strong, black coffee. One piece is au natural and the other is a pepper bacon.

I normally do my pepper bacon using a quick coating of honey before I add the pepper to add a sweet note and help glue the cracked pepper to the surface. This time I forwent the honey and just pressed the cracked pepper into the cured belly before smoking. It was nice and wet, per my opening paragraph or two. It stuck nicely and was on pretty snugly at the end of 4 hours of smoking. I used hickory chips, running a low 175F or so for the first couple of hours, then finally kicking the temperatures up to the 250F plus range as I raised the internal temperature of the bacon to 150F or so.

Time will tell if smoking wet and cold is better than smoking dry (-ish with a pellicle) and room temperature. My results will be personal and your mileage may vary! Here is where you can read Mr. Blonder's discussion and results --> Foggy Ideas About Smoke
 
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Update: We couldn't wait, so we cooked the pepper bacon before going to bed. Our standard approach to cooking bacon is to do it on a wire grid on a cookie sheet in the kitchen oven. That and poking it with a fork gives us nice flat, "restaurant" bacon. It came out great. Very peppery, not a pronounced coffee flavor, but it came out as a deeper, hard-to-identify flavor. Definitely worth doing even if you don't get a hit of "morning coffee". I like the not exactly subtle, but not exactly identifiable note the coffee seems to give. Tomorrow I'll cook the straight, not much pepper version and see how that tastes.

Now, to the smokiness. Not so much. Not bad, not completely gone. And part of that may be that I spent about 5 to 6 hours sitting next to my Weber as it smoked away. That can over saturate both the nose and the taste buds. So after a shower and few hours of sleep, I'll give it another taste test to see if it still seems to lack the smokiness my other bacon usually has. Still very good and I'm looking forward to eating it over the next week or two.
 
IMHO, Cold smoking truly dry-cured bacon is the best way to go, the flavor is better, more concentrated and the bacon keeps longer.
Mr. Blonder's findings don't apply to cold smoking bacon, at least they don't match my findings, he's smoking at a MUCH higher temperature.
I like to cold smoke at 75 degrees F or less, when the surface on the meat is bone-dry and when the temperature of the meat is as close to the temperature in the smoker as possible, because that will eleiminate condensation, that's important because if you're getting condensation on the meat, the meat is no longer dry and smoke will no longer stick as well.
I've tried smoking many different ways over the years, and the above is what produces the best bacon for me, YMMV.
Producing the best bacon takes lots of time and attention, that's not acceptable to everyone. It takes several weeks, in all.

There was a good vieo of Benton's dry curing and cold smoking on youtube, but it's been recently removed....boohoo
Anyway, the following video shows some bits and pieces of how it is done...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rbeIiFITfQ


~Martin
 
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Great video! I noticed them taking the skin off the ham after the smoke. I haven't had the chance to try the great variety of smoked bacon that is out there. And during the interview, when describing the ingredients in the ham, no talk of nitrite or nitrate at all. Salt, sugar, some pepper and that seemed to be all.

I know a number of people that swear by cold smoked bacon, room temperature meat, under 75F and some smoke it for a lo-o-o-ng time. Mr. Bonder's experiments may work better with other items, but I don't see how a bacon will smoke differently than ribs. Cook differently, sure. But if you want that deep smokey flavor, both are pork and should, theoretically, pick up the smoke somewhat similarly.

But I think you are right. My bacon, started cold and wet, per Mr. Bonder's findings, came out good, but not particularly smokey. Other bacon I've made was much smokier, you would get a shot of that smokiness anytime you cooked some. The kitchen would fill up with a definite odor of hickory smoke. We all have a journey, so I'm learning by both listening and trying things to see how they work, much as you did when you were starting out, I'm pretty sure. Next time I'll definitely let the cured belly cool its heels in the fridge overnight to get the pellicle.

I learned I really like the flavor the coffee added to the bacon. No, it doesn't scream Coffee on the tongue. It just has a nice deep flavor that really resonates for me. The cracked pepper was a bit too much this time. I'll have to rethink my approach to pepper bacon. The bacon has smokey notes to it. Just not really forward, in your face, smokiness. Given that it ran almost twice as long as my usual smoking time, I really am surprised. And learning from it. So technique will be adjusted, but the recipe (in terms of coffee) will be added to my "make this occasionally" list.

Next Sunday I have 4 variations coming up for the smoke:

All have Sea Salt and Cure #1 ... then other flavors were added to the cure ...

Version A: Honey 1/4 cup
Version B: Honey 1/4 cup & Jack Daniels 4-5 Tbsp
Version C: Molasses 1/4 cup & Brown Sugar 1/4 cup
Version D: Molasses 1/4 cup, Brown Sugar 1/4 cup, & Coffee (finely ground) 2 Tbsp

I'm curious if the coffee will add its flavor notes when being ground the way it did when brewed. Same coffee is being used for both the bacon I just made and the one in the cure. And not sure what to expect out of the Jack Daniels. That was sort of spur of the moment thing. Cracking the bottle means I have an excuse to make some Jack Daniels glaze for chops or ribs down the road.
 
Have a look at this, it explains, basically, why cold smoking works so well.
http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/meat-smoking/cold-smoking

What Blonder has posted applies to BBQ at much higher temperatures.
Something else to keep in mind, just because something darkens up easily doesn't mean that it translates to good flavor.

re: Nitrate and nitrite....Some of the traditional country ham and bacon producers don't use either.

~Martin
 
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I hear you about the darkening thing. I have been having problems with my honey glaze on bacon. I do the honey glaze to satisfy my wife's preference for a sweet note in the bacon. However, it darkens then burns often, particularly when pan cooking, but even when cooked in an oven. She also prefers a maple flavor, but maple syrup is way expensive here. I am considering injecting a maple flavored, slightly thinned honey mixture into the belly but sticking with a dry cure for the exterior. Just shooting the belly up in a stitch pattern to try and get that pronounced sweet note she wants. But I expect I'll still have the burning issues when it is cooked.

I could theoretically do cold smoked bacon here. We rarely see temps over 80F in the daytime and night time is usually in the mid 60'sF range. But I need to cobble something up to do it. I've tried once with the Weber, but we don't have briquettes that stay lit reliably by themselves. The lump does better, but by the time I can get a small pile going reliably, they raise the interior temperature out of the cold smoke range and into the warm smoke rang of 80F plus (usually in the 110F or better range).

For a real cold smoke over an extended period, I'd need to fabricate a metal smoking box, a connection tube, and a small fire box to create the smoke in. Sadly, not much room to do this in my apartment, just a small balcony that fits the Weber well enough but couldn't handle 2 or 3 units. In the future, I do hope to get something like this setup. A cabinet smoker that can be adapted to cold smoking with a small supplemental fire box. Then I can play around with the true cold smoked bacon.

However, I am in the "at risk group" in terms of health issues and so are many of the people I share my bacon with. To reassure them and the people that care about them, I always finish my bacon to 150F so they can enjoy it without any lingering health concerns.
 
We always just drizzled or brushed a little warm honey or maple syrup on the bacon after cooking to avoid the burning issue.
Not my preferred way to eat bacon, but some in the family like it that way.



~Martin
 
I can't really comment on bacon since I've only ever smoked it dry, but I've found that surface moisture when smoking cheese leads to an unattractive streaky finish. I wonder if the same might happen to meat.
 
Well, I'll certainly dry my bacon off and let it form a pellicle before I smoke from now on. It was worth trying to see what happened. I will reserve any further experiments in wetness for meats smoked/cooked at higher temperatures.
 
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