Cold-Smoking?
- Thread starter Miller
- Start date
Robert Oleksak
TVWBB Pro
I have about two weeks ago. I bought a half a hog and decided to try my hand at bacon. What I did was take a 1 pound coffee can and poked holes in the bottom of it and lit five or six briqs and just let them smolder and added a couple every hour with some small wood chips/chunks. It held the WSM at 85 to 100 degrees for about 7 hours but you really have to keep an eye on it. Good if you have yard work to do. Here's a pic of the bacon.
While I've not tried it myself, there are few posts about cold smoking here. There's a section about making a cold smoker conversion here: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/coldsmoker.html
David Lohrentz
TVWBB Pro
I've done it quite a bit, but it really isn't necessary for bacon. Hot smoking to 145-150 works just fine.
For bacon or jerky, what I think works better than cold smoking is to minion the start with just a few lit coals, and let the temp come up slowly and try to hold it around 150 for an hour or two or let it wander a little north of there.
But I have cured salmon and cold smoked it, and for that cold smoking works really well. My strategy is to a) keep the fire small, and B) put as much cold mass as is reasonable between my fire and item being smoked. I typically take advantage of our cold weather 5 months out of the year. This method will work best when ambient temps are around 40 or lower, and the cooker itself is the same or lower. First I stash a couple of fire bricks in my freezer. Anything else that is heavy and safe to heat would work fine as a substitute. I minion a start with just two or three lit coals on top of about 5 unlit coals and put the chunk of wood on top of the lit coals. I place the frozen fire bricks on the bottom rack and place a big bowl of ice water with mostly ice on the bricks. The item to be cold smoked goes on top. In summer when early morning temps are low 50s I can get an hour or maybe a little more. In the winter I can get a couple hours from this method, but may need to change the ice water at the half-way point. If you have a leaky connection as I have between the bowl and mid-section of the cooker, a foil gasket helps to slow it down.
For bacon or jerky, what I think works better than cold smoking is to minion the start with just a few lit coals, and let the temp come up slowly and try to hold it around 150 for an hour or two or let it wander a little north of there.
But I have cured salmon and cold smoked it, and for that cold smoking works really well. My strategy is to a) keep the fire small, and B) put as much cold mass as is reasonable between my fire and item being smoked. I typically take advantage of our cold weather 5 months out of the year. This method will work best when ambient temps are around 40 or lower, and the cooker itself is the same or lower. First I stash a couple of fire bricks in my freezer. Anything else that is heavy and safe to heat would work fine as a substitute. I minion a start with just two or three lit coals on top of about 5 unlit coals and put the chunk of wood on top of the lit coals. I place the frozen fire bricks on the bottom rack and place a big bowl of ice water with mostly ice on the bricks. The item to be cold smoked goes on top. In summer when early morning temps are low 50s I can get an hour or maybe a little more. In the winter I can get a couple hours from this method, but may need to change the ice water at the half-way point. If you have a leaky connection as I have between the bowl and mid-section of the cooker, a foil gasket helps to slow it down.
If you live in a cold enviroment you can easily cold smoke in the winter. I use an old soup can that I burned out real well to make sure there was no liner left inside the can. I light 3-4 briquettes and leave until all are completely ashed over. Add a little chunk of wood and you are good to go. I do this all the time with cheese.
Let us know how it works out.
Let us know how it works out.