smokers cold smoker???

R

redeyes

just wondering if anybody has bought a cold smoker where and how did it work out for you ??? i have a nice pit but not really sure why i would need one of these ...just seems real cool to have one.. i just wanted some feed back on this ... thanks:)
 
I have never seen a smoker designated a cold smoker, but you can cold smoke things like fish and cheese with my Brinkman smoker. You just use very few briquettes (like 3-4) so there is only enough heat to make the wood smoke but not really cook the food.
 
Yeah, I don't know much about the cold smokers either, but I imagine you can do it with any smoker by just regulating the heat. But if you wanna get one to have one, more power to ya. I imagine if you got the patience cold smoking would be a good way to help cure a ham too.

Anyone here made salmon jerkey? I've had it but never attempted to make it. This might be a useful step in that process.
 
I had to build my big cold smoker, and its still a work in progress but functional. I do lots of sausage, jerky, and peppers, and am hoping to do some more fish if I get around to ice-fishing this season and if I can dig the smoker out from the snow. Most of the cold smokers you can buy are just basically insulated boxes with a heating element and a pan of sawdust, very easy to bulid

Here's my smokers before we had snow
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Sickmont said:
Dude, is that some sort of treehouse in the background?
Click to expand...
Ya, it was probably once home to the he-man woman hater's club :)

Here's a few pics of the snow
My COLD! smoker. I'm hoping to do some bacon real soon
3100941570_24721a4d50.jpg


My whitehouse
3100941566_1715a7eb50.jpg
 
There's differing definitions of 'cold smoke.' Generally speaking, most folks consider the storebought smokers with the electric heating element and the sawdust to be cold smokers- and they are. Another form of cold smoker is one like Potawie has- which looks pretty similar to fatalii's smoker-
http://www.fatalii.net/growing/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=55
You can 'smoke' on your pit, but you most likely won't be able to keep the temperature down enough for it to be an actual cold smoke. Down below 120 degrees or so is where you want it- that way your product can stay in long enough that the smoke truly permeates uniformly.
Up here we have COLD cold smokers for putting up fish. They vary in size, but generally they're wooden boxes that are about 4' x 4' x 8 or 10 feet tall. The smoke is either made in a small 2' diameter pot that you set on the ground inside of the hootch, or if you want a really really cold smoke, you make a firebox that is connected to the smokehouse by a run (6 feet or so is about good) of uninsulated ductwork. By the time the smoke makes it's way from the small firebox through the ductwork to the hootch it is cooled down to ambient temperature. Veggies of course aren't a problem as far as spoilage goes. As long as you properly brine meat or fish and properly seal and screen your hootch from blowflies, and you properly pressure cook afterwards, you don't have to worry about spoilage. When smoked in this fashion, meat and fish will have a very slight 'skin' that is dried that is maybe 1/16 inch thick with a uniformly smoked interior.

An excellent cold smoker design is contained in the book 'Putting up fish on the Kenai'- it also tells you how to properly smoke fish, of course! Using these methods, we've put up 40-50 salmon at a time.
http://www.amazon.com/Putting-Fish-...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229046391&sr=8-1

You simply have not lived until you have ate from a 15 pound King Salmon filet that has been in the smoker for ten days or so!
 
POTAWIE said:
Ya, it was probably once home to the he-man woman hater's club :)

Here's a few pics of the snow
My COLD! smoker. I'm hoping to do some bacon real soon
3100941570_24721a4d50.jpg


My whitehouse
3100941566_1715a7eb50.jpg
Click to expand...


what you pushin snow with??

I put up another greenhouse and it looks about the same with all the snow we got this past week.

I thought cold smoking was the same as cold bbq.. Cooking IN THE SNOW :party:
 
Actually my smoker is far different than Fatallii's since mine uses the same wood for fuel and for smoke. Fatalii's is more of a wood oven which heats up woodchips. If you're building a smoker I recommend the book "Meat smoking and smokehouse design" by Stanley, Adam, and Robert Marianski. It has a lot of cool design ideas.
BTW, I have a tractor now for snow removal :)
 
You can build one from an old refrigerator.
 
thehotpepper.com said:
You can build one from an old refrigerator.
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I have read that this can be a bad idea if there is alot of plastic in the fridge you choose.

I have seen it done but I still prefer building or buying a real unit .
 
shayneyasinski said:
I have read that this can be a bad idea if there is alot of plastic in the fridge you choose.

I have seen it done but I still prefer building or buying a real unit .
Click to expand...

You strip it down to metal and remove all parts and if it's a freezer on top, you flip it over so the fire box is on the bottom. There's plans available the net.
 
Often used are the old type fridges or commercial ones with little plastic. I have a huge Coke fridge that I'm thinking of using in the future as a smoker but I'll probably have to replace the glass door (and the seal) with steel, and still try to make it as airtight as possible
 
What about one of those old Norge or Kelvinator's from the 40's and 50's? As much as i'd really hate to see a working one chopped up(and if you've got one don't chopit send it to me....i'll restore it), there's still plenty of dead ones in the scrap yards. They have almost no plastic on the inside of them.
 
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