Hot smoking guide

[Malc]

I am not an expert but we have been smoking fish, fowl and vegetables for around 20 years so I hope that I can cover the basics. Our smoker was blagged by my wife when we were buying our new kitchen units and the smoker was part of a display kitchen, it's a Camerons smoker Quick search  but you could make your own with 2x roasting tins and a cake cooling rack, the heavier the better as I would expect cheaper tins to buckle. If you have a deep enough single tin you could try sealing the top with foil.

That's my set up you can easily get 2-4 mackerel fillets in it or 2 chicken breasts.

Meat and fish need to be salted before smoking as it really does enhance the flavour, brine or dry salt is used, I prefer dry as it is easier to see it working and you don't need to weigh the ingredients or wait for brine to cool, but brine is great to flavour a chicken for Sunday lunch. 

Coarse or fine salt can be used and I prefer any salt that doesn't have anti caking agents or anything else, just pure salt. You can use sugar as well as salt and I sometimes use it when doing hot smoked mackerel for a salad rather than paté, 50/50 seems to work well enough. You can also try adding other flavours (spices, chilli garlic etc) but you need to be bold as the smoke may mask subtle flavours. 

How much salt? This is the magic bit...just bung it on! Not 3" thick but a bit like a doughnut, a good covering, if you are using sugar, demerara is good, use a spoonful of each mixed together and coat the meat/fish. We have smoked sweet peppers and chilli which worked fine, no need for salt, just wash and split into two. Length of time is indeterminate, mackerel takes about 15-30 minutes and what I like to see is fluid on the plate, below is just after salting and you can see it is just dry. 

Next is about half done and the salt looks wetter, but as I said I like to see fluid on the plate that the salt has drawn out. 

After that wash off the remaining salt and dry well on kitchen paper, if you can leave it on the rack to dry further before smoking. 

Timings? How long is a piece of string?

I put it onto the smallest gas ring at 1/2 heat for about a minute or so but I wait until the top of the smoker is getting a little too hot to touch, then I turn down to lowest setting. Once I think it is half cooked I turn up to 3/4 for a minute and then turn off and leave (don't open it up) for 15 minutes or so to maximise the smokiness. Timings are not set in stone unless you have the same smoker as me, however I find that around 10 minutes cooking  for mackerel or similar size fish, 20 minutes for chicken and 30 for peppers. Leaving in the smoker gives more smoky flavour but that's just personal preference, you could take it straight out and scoff it. However always check that the food is fully cooked first, meat thermometers are good but most people can tell if you cut through the thickest part. 

Wood. I have been processing my own wood for many years and initially I ran my saw with vegetable oil instead of chain oil for a while and then cut some oak and cherry limbs and kept the chips. They were good but I also use hand saw sawdust as well. A level tablespoon dampened works well enough for fish and heaped for chicken and veg. 

You will mess up on occasions, but a couple of leather hard and blackened mackerel fillets isn't the worst thing to happen to you (we forgot to set the timer!) but over cooking is preferable to uner cooking. If it's too salty this time just use less salt next time or reduce the salting time. It isn't rocket science but it is fun and the results are tasty!

If I've missed anything or you aren't sure what I meant just ask. 

[Malc]

Just checked in the River Cottage Cook Book by Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall, there's a section on hot and cold smoking in it.

[Odyssey]

Great post!!

[JDP]

I've used a few different smokers including the large version of the Cameron's with reasonable success but now use a Kamado bbq. The advantage with the bigger Kamado is I can use large chunks of wood, rather than the very expensive fine wood chips and also it doesn't create steam.  I did find that I sometimes got a more sweaty steamed fish or meat using those metal styles in comparison. Making sure moisture doesn't drip onto the saw dust will help. Some people dampen the wood chunks or chips but again makes for sweaty fish which allows the fish to dry out to much. 

Have you experimented much with different wood ? After trying all these bellow I now pretty much use cherry on everything, which I buy in 10kg bags for the equivalent of about 3 quid. Chunks are about the same size of the charcoal I use.

For all the fish species, I use a dry mix of 2 parts brown sugar to 1 salt completely covered and allowed to sit in the fridge for 2-3hrs. I then rinse under the tap, pat dry with paper towing then leave on a drying rack until the surface of the fish turns sticky. If it doesn't form a tacky surface its likely to dry when smoking rather than remain moist inside with a golden surface. When its tacky its a good time to crack some fresh pepper over it before smoking. 

Once the charcoal (3 05 4 chunks ) has completely turned white, I place a chunk of cherry wood on top of the charcoal and shut the bbq down to a very slow burn at around 50-100f for 30-40 mins. Once cooled I will vac pack some which will last a few months in the fridge. 

With meats such as pork or even venison which are the most common we smoke, I use around 8 chunks of charcoal, 2 chunks of cherry and one of hickory and leave for an 8-9hr slow cook at 100f. This is good for tender pull apart meat. There are some really good video tutorials on Kamado cooking which could be applied to the Cameron smoker to a certain point.

[Malc]

8 hours ago, JDP said:

Have you experimented much with different wood ?

No, I cut the cherry and oak and had 2x coal sacks full unfortunately I had to get rid of most of it when moving house. I found that the dry chips would catch fire too easily and you would have too much heat in the smoker, the chips would be just dust inside but damp chips and dust smouldered nicely and no appreciable difference in the food. 

[Malc]

Don't think I would like hot smoked cheese?

[Andy135]

18 hours ago, Malc said:

Don't think I would like hot smoked cheese?

Smoked cheese is lovely though. But probably cold smoked rather than hot smoked goo.