Lots of Questions About Cold Smoking

[The Knize]

Sorry is these questions are repeitious of a previous thread. I did run a few searches and did not find much, which surprises me.

I have been using an electric Masterbuilt dorm fridge style smoker for some timer, and have pretty much liked it, although it is not completely reliable. This is my second one, which I got after the heating element stopped working altogether, and I had replaced that hearing elment previously. In any event, I just got the MB "slow" smoker side attachment, because while the heating element seems to continute to heat the unit, it seems to have lost much of its smoke generating capability. Also, I have been wanting to try some cold smoking for some time.

First, does anyone else have this slow smoker attachment? Any thoughts/tips?

But more to the point, it is really safe to each cold smoked salmon? Particularly as to parasites. I am not too concerned about bacteria. I figure I can keep the temps down. In making gravalx in the past, however, I came across worms, and nothing about continuing the curing process made me want to eat that gravlax. From what I have read, frozen salmon is thought to be better than fresh because the freezing kills parasites, but the reference is keeping the fish at -10 degrees for a week. How the heck would I know what temp a piece of fish has been kept at?

The amount of time on smoke suggested for a piece of salmon seems to be all over the place. Often, though, like 12 hours, which seems like a lot. Then some say let the salmon rest in the fridge for a good while before eating. All of that sound about right?

I smoked some cheeses last night for about 3 hours because I did not seem much effect after 1.5 to two. However, the smoking really affected the taste. I have seem things that recommend sealing the cheese and letting it sit in the fridge for 8 weeks. Does all of this sound about right?

I smoked some almonds that had previously bee roasted after I dipped them in some melted butter and garlic. They were inedibly smoky, but the suggestion there, too, is to let the sit sealed up for a week or so.

I have lots of other questions, including about this particular unit, but this is probably enough for now! So far, I am not impressed with cold smoking. By the way, I loaded the unit with ice to keep the temp down.

Thanks everyone!

 

[simon1]

I'll tell you everything I know about cold smoking.





There...that's it.

Really though, the only thing I've cold smoked was cheese. Never tried fish and don't know anything about salmon. And never used an electric smoker. That sounds delicate.

For cheese I smoke when it's about freezing outside, and put 6 charcoal briquettes in the firebox with a couple of small pieces of wood then keep the smoker temp. below 90 degrees. I smoke that for about 4 hours or so. Then let the cheese sit in the fridge for a few days to a week or better.

That wasn't any help, was it?

 

[davent]

For freezer temperature and fridge temperature monitoring i have a Bluetooth unit with a sensor in each of the two sections. Readout/reader magnetically mounts to the outside of the fridge and the reader shows the current temperature as well as the maximum/minimum temperatures of each section since you last reset the reader. Push a button on the reader to reset.

This is the one i've been using for a few years now.
Refrigerator/Freezer Thermometer-Alarm - Lee Valley Tools

dave

 

[The Knize]

simon1, that may be informative. Four hours is useful. When you take the cheese off is it overwhelmingly smoked, as in creososted? Does it evolve after a week?

I pulled the salmon after about 18 hours of smoking. Tasted good to me and my wife thinks it is excellent.

 

[simon1]

simon1, that may be informative. Four hours is useful. When you take the cheese off is it overwhelmingly smoked, as in creososted? Does it evolve after a week?

I pulled the salmon after about 18 hours of smoking. Tasted good to me and my wife thinks it is excellent.

4 hours seems good to me. I only use about 2 small pieces of wood at a time on top of the charcoal until I need to add more. The longer it sits in the fridge the smokier it seems to get, which is a good thing to me.

 

[The Knize]

One downside of the MB slow smoker may be that it has only an off-on switch. There seems to be no way to adjust the amount of smoke produced. I may experiment with using chunks instead of the chips the instructions say are required. In the past I have used chunks in the smoker itself to good results--a low, steady, long-lasting stream of smoke. Folks on-line also seem to use pellets--which MB also says should not be used.

I doubt that my home freezer gets cold enough, but who knows. I had not been on that Lee Valley website for a long time. Very cool.

 

[stamasd]

Hehe I've been cold-smoking meats and fish since... well forever. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of smoking homemade sausage with my father and grandfather.
Here is my current setup. It does not use electricity except for running a small fan for the forced air. For that I use a 80mm computer case fan running from a 5V power adapter.
There are 2 separate containers, one is the smoke generator and the other one is the smoke chamber. They are connected by 10ft of 4" flexible aluminum AC duct from Home Depot. The reason for that is to allow the smoke to cool. Cold smoking means smoke at 42-45F or so, i.e. you cannot do it if ambient temperature is above that. The perfect season is right now.
The smoke generator is an old Weber grill or similar. Inside it I place an A-Maze-N pellet smoker. This is the best way I know of to generate just the right amount of smoke for a long time. It costs around $30 on Amazon and it's essentially indestructible. It's a rectangular tray made from perforated stainless sheet with some internal walls which create a S-shaped channel. You fill it with hardwood pellets, light it at one end and it will smolder and generate smoke for several hours. There are videos on youtube on how to properly use it. Hickory is what I use for pellets, but maple, applewood etc are alternatives.
I tape one end of the aluminum duct over the round opening on the cover of the Weber with aluminum tape. The other end is taped into a round opening cut in the side wall of the smoke chamber, near the bottom.
The smoke chamber can be a number of things. Even a large cardboard box will do. Currently I use a large metal pail also from HD (metal garbage can - of course this one was bought new, never used for garbage). I cut a hole in the side as above for the smoke duct. I also cut a hole in the lid to which I attached a 3-foot length of tin pipe, 4-inch diameter also from the AC aisle of HD. At the top of this chimney is the computer fan, set to blow outwards. This pulls the smoke from the smoke generator, through the duct, into the smoke chamber and then out. You can actually get away with a much smaller fan, it only meeds to create a small amount of draft. Inside the pail I installed some small shelves onto which I can rest the ends of wood dowels to which I suspend the meats to be smoked. For flat and fragile items Iike fish I remove the dowels and instead put in a stack of cookie cooling racks onto which the fish is laid.
For sausage and salami I use a regimen that takes 3 days and nights: put the meat in around 6pm, light the smoker up, start the fan, let it go all night (about 9-10h on a load of pellets). In the morning I take the meats out and put them back on the meat curing chamber I have built in the basement to rest. At 6pm I start smoking them again etc, total 3 nights in a row. For fish I use 2 smoking sessions of 6h each with a 12h rest in the fridge in between.

 

[stamasd]

I should add that I'm not experienced at smoking cheese. I only tried once to smoke a block of cheddar and it wasn't good. I left it in for too long and ended up with a block of cheese that was covered with a thick layer of tar, very bitter, and no penetration of the smoke inside. I let it rest for a couple of weeks but it didn't improve at all. If I were to do it again, I would slice it into sections no thicker that an inch (or perhaps half-inch) and smoke it in very, very thin smoke - a lot thinner than I use for meat - for short periods, maybe 30-60 min each with rest periods in between.

 

[The Knize]

Thanks for writing up all of that, stamasd.

I had not read about rest periods before.

Is the fish raw when it goes into smoke? If so, are there any concerns about parasites surviving the smoking process.

My cheese did not darken much at all. I am still letting it rest. We shall see.

I may have more later, after I digest what you have written.

 

[stamasd]

I forgot to add that I marinate the fish in the fridge for a few days before smoking. Using a mix of salt and brown sugar. The fish is quickly rinsed at the start, then patted dry. In a large pyrex dish I put on the bottom a 1/4 inch layer of the salt/sugar mix, the fish on top of that, covered with another layer of salt/sugar. Cover that with plastic foil and put in the fridge for a minimum of 2 days. The salt and sugar will draw liquid out of the fish and turn into a syrup. Turn fish upside down once a day. At the end pat the fish dry and put it back in the refrigerator for a few hours on a wire rack so that the surface dries better. This creates a film of dried salt/sugar at the surface that the smoke particles can stick to like velcro. ALso the hyperosmolar environment created in the fish by this treatment will kill all bacteria, and probably parasites as well.

 

[The Knize]

Thanks for that. Hyperosmolar meaning, essentially, dehydrated, I take it. The salmon I cured and then cold-smoked came up fairly dehydrated in appearance and texture. Really tasted good. My assumption is that standard curing and cold-smoking techniques take care of any parasites one way or the other. Although like I said, actually seeing parasites on a piece of salmon threw me off making gravlax!

 

[stamasd]

If you're really worried about parasites, stick the fish in the freezer for a couple of weeks before doing anything else with it. That will definitely take care of that problem. Though almost all fish available to buy these days are frozen at the site of production (either fishing boat or fish farm), shipped and then thawed before sale.

Yes, by hyperosmolar I mean "with a higher concentration of salt and other substances than it normally would be". Technical terms tend to slip into my casual writings - I'm a biochemist.

 

[simon1]

One downside of the MB slow smoker may be that it has only an off-on switch. There seems to be no way to adjust the amount of smoke produced. I may experiment with using chunks instead of the chips the instructions say are required. In the past I have used chunks in the smoker itself to good results--a low, steady, long-lasting stream of smoke. Folks on-line also seem to use pellets--which MB also says should not be used.

I doubt that my home freezer gets cold enough, but who knows. I had not been on that Lee Valley website for a long time. Very cool.

Did you put an oven thermometer or probe in the smoker to see what the smoking chamber temp. was? I try to keep my chamber at about 80-85 degrees. The cheese gets a bit soft but doesn't melt. Maybe your chamber temp. wasn't warm enough to soften the cheese and let it absorb the smoke, and maybe there was also too much smoke coming in. Cheese is delicate. Don't want to melt it though.

I never got any creosote on mine. Maybe your pellets were just smoldering and not burning well and the smoke wasn't good for cheese? I try to keep my chimney smoke the light blue color and not anywhere near black. Get the wood burning well. Slow coals but not smoldering. But then I have a regular offset smoker.

Fish and pellet smoking is something I have no experience with...zero, zilch, nada.

 

[The Knize]

<Did you put an oven thermometer or probe in the smoker to see what the smoking chamber temp. was? I try to keep my chamber at about 80-85 degrees. The cheese gets a bit soft but doesn't melt. Maybe your chamber temp. wasn't warm enough to soften the cheese and let it absorb the smoke,>

There's a thought. I had the MB loaded with ice and it is quite cold outside, so it might well have been pretty cold in there.

 

[The Knize]

If you're really worried about parasites, stick the fish in the freezer for a couple of weeks before doing anything else with it. That will definitely take care of that problem. Though almost all fish available to buy these days are frozen at the site of production (either fishing boat or fish farm), shipped and then thawed before sale.

Yes, by hyperosmolar I mean "with a higher concentration of salt and other substances than it normally would be". Technical terms tend to slip into my casual writings - I'm a biochemist.

I have seen online references to keeping the fish a 10 degrees for x number of days to kill parasites, and referfences to that being a reason why using frozen fish is an advantage. I just am not sure what commerical freezing freezes fish to and I do not know what my home freezer is. I suppose it is very easy to get a freezer thermometer for my freezer.

Hyperosmolar seems like a great and highly useful word to me! Googling it, it seemed to be used most frequently ibn reference to diabetes. I think the cure probably takes care of parasite issues, too. But I would love to see a USDA or similar reference to that effect.

Welcome to B&B, by the way. Your active participation is much appreciated!

 

[stamasd]

Welcome to B&B, by the way. Your active participation is much appreciated!

Thanks. This looks like a nice home. I think I'll put my sack down and rest here for a while.

 

[simon1]

Thanks. This looks like a nice home. I think I'll put my sack down and rest here for a while.

Just stay away from my pillow, it's mine.

Glad to see you here.

 

[The Knize]

Hmm, one of the videos on cold smoking salmon that I watched called for sodium nitrite (Prague powder or Instacure no. 1) as part of the "brine" for the cure to discourage bacterial growth. I certainly use that when making bacon and, as I recall, fresh sausage that I hot smoke, but I had not thought about it for salmon. One reason I use it for bacon is that it really is part of bacon's flavor to me. Generally I am less concerned about a long term cancer risk than I am about food poisoning. But I do not want my salmon to taste like bacon. Anyone have any experience with or thoughts on using sodium nitrite for cold smoked salmon?

I think I am going to bring an insta-read thermometer to Trader Joe's and see what temperature their freezers seem to be. For that matter, I assume I can figure out my own freezer temperature that way.

 

[stamasd]

I don't use nitrites or nitrates for fish, but I do use them for sausage/salami. I don't think that fish would be a good application for nitrates, but a small dose of nitrite may be useful. The reason being, the nitrite is the one of the two that is directly antibacterial but degrades quickly. The nitrate is not directly antibacterial but gets converted slowly into nitrite. The nitrate persists for several weeks, but the nitrite goes away in a matter of days to max 2 weeks at usual doses.

 

[The Knize]

Thanks. Are you saying that nitrite does not affect flavor long run?

To me one would use nitrates for some thing like salami that one intended to "age." Dry sausages in other words. I have never used them, but I have never made that kind of sausage either. Kind of nice to have a biochemist to ask about this stuff!