What could be better than a pleasant vacation in their own country, when in an open area divorced home and you enjoy communing with nature in the mind of family and friends. For a complete happiness remains only to try a dish of smoked fish or meat, cooked with his own hands. To diversify your table dishes with an unforgettable taste and exquisite aroma, it is only necessary to make a smoker to give.
The contents
Many people know that there are two ways of cooking meats: cold and hot.
Products podavame cold smoked to retain its texture and density. The technology is quite long, but to rush things not worth it, because not until the end of cooked fish or meat can cause poisoning.
In hot smoked products are prepared at the expense coming from the coals to heat up, soaking the pleasant aroma of smoke and acquiring a more intense taste.
The cold method involves Smoking products for several days at 30°. Products are simply hung up to smoke and the smoldering fire kept in for 5-7 days
Method involves hot Smoking of fish or meat for several hours at a temperature of from 90° to 150°. The lower the temperature in the installation – the longer it is smoked the product
The principle of operation of the smokehouse
The main principle of Smoking is that at the optimum heating wood chips, not ignited, gradually smoldering, highlighting the large amount of smoke.
Basic arrangement of the smokehouse to maintain the temperature, creating the conditions under which wood branches and sawdust not burn and char, and the dish turns out tasty and healthy
The best method of Smoking in the absence of special thermometers in the home can only be determined empirically.
The cap should fit snugly to the body of the Smoking chamber, otherwise instead of Smoking you can get burning. Because if reusable metal tends to buckle, to ensure a perfect seal, the cover can press down the usual brick.
The design of the smokehouse is smoked.
During the construction of the device for cold-smoked pit hearth feature in the side, connecting it with the smoke chamber with special steel
During the construction of the device for smoked hearth with coals come directly under the Smoking chamber
The option of the smoke house #1 — design for hot Smoking
Designs smokehouses that you can do with your hands, a lot. It all depends on the available time, necessary for the manufacture of materials and the skills master.
The easiest option smokehouse is a structure made of two hundred litre drums.
On the bottom of the tank is filled with wood shavings. Slightly above the middle have reinforcement bars, the thickness of the rods in which 8-10 mm
The upper part of the barrel covered with burlap cloth, which prevents the exit of smoke. The design itself is closed with a wooden shield. A barrel set on columns, brick, and throw it under the fire.
The same principle of arrangement can be used, making a smoker from a metal bucket. For the arrangement of the lattice, we used willow twigs, which formed a ring and braided wire so as to get the coarse grid.
It is also important for the proper selection of sawdust. In any case do not take pine sawdust, otherwise you are guaranteed failure option. Not good and when cooking on aspen sawdust.
For Smoking it is best to use chips and chopped branches left over from the autumn pruning of fruit trees: cherry, sea-buckthorn, Apple, apricot
A tasty dish can be obtained by applying twigs of birch, cherry and dry alder. But they must first be cleaned of bark, as that adds bitterness.
The option of smokehouse #2 — design for cold-smoked
To provide a variety of food, you can make a smoker yourself.
The choice of installation location
On the one hand, the place must be convenient to have where to lay out the food and sit down, waiting for the end of the process. On the other — flammable design is better positioned away from green spaces and buildings, because this blaze can cause irreparable damage.
When selecting a location for installation of the smoke house it is important to consider not only the convenience for those engaged in preparing food, but also the safety of the design
You also need to have enough space to install an underground flue length is 3 meters, the height of which averages 25-27 cm and width of 30-50 cm.
Procurement of materials
For camera smokehouse perfect metal barrel or iron box. To work better use of capacity, the area of which does not exceed one meter and a height of five feet. It can be done, roskrow and bending a metal sheet, and then cook it from a box without bottom and roof.
When building a smokehouse it is better to use natural materials that when heated it does not emit any harmful substances
The arrangement of the chimney
The upper wall of the channel, you can issue all the same brick or cover with a sheet of thick metal. From the top of the chimney is placed a valve, which will block out the heat and smoke. It is better to cut of a piece of sheet metal, having a thickness of 4 mm.
Channel build of the chimney above the level of the smokehouse. The walls of the chimney lay bricks, installing them the edge and bonding clay solution
Connect the chimney with the smoke chamber so that the entry was equal to 20 cm, providing uniform distribution and timely removal of the smog outside. The joints of the walls of the Smoking chamber and chimney sealing clay solution.
To install the Smoking chamber
For the arrangement of the furnace tearing a hole in the ground to a depth of 40 cm and a diameter of 70 cm, providing sufficient space for air intake.
The smoke chamber spread out bricks using sand and clay mortar, or use for this purpose a metal box
As the fire-heated sawdust we kindle directly on the ground, the bottom of the box completely removed. Himself Smoking compartment constructed of lattice, made of iron rods. Great addition of the structure are the metal hooks that are convenient to hang the carcass of the fish and cuts of meat.
In the process of Smoking meat and fish starts to release fat. So where it to drain under the grate is placed a shallow tray, leaving gaps between the walls of the box and the edges of the pan for the passage of flue gases.
Stretched over a furnace with wet burlap will be free to skip the smoke, but to protect the products from contamination with ash and foreign material.
To be able to control the process, the wall structures fixed mechanical thermometer.
The first test of the device
Inside the Smoking compartment, lay the fish or pieces of meat so that they do not touch.
To the Department for fall asleep sawdust, comminuted wood of any fruit tree and flooded the furnace. Close the valve, wait until the Smoking chamber has been warmed and filled with smoke. The preparatory phase is the fourth part of the total cooking time and lasts 10 to 15 minutes.
Not necessarily be limited to Smoking only one fish. In the course can go to chicken, stuffed with garlic, pork neck and bacon
When the temperature rises to the required level, the outlet is opened. To determine the temperature in the smoker, using a mechanical thermometer, or by way of water. For this it is necessary to drip water on the cover and watch: if it’s not Sizzling by evaporation, the Smoking process takes place correctly. If you need to lower the temperature enough to push the coals.
It remains only to wait until the product is completely prokatitsya, becoming hot to the touch and acquiring a Golden hue.
The first few times, the readiness of the product you can check directly in the cooking process, for a fraction of a second lid and with the same speed returning it back, some in violation of the production technology. With experience the need for it will disappear and you will be much better to navigate, creating culinary masterpieces in the fresh air.
