At home, you can smoke any food, as well as fruits and vegetables. After smoking, products acquire a unique taste and aroma and a longer shelf life, since the smoke has not only the ability to preserve, but also kills bacteria and microorganisms. There are two smoking methods: cold smoking and hot smoking. Smoked products have different classifications: smoked, smoked-boiled and smoked-baked. Smoked - boiled: meat and poultry products, and smoked - baked vegetables and fruits, but this all depends on the personal desire of each. Someone likes to bake meat and poultry. Some housewives do this after long-term storage of smoked meats. It should also be emphasized that only cold smoked products can be cooked or baked.
Instructions
Step 1
Build a smokehouse. Homemade smokehouses are different, but mostly primitive. For hot smoking, the smoking chamber is tightly closed. It should be installed directly over a fire or furnace and supplied with thick and hot smoke.
Step 2
Prepare food. Gut the fish, rinse well several times in cold water. Cut the meat into pieces of the desired size and rinse in cold water. Pluck, gut and rinse the bird. Freshly slaughtered meat is usually not smoked, but kept in the cold for at least three days. After the products are prepared in the above way, you need to salt them.
There are two ways: dry pickling and pickling in brine. In the dry method, rub the prepared product thickly with salt and place it tightly in a clean container. When salting in brine, put the food in a barrel or tank, but not tightly, and fill it with pre-prepared and cooled brine. To do this, take water, the required amount so that the entire product is hidden, put salt 10 -12 percent of the weight of the original product, sugar for 5 kilograms 2 tablespoons and saltpeter 1 tablespoon.
For cold smoking, salt meat for a month, lard and fish for at least five days, dry salted foods, rinse from salt and dry on a cloth.
Step 3
Hot smoking method. Put wet alder sawdust on the bottom of the smokehouse, increase the temperature to 90-100 degrees and gradually decrease. The products are smoked quickly, in one, maximum two hours, they turn out to be quite juicy, but they have a short shelf life.
Step 4
Cold smoking is a longer and more laborious process. The bottom line is the long-term supply of smoke while maintaining low temperatures: for meat - no more than 20 degrees, for fish - 40 degrees.
Make a firebox. A trench should extend from the firebox at least three or five meters, at the end of the trench put a container in which the products are suspended, but not tightly so that everyone is covered with smoke.
Put firewood in the firebox, on top - wet alder sawdust and maintain light burning for 5 days.
Cold smoked meats retain their original taste and aroma for a long time and are stored in a cool place for 5-6 months.
