Hi all,
I'm trying to gather information regarding attempts to smoke at temperature below the food safety danger zone - Between freezing and 4C / 39F, let's call it undersmoking?
I built a setup similar to what dcarch posted, which is basically a thermocontrolled fridge with a recirculating fan and a venturi smoker. The smoke is cooled through a long 1/2 inch copper pipe.
Question I'd like to answer for are:
1- To which extent does one needs to prep meat before this type of cold smoking? As I can understand online, brining for cold smoke seems to be there mostly to help with food safety but has been adapted to bring nice flavor, am I missing much there? How does the fat content, tonicity and the moisture of the surface affect smoke penetration.
2- What effect does cooling down smoke has on it flavor/intensity profile? What I've experienced is a much lower flavor transfer at lower temperature. I am still not sure if this pertains to temperature and/or surface prepping. Water density and viscosity peaks at low temperature, which might be lead to lower equilibration rate. Usually I get nice flavors after 3 hours but nothing really overwhelming. Could we be condensing off some flavor with the creosotes?
3- Would there be a difference between the flavor profile of a long infusion time - low temperature vs a short infusion time - higher temperature?
4- Just out of curiosity, I have no visible smoke coming out off my smoker, might be due to the recirculating fan but I wonder if anybody saw that. When I open the fridge, it is filled with TBS, and I can see smoke coming in through the glass door.
Thanks all for your input, I'm very exited about that project!
I'm trying to gather information regarding attempts to smoke at temperature below the food safety danger zone - Between freezing and 4C / 39F, let's call it undersmoking?
I built a setup similar to what dcarch posted, which is basically a thermocontrolled fridge with a recirculating fan and a venturi smoker. The smoke is cooled through a long 1/2 inch copper pipe.
Question I'd like to answer for are:
1- To which extent does one needs to prep meat before this type of cold smoking? As I can understand online, brining for cold smoke seems to be there mostly to help with food safety but has been adapted to bring nice flavor, am I missing much there? How does the fat content, tonicity and the moisture of the surface affect smoke penetration.
2- What effect does cooling down smoke has on it flavor/intensity profile? What I've experienced is a much lower flavor transfer at lower temperature. I am still not sure if this pertains to temperature and/or surface prepping. Water density and viscosity peaks at low temperature, which might be lead to lower equilibration rate. Usually I get nice flavors after 3 hours but nothing really overwhelming. Could we be condensing off some flavor with the creosotes?
3- Would there be a difference between the flavor profile of a long infusion time - low temperature vs a short infusion time - higher temperature?
4- Just out of curiosity, I have no visible smoke coming out off my smoker, might be due to the recirculating fan but I wonder if anybody saw that. When I open the fridge, it is filled with TBS, and I can see smoke coming in through the glass door.
Thanks all for your input, I'm very exited about that project!
