Hello all
Just wanted to say hello from sunny Londontown.
I am an American expat living and working in London, UK for the past 5 years. I love long walks on the beach, pretty sunsets and grilling meat!
I have recently become obsessed with smoking and am in the process of choosing a smoker to purchase. Obviously since I live in the city my space is limited so I am leaning towards a bullet smoker for the size and capability. The ProQ Excel 20 has caught my eye and I would welcome any suggestions from yourselves should you have any on this matter.
In the meanwhile I have procured a cold smoke generator, also from ProQ and have fashioned myself a smoke house out of cardboard. I prepared a side of trout in a salt/sugar/water brine, soaked it overnight and cured it for an additional several hours in the refrigerator prior to smoking. This also gave me the opportunity to put the final touches on my smokehouse.
So finally I finished the smokehouse and set it up in my backyard area. I fired up the cold smoke generator and loaded it up with the cheese selection (mozzarella, mature cheddar and edam), and hung the fish from a hook. I left the cheese for nearly 3 hours going on the advice of many people suggesting that cheese didn’t need too long otherwise there was a risk of over-smoking. The fish I left smoking overnight and refilled the smoke generator before coming into work today. In total the fish will have been smoking for between 15-18hours. Again, I welcome all suggestions, comments or tips on this as this is my first attempt at smoking (hot or cold) anything!
My experience with the cold smoke generator has been ok. At first it seemed like it was working great, I set it up and headed out to dinner. When I returned it had gone out and 3 hours had passed! I quickly fired it back up and determined that there wasn’t enough airflow in my cardboard smokehouse. So I cut 4 air vents into the smokehouse and it seemed to work much better. I smoked the cheese for another 1.5hrs and took it out, wrapped it up and put it in the fridge just before going to bed for the night. I let the fish smoke through the night and reloaded the generator prior to coming into work today and I plan on taking the fish out as soon as I make it home tonight after work.
For your amusement I will upload a picture of my homemade smokehouse and final products if I am not too embarrassed about the results.
Anyway, that’s me.
Just wanted to say hello from sunny Londontown.
I am an American expat living and working in London, UK for the past 5 years. I love long walks on the beach, pretty sunsets and grilling meat!
I have recently become obsessed with smoking and am in the process of choosing a smoker to purchase. Obviously since I live in the city my space is limited so I am leaning towards a bullet smoker for the size and capability. The ProQ Excel 20 has caught my eye and I would welcome any suggestions from yourselves should you have any on this matter.
In the meanwhile I have procured a cold smoke generator, also from ProQ and have fashioned myself a smoke house out of cardboard. I prepared a side of trout in a salt/sugar/water brine, soaked it overnight and cured it for an additional several hours in the refrigerator prior to smoking. This also gave me the opportunity to put the final touches on my smokehouse.
So finally I finished the smokehouse and set it up in my backyard area. I fired up the cold smoke generator and loaded it up with the cheese selection (mozzarella, mature cheddar and edam), and hung the fish from a hook. I left the cheese for nearly 3 hours going on the advice of many people suggesting that cheese didn’t need too long otherwise there was a risk of over-smoking. The fish I left smoking overnight and refilled the smoke generator before coming into work today. In total the fish will have been smoking for between 15-18hours. Again, I welcome all suggestions, comments or tips on this as this is my first attempt at smoking (hot or cold) anything!
My experience with the cold smoke generator has been ok. At first it seemed like it was working great, I set it up and headed out to dinner. When I returned it had gone out and 3 hours had passed! I quickly fired it back up and determined that there wasn’t enough airflow in my cardboard smokehouse. So I cut 4 air vents into the smokehouse and it seemed to work much better. I smoked the cheese for another 1.5hrs and took it out, wrapped it up and put it in the fridge just before going to bed for the night. I let the fish smoke through the night and reloaded the generator prior to coming into work today and I plan on taking the fish out as soon as I make it home tonight after work.
For your amusement I will upload a picture of my homemade smokehouse and final products if I am not too embarrassed about the results.
Anyway, that’s me.
