Gonna smoke some eel this year - New Member

[fullfatboy]

Good Afternoon - My name is Syd and I live in Washington Crossing, PA. I am a Food Scientist and grew up watching my dad and uncles smoke Whiting and other fish. Now the fishing is tough and the days of sacks of Whiting and Mackeral are long gone. However, I live on the Delaware and there seems to be an abundance of eels. So my plan is to build a smoker from scratch and then do some fishing at night! What would be helpful are any smokehouse plans and an idea of how to brine and smoke eel/fish in general. What wood to use? Temperatures? Time? 

I'm very handy and would like to build a nice house with a masonry bottom and wood top. These are fun projects for me and beats doing another bathroom refurbish. What types of wood are appropriate (cedar?) and who manufactures good thermometers to install? Where to find a metal door for the fire box? 

Most of all I'm curious about how the smoke and heat draws through the house. How do you keep the house at a certain temperature, etc? What vents do you install and where? I want to make sure I can control the thing and not ruin my hard caught catch. Do you wet the wood and if so, how? 

I'm sure the answers to all my questions are in the forum and I look forward to searching for them. Hopefully after trying out fish I can graduate to some other meats/cheeses, etc. 

 

[SmokinAl]

Welcome to the forum Syd!

Here is a great thread on a smokehouse build.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/88853/found-a-burner-for-smokehouse

And here are a bunch of other builds you can look at.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/newsearch?search=pops+smokehouse+build

Good luck with your project!

Al

 

[gary s]

  Good morning and welcome to the forum from a nice cloudy and warm day here in East Texas, and the best site on the web.               Lots of great people with tons of information on just about everything.

Use  the search and look through the builds  lots of info

        Gary