- Oct 23, 2007
- 206
- 10
A few photos from my "smoking" week-end.
I had a cured Corn Beef in the freezer, so I thawed it during the week. My wife got some Pork Loins on sale, so on Monday I did a Morton's Cure to one of them for a couple of pieces of Canadian Bacon.
Yesterday, Sat. I loaded up my new Smoke Hollow smoker cabinet for some slow smoke over an electric hot plate.
The little hot plate was only able to get the cabinet temp up to about 160F., and that was after all day. Ambient temp varied from about 50F to the mid 70'sF. But that was enough to fill the cabinet with a nice low temp. Hickory smoke. I wrapped soaked chips in foil and poked some holes in it. They produced a nice long smoke in that little cast iron tray on the hot plate.
I finished the Bacon and Pastrami roasts off in my electric Roaster Oven (not shown) to about mid-170'sF. With a bit of water in the roaster. Foil wrapped for the cool down, and into the refrig over night.
Both turned out exceptional, and this is the my first Canadian Bacon and Pastrami attempts! Actually thanks to a lot of reading I've been doing here on the Forum. Thanks so much!
So, while that slow and low smoking was going on, I prepared about 15 lbs. of Summer Sausage using a Cabela's summer sausage spice kit I've had around for awhile. Using a 11 lb beef brisket, and a 4 lb. pork Loin things worked out really close to using 1/2 of the 30lb. spice kit.
I used a lot of the same sausage making technique seen here in my web site. www.homesausagemaker.blogspot.com The main difference was that I did an initial grind, with a mid-size plate, followed by a small plate grind to stuff the Red SS casings. This was my first experience stuffing these things (usually fresh sausage in pork casings), and if you think things went without incident, you just go right ahead, but they didn't. But in the end I "got 'er done" as Larry sez!
The most comical thing was that I found one of my pretty summer sauasge casings about 1/3 full of air instead of meat when I was putting it in the smoker this morning. How that came about, I'm not too sure, but things happen, so it was just a shorter log.
My other big first time mistake was that I planned to hang these guys from hooks in the smoke cabinet. Well when I got ready to load the smoker up this morning, it was obvious that they are much too long to hang. Luckily, they fit on the racks. So, note to self. Split 'em up shorter next batch.
Again, smoked most of the day at the low temps in the cabinet, and finished off to around 180F in the Roaster Oven. The SS is cooling now, and will refrigerate overnight before taste testing tomorrow.
I made one small modification to the Smoke Hollow to use the hot plate, making a hole for the electrical cord in the bottom of the cabinet. Here are a couple of photos detailing the mod.
The final tip, in this low temp environment has to do with the water in the tray. My wife drinks a lot of hot tea, so we always have a teapot ready to go. So I filled the water tray with boiling water to maintain temps in the cabinet.
I hope this report is of interest, and am looking forward to getting many more tips and other info from the forum.
Smoke On!
-=- Jerry -=-
.
I had a cured Corn Beef in the freezer, so I thawed it during the week. My wife got some Pork Loins on sale, so on Monday I did a Morton's Cure to one of them for a couple of pieces of Canadian Bacon.
Yesterday, Sat. I loaded up my new Smoke Hollow smoker cabinet for some slow smoke over an electric hot plate.
The little hot plate was only able to get the cabinet temp up to about 160F., and that was after all day. Ambient temp varied from about 50F to the mid 70'sF. But that was enough to fill the cabinet with a nice low temp. Hickory smoke. I wrapped soaked chips in foil and poked some holes in it. They produced a nice long smoke in that little cast iron tray on the hot plate.
I finished the Bacon and Pastrami roasts off in my electric Roaster Oven (not shown) to about mid-170'sF. With a bit of water in the roaster. Foil wrapped for the cool down, and into the refrig over night.
Both turned out exceptional, and this is the my first Canadian Bacon and Pastrami attempts! Actually thanks to a lot of reading I've been doing here on the Forum. Thanks so much!
So, while that slow and low smoking was going on, I prepared about 15 lbs. of Summer Sausage using a Cabela's summer sausage spice kit I've had around for awhile. Using a 11 lb beef brisket, and a 4 lb. pork Loin things worked out really close to using 1/2 of the 30lb. spice kit.
I used a lot of the same sausage making technique seen here in my web site. www.homesausagemaker.blogspot.com The main difference was that I did an initial grind, with a mid-size plate, followed by a small plate grind to stuff the Red SS casings. This was my first experience stuffing these things (usually fresh sausage in pork casings), and if you think things went without incident, you just go right ahead, but they didn't. But in the end I "got 'er done" as Larry sez!
My other big first time mistake was that I planned to hang these guys from hooks in the smoke cabinet. Well when I got ready to load the smoker up this morning, it was obvious that they are much too long to hang. Luckily, they fit on the racks. So, note to self. Split 'em up shorter next batch.
Again, smoked most of the day at the low temps in the cabinet, and finished off to around 180F in the Roaster Oven. The SS is cooling now, and will refrigerate overnight before taste testing tomorrow.
I made one small modification to the Smoke Hollow to use the hot plate, making a hole for the electrical cord in the bottom of the cabinet. Here are a couple of photos detailing the mod.
The final tip, in this low temp environment has to do with the water in the tray. My wife drinks a lot of hot tea, so we always have a teapot ready to go. So I filled the water tray with boiling water to maintain temps in the cabinet.
I hope this report is of interest, and am looking forward to getting many more tips and other info from the forum.
Smoke On!
-=- Jerry -=-
.
