Making smoked foods - Cold smoke generator

You can preserve a stack of stuff by smoking it, but I don't know how to make cold smoke. Or at least I didn't.

But this will work.

Sometimes I like to do stuff that's already been done, but without seeing how other people do it.

This is one of those times.

I used to make hot smoked chicken wings in a BBQ kettle or whatever you call such a thing in your part of the world. It's a BBQ with a large domed lid. It's like a grill with a big lid. Whatever...

I would get some heat beads (artificial coal like BBQ fuel that are about the size of a golf ball) and set 3 next to each other with a third on top. This arrangement would allow a heat of only 50 or 60 degrees c but would stay alight.

I'd soak some wood chips in water for a while and then wrap them in foil so they would be starved of air and wouldnt burn. Then Id put the foil package against the heat beads, and would be rewarded with a stack of smoke to impart all the yummyness that smoke does.

But I want to be able to make some cold smoke. I'm not sure why, but I've heard of it.

Rather than just looking up how to do it, I thought I'd invent something.

The result is this...

Picture a glass jar with a plastic lid. (I pictured a peanut butter jar)

Drill two holes in the lid and invert the device from it's native, and more normal peanut butter aspect. (turn it upside down)

Make a foil bowl and hug it into a heatproof tube set through one of the holes. It wont matter if it doesn't seal very well. (I think)

No, I';m sure. It wont matter if it doesnt seal very well.

Now add an air line from your aquaponic system's, or aquarium's air pump into the other hole in the lid.

Fill the foil bowl with wood chips, and light them so there is at least a small bit glowing, then screw on the lid, and start the air pump.

Add a plastic tube to the "cold smoke out" tube, and run that to a container with fish or whatever laid out.

This will.... should.... give an adjustable flow of cold smoke that will keep going for ages, and allow total control of your cold smoke preserved fish or whatever.

The air will come in and build (slight) pressure in the jar. The only way out, will be through the glowing wood chips.

It will work.

I'm going to try to make smoked sea salt. That way I might be able to add smoke flavour at will to whatever I want.




120 things in 20 years lovingly includes things that may well have already been done.