Home Smoked Salmon

Smoker in action

I did the first run of my cold smoker yesterday. I used a mixture of oak and silver birch logs for the fire and also chipped some in my garden shredder to use for the sawdust which I put in an old loaf tin above the fire. Once the logs had settled down to glowing embers the temperature in the smoke chamber was a fairly steady 25 C or so. I didn’t need to do much fiddling about to get the air (and smoke) flow through the system – the smoke chamber seemed to have enough natural ventilation.

The fire box

I decided to do a test run by making some lightly smoked salmon for cooking (as opposed to just curing it). I dry salted a couple of salmon fillets for 15 minutes and then rinsed them and dried them off with kitchen towel before smoking them for 3 hours. They didn’t change colour much but had definitely absorbed the smell of the smoke. Today I roasted them in the oven as you would a normal salmon fillet and the result was amazing. It was easily the tastiest smoked salmon I’ve had. The flavour of the smoke was really fresh and much more complex than shop bought smoked salmon. It really was like standing next to a bonfire! I think you could probably get away with just a couple of hours if you only wanted a hint of smokiness, but I think three hours will be a good starting point for doing white fish (haddock, pollack etc). Next time I’ll see how much I can get smoked in a session.The grill should fit a couple of sides of salmon or 8-10 smaller fillets, or a decent size belly of pork. I’d also like to try some more unusual things like garlic, cheese and chillies.

The smoke chamber

 

Inside smoke chamber

 

Smokin’

Sorry for the lack of posting recently – I’ve been busy starting at Uni. This has, however given me a nice long Christmas break so I finally got some time to build my cold smoker. I already have a chimnea which I can use for the firebox after a bit of adaptation, a BBQ rack to hold the items for smoking, and I recently bought a flexible flue liner (10 cm diameter) for about £10 in France. The only remaining piece was the actual smoke box.

I originally planned on acquiring and old whisky or cider barrel for the smoke box, mainly because I thought it would be cool, but on reflection I think it would be too big as it is more suited to doing large items like whole hams. Seeing as I’m realistically just going to be doing a few small pieces of fish, bacon and chillies I had a rethink. I decided to test my mediocre woodworking skills and build a box myself. I’ve attached some photos below showing you how I built it. It actually wasn’t too difficult and only only took me a day or so.

Assembled cold smoker

I used sawn treated timber which came in planks of 2.4 m x 10 cm x 1.9 cm and started by cutting three 40 cm lengths for each end. I joined these together by screwing on some battens (29 cm x 3.4 cm  x 1.8 cm) and fixed another batten across the two beams for the BBQ rack to rest on. I cut a 10 cm circle (sort of) into one of the end pieces using a jigsaw and then joined the two ends together with 60 cm lengths of wood screwed into the corner battens. A few 40 cm long strips were then nailed to the bottom to make the floor of the box and I made a separate lid with 60 cm lengths joined together with another couple of battens. I also used some larger pieces of wood (40 cm x 10 cm x 5 cm) to add two ‘feet’ to the bottom of the box. The whole box cost about £18 to make.

It all seems to fit together nicely, so now I just need to test it out to see how it draws the smoke through, where and how much it leaks and how hot the smoke box gets. Home-smoked salmon here I come!

End pieces	Chimnea	End piece showing rack shelf
Assembled cold smoker box	Box feet	Flue placement
	Lid of smoker box

Cheeky Cow

It feels very autumnal here in the UK which means it’s getting into stew season. Time to use up some of those onions, carrots and leeks from the garden. My favourite cut of meat for slow cooking is ox cheek because it has such a wonderful texture. It needs a long slow cook – about 2.5-3 hours at 140 C – which gives time for all the fat and collagen to soften and makes the meat melt in your mouth. The texture is similar to pulled pork only the strands of muscle fibre are much thicker and it obviously has a deeper, beefier flavour. The other good thing about cheek is that it is very cheap. My local butcher sells it for £2.50 per kg which is cheaper than shin or mince so it’s great if you’re on a budget. Here’s how I cooked it last night;

Brown the whole cheek in a casserole dish on the hob and then put aside. Add one large sliced onion, 3 or 4 sliced cloves of garlic, a couple of diced carrots and half a sliced leek and fry them until the onions are soft. Add 1/3 of a bottle of red wine and reduce down to remove most of the alcohol. Add the meat back in and add water to cover (probably about 1 litre). Then add a couple of bay leaves, a spoon of mustard, a teaspoon of cracked black peppercorns and a bouquet garni  - I used two varieties of thyme, rosemary, sage, hyssop and oregano and tied it up with a strand of garlic chive. Bring to the boil on the hob and then put in the oven at 140 C for 1.5 hours. The sauce will evaporate as it cooks but you want to keep enough there to cover the veg, so add a bit more water if required. I then added a bit more veg (the other half of the leek, a couple more carrots and some swede) and cooked for another hour so that you have some nice chunks of just cooked veg instead of it all turning to soup. Remove the meat and pull it apart into bite-sized chunks (it should easily fall apart at this point, if not then cook for a bit longer), reduce the sauce a bit if required and then add the meat back into the pan. Serve with either a big dollop of creamy mashed potato or some soda bread.

Camel Valley Bacchus – Wine review

Camel Valley; Bacchus Dry 2010; available from The Goods Shed, Canterbury

Appearance – Very light, pale yellow

Nose – Floral, Elderflower

Taste – Crisp, minerally, apple, elderflower and some good acidity. Like a light Sauvignon blanc.

Verdict – Nice light, floral wine ideal for an aperitif or with fish and seafood. Probably wouldn’t stand up to spicy Asian food like a strong NZ Sauvignon Blanc but would be a good accompaniment to more subtle flavours.

Here hare, here.

I finally got round to cooking the jointed brown hare that has been in the freezer for a few months after I bought it from Godmersham Game. I did a hare and summer vegetable stew that was loosely based on the jugged hare recipe in the “River Cottage Meat” book – which, incidentally, is the best food book of all time (imo). Once I’d defrosted the hare and got it out of the bag it was quite a bit bigger than I expected; there were a good six portions there, if not eight. I cut the saddle into two pieces (managed to use scissors for the backbone) and took the rear leg meat off the bone which was actually quite easy. It’s the first time I’ve cooked (or even tasted) hare and it turned out really well. Hare is a very lean meat and has a reputation for being a bit dry if not cooked properly, but this recipe gave beautifully tender meat with a fantastic taste in really delicious juice. I think the taste is somewhere between venison and pheasant leg meat – like a meaty bird (or birdy meat). One of the good things about hare is that they tend to be killed with a rifle rather than a shotgun so you don’t have to worry about chomping down on a piece of lead shot and cracking your tooth in half.

Hare jointed into six pieces

Stewing is the ideal, and traditional, way of cooking hare because you can give it a long slow cook with some added fat to make the meat tender and melt off the bone. Here’s what I did.

Fry up 150 g of chopped back bacon and add a chopped onion, half a sliced leek, a diced carrot, and a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic. Once browned add these to a large casserole dish. Rub the jointed hare in some seasoned flour and fry on all sides to brown off. Add the hare to the casserole dish. Throw in a handful of black peppercorns, pour over half a bottle of red wine and a decent slosh of brandy, add a bouquet garni (I used oregano, rosemary, purple sage, thyme and a bay leaf and tied them up with a garlic chive) and bring to the boil. Put the lid on and transfer to the oven and cook on a low heat (140 C) for 2.5 hours. I then added some large chunks of carrot, baby parsnip, tomato and beetroot and cooked for a further 45-60 mins.

Hare and summer vegetable stew

When it’s finished you should have a really rich meaty juice with a bit of acidity from the tomatoes to compliment the hare and the beetroot. And of course there’s half a bottle of wine to finish off too….

P.S. If you don’t know what the title is about then watch “Withnail and I”.