Food Artisan Blog

True cold smoking is not an easy task to accomplish at home nor can you just go out and buy a cold smoker intended for home use. Those of us who enjoy curing meats and making sausage all dream about the ability to smoke a salmon filet to make lox or make real homeade bacon that is cured, smoked and uncooked.

All of my attempts resulted in success of varying forms and the end product was smoked, but until now they were at best partially cooked during the process. My goal was to make kielbasa and bacon that was simply smoked and not cooked. When i first began sausage making i had done so to make kielbasa. This type of sausage is one of my favorites, but required smoking in some form. This led to my first attempt at cold smoking.

Using my grill i placed a packet of chips on the front burner, then putting a link of kielbasa away from the heat ran the grill as low as possible. The chips being directly on the heat kept them going without heating the rest up too much. With constant tending and lid lifting to bleed of heat i was able to smoke the links at an average of around 100 degrees. I say average because at points it was well above true cold smoking. The constant lid lifting, while bleeding off heat also released alot of smoke. A grill isn't exactly built for this and leaked alot of smoke even with the lid closed. I ended up with mostly cooked links that had a gentle smoke flavor as well as the knowlege that this was definately not a usable solution to cold smoke anything at all.

During my cold smoking trials i was also enhancing my skills at hot smoking. This led to my purchase of a brinkmann electric bullet smoker. Price wasn't the only reason i purchased this cheap smoker though. The idea with the bullet smoker was to make a cover to replace the stock one that would funnel the smoke out of the smoker and into a sealed cardboard box. I wound up building a wooden box that rested on top of the smoker and used a fan to push the smoke through a duct and into the cardboard box meat chamber.

This prototype, while technically acheiving the desired result had two major flaws. The first is the box trapped all the heat along with the smoke and not only got hotter than i liked but wound up pushing the heat into the meat chamber along with the smoke. The second was the fan that was intended to easily push the smoke out actually pressurized the smoker and forced most of the smoke out of cracks and holes in the device. This setup lasted twice, the heat was getting hard to control and kept ungluing the tape that was holding the cardboard box together and sealing it up. To be honest a cardboard box wasn't the best idea because regular use and storage was destroying it anyway.

After a bunch of partial successes and a total lack of ideas i took a hiatus from trying to create my cold smoker. I then turned my attention to hot smoking which was not only fun but successful every time. The regularity in which i was hot smoking meant I needed something that i had better control over temperatures with. I began researching electric smokers due to thier semi-set and forget use and purchased a masterbuilt electric smoker with digital temperature control. The masterbuilt was capable of consistently running at temps from 100F to around 300F. Of course the 100F degree was perfect for cold smoking and the digital thermostat meant it would stay there all day long.

Well it turns out that wood chips won't smolder at cold smoking temps...duh! I reached this conclusion very quickly and began using a blowtorch to start the chips smoldering. The masterbuilt was designed with a side load hole for the chips so the main smoker could remian closed while adding more chips. A half tube mechanism is loaded with chips, inserted into the hole and turned to drop the chips onto the heat element. I simply placed a pile of chips in the metal tube and applied fire until they were smoldering then dumped them into the smoker. This actually worked pretty well, but required constant attention to re-ignite the chips if they went out. Eventually i found that a larger pile of chips would hold enough heat to stay smoldering, but created too much smoke flavor. At this point i was also using recipes that cooked the kielbasa during the process so the excess heat wasn't as much of a problem any more. This new setup reinvigorated my desire to create a reliable cold smoker. Even though i was now warm smoking kielbasa i was still unable to smoke cheese or make traditional bacons.

So i kept dreaming and brainstorming and then one realization sparked my result. I realized that no matter what the final solution was i would need to have a cover on the chips to prevent flareups and promote smoldering. The it occured to me if there was a hole in this cover and a tube attached then i could funnel smoke directly into something...like a chip hole loader in the side of a masterbuilt smoker. Using an electric burner, a cast iron skillet, a cake pan and the duct from a previous setup i built a smoke generator. Then placed the open end of the duct into the chip loader hole and fired it up. Within minutes i was true cold smoking a small peice of bacon at ambient temps of 50F. The openness of the pan and burner allowed almost all of the heat to bleed off while still reliably smoldering the wood chips i was using. With a temp control knob on the burner i was also able to adjust the burner to the point just hot enough to smolder without flaring up.

This setup could actually be used with any type of meat chamber that has a hole for the smoke duct. I only turned on the smoker as an experiment to see what the effect of 100F was vs 50F. In the pictures below you can see how the final setup was laid out. The meat chamber should really be placed up above the smoke generator to create a better smoke flow. The dryer duct can also be extended in warmer weather to allow more length for smoke heat to bleed off.

Click here for pictures

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For some reason and for the past few months i have had a major craving for Egg Foo Yung. I have only been able to get it recently because we changed to the only chinese restaurant around that has it. Normally i consider these type of foods difficult to duplicate at home. The recipes use alot of special ingredients and utensils most don't usually have on hand.

In spite of that i decided to see what recipes were out there. I was surprised to find quite a few and almost all seemed quite simple for a chinese dish. Since we were already getting chinese and i have gotten egg foo yung so much i decided to forego getting it again and decided on some chow mein and kung pao instead. Since dinner was still a few hours away i just dropped the idea of making this dish myself. That all changed once the food was laid out before me.

The chow mein that i expected to have noodles mixed in was instead the perfect filling for egg foo yung. They sent a bag of crunchy noodles with it instead of on it. This revitalized my thoughts on making egg foo yung myself. So i saved the left over chow mein and went to sleep dreaming of homemade egg foo yung.

The next day i looked over the recipes online again and found one that was simple and appeared accurate. Now that lunch is over, i have to say it was spot on and wonderful. I made half the recipe because i didn't have enough eggs and thought it would be too much anyway. Using the smallest fry pan i had at 6 inches in the bottom i dumped the egg,cabbage,onion and beef mixture into the pan. I used the recipe halved to make one pancake rather than a few. It was more consistent with the restaurant i am used to which serves a thicker fritatta like version of egg foo yung. I almost had a mishap when flipping but it was small enough to get lucky and have it fall in the right place.

I'm glad i tried making egg foo yung myself. Once the sauce was added it tasted and looked just like every egg foo yung i have ever had. It was very easy to make and only took a few minutes to cook. Of course having the chow mein leftovers helped, but i imagine even with some julienne onion it would be good.

I finally have a minute to breath and do a writeup about the new website. The most obvious feature was the total layout and look & feel change. The old design was far too wide to be usable by the broader audience the site had attained and was a bit obnoxious and confusing to find things. The major goal of the new layout was to relocate navigation and bring all the wonderful features of the site to the forefront. I felt too much of the sites usefulness was hidden behind the login and registration, now everyone can see what they were missing.

The homepage was rebuilt to make getting into the sections more conveniant. Now many tools like glossaries are a single click away rather than 2, 3 or more clicks to find. Login, registration and user specific links have been placed in a high visibility location at the top of the site for much easier access. The homepage as well as section homepages have also had active forum posts added. Now getting into interesting and related discussions is extremely easy.

Find your way to a section homepage and you'll also see another major redesign. The most noticable is the addition of YouTube video. I hope all of you will appreciate not having to search youtube to find useful and applicable videos now. I have also added two new mini-sections for the best member rated link and recipe to each section as well as increasing the visibility of section related content.

Somethings you may not realize are the updates and enhancements to the backend of the entire site. The major change here was the introduction of a new web 2.0 technology called AJAX. The system can now perform actions and update information behind the scenes while keeping the page your reading from being refreshed and lost. The most visiable areas to make use of this are the bakers percentage tool and the section glossaries. For the glossaries it allowed us to introduce search capabilities for terms as well. The visual redesign allowed us to take the time to stabalize the sites systems to make things more reliable as well as making the site function better across more varied browsers and computers. I also took a large amount of time reworking the project management tool. The whole thing was streamlined and cleaned up and it's timeline sub tool was tested and adjusted to function better.

I'm sure all of you have noticed the advertisements placed on the site. While it's nice to have even a tiny revenue stream, the ads were placed in hopes of providing a useful resource. I make every attempt to keep the ads relevant and so far google seems to be keeping up on thier end in doing so. Placing ads on the site was not an overnight decision.

The entire project took much longer than i ever could have imagined. It's not easy taking on a task as large as a web application all on your own. It took so long in fact that i had to start putting new ideas and features into the next updates que. That means you can look forward to some new features as soon as i recover from programmers dimensia. Until then, have fun and don't be afraid to share with others on the site. As always any ideas or suggestions anyone has please feel free to contact me. Also, pleeeeeease let me know know if you experience any issues.

Thanks
Jenson

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