Cold smoking poultry

Cold smoking poultry

Postby Rothermere » Tue Jun 18, 2013 11:43 am

There seems to be a bit of a dearth of publicly available information about how to cold smoke chicken, turkey and duck breasts etc. I don't know if that's because it's at the more 'dangerous' end of the smoking spectrum, or if it's a closely guarded commercial secret.

I've found a couple of different brines on this forum and other places (such as the Bradley forums) but no real consensus.

As I trust this forum most of all, I am going to follow a recipe fellow UK forum user Wohoki posted back in 2006.
For every litre of water, 265g of salt and 50g of sugar, plus spices to taste (cinnamon stick, cloves, peppercorns, lemon peel).

Where it differs from some of the US forum discussions I've seen is that they tend to favour including cure #1. I have a couple of questions:

-Is it considered standard to add prague powder?
-Should it be cure #1 or would cure #2 work
-At what proportions should it be included in the brine? At the same 0.25% - 0.30% used in salumi and bacon?

I have tried googling and searching on here but can't seem to reach a consensus. And before I set about poisoning myself and members of my family, I thought I'd ask the questions directly.

(More salmon going in the smoker this weekend, btw. I think I'm getting the hang of that)

Many thanks

James
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Re: Cold smoking poultry

Postby Wunderdave » Tue Jun 18, 2013 4:53 pm

Are you intending to cure it and cold smoke it to be eaten without any further preparation?

Cold smoking prior to cooking with other conventional methods should be fine, so long as it is actually "cold" and the meat doesn't spend too much time between 40 and 140F.
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Re: Cold smoking poultry

Postby crustyo44 » Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:13 pm

Hi James,
Smoked chicken needs Cure #1 to be on the safe side. I have smoked drum sticks and whole chickens and added the same amount of cure as when I smoke bacon. Better colour as well.
Inject brine in the breasts and thighs at 10%.
Don't poison your loved ones.
Good Luck,
Jan.
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Re: Cold smoking poultry

Postby Rothermere » Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:49 am

Cheers chaps,

Not intending to eat it sashimi style. That would test even my stomach I think. I was planning on brining skin-on breasts, cold-smoking for about 4 hours with a ProQ, refrigerating overnight and then roasting. For salads or sandwiches with brie and salad cream :)

I was intending on soaking the breasts in the brine rather than injecting, as I'm a bit of a noob.

Does preparing sausages for smoking also involve brining or do we add the cure to the mix directly? I had some lovely smoked chipolatas from Orford smokery, and they felt very 'solid' compared to usual chipolatas. I assumed they had been brined.

Also, any advice on what proportion of the brine should be cure 1?

Thank you for all your advice. Very helpful indeed.

James
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Location: Hertfordshire


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