Smoked butter

[Heather]

Not sure which forum I read about someone cold-smoking butter, but last night I ran the Bradley for a cold smoke, filled the smoker up with haddock, salmon, cheese, garlic and coarse salt, and added a pack of butter as an experiment.

Obviously smoking temperatures are a lot more important when trying to smoke butter, all I did was open out the paper wrapper and leave the butter on the wrapper. We did about an 8-hour smoke using mesquite, just had a taste test on a piece of toast. YES! That works very well indeed. I would imagine the butter would be very good on baked potatoes, steamed veggies, fish or other meats.

[aris]

So it didn't melt?

[welsh wizard]

Hi Aris, no it would not melt on a cold smoke, the box only fills with smoke not heat. I am smoking some salmon over easter and will give the butter a go - I do smoke garlic however and that is yum yum as well.

Hi Heather. Do you seperate the smoker unit from the Bradley to cold smoke or do you use it as is? Hobitfeet gave me a tip of using a cardboard box, and a length of pipe. You place the box lower than the Bradly and cut two holes in it. In one you insert the pipe which you then insert into the hole on the side of the smoker and at the other end you place the feed box with the actual plate the wood travells along inside the box. Pop a pan of water under the feed which is in the box and tape the lot up. It does give a goodly head of smoke and I think reduces the smoking time.

Cheers WW

[aris]

I realise it is a cold smoke, but it doesn't take much for butter to melt.

[Spuddy]

I realise it is a cold smoke, but it doesn't take much for butter to melt.

I thought that too especially as the bradley has a tendency to get a bit "warm" when cold smoking.

[welsh wizard]

Hi Aris and Spuddy

Sorry for the confusion. If you place the buscuit feeder in the side of the the Bradley, you are correct it will produce a small amount of heat and yes in that case it could well melt the butter. However as I use a smoke generator (cardboard box) set away from the Bradly linked via a piece of tubing there is no heat build up in the Bradly smoker at all and it smokes as it should. The bradley is an A1 hot smoker but it needs a little adjustment in my opinion to cold smoke properly. When cold smoking there should be no heat what so ever, hence the term cold smoking. In fact it could be argued that a little heat say when smoking chicken could be a dangerous thing.

Cheers WW

[Heather]

Aris and Spuddy, WW is correct, the Bradley does need some modification to cold-smoke effectively.

Fortunately hubby relished the idea of modifying the kit, so he had a stainless steel box made up with correct sized holes in 2 opposite sides (box approx 600mm x 400mm, maybe a bit smaller). We site the smoker cabinet on a small table in the shed (so ambient temperatures this time of year are low), with some B&Q silver flexible tubing leading from the top of the Bradley out of the shed. The smoke generator/biscuit feeder then attaches to the stainless steel box on the floor, and then the box is attached to the inlet on the side of the smoker cabinet using more silver flexible tubing from B&Q. Various jubilee clips / hose clamps and gaffer tape ensure that the system is relatively well-sealed.

Friday night's smoking showed a temp of 10�C on the gauge on the front of the smoker, there is no heat transfer using this system.