Cheepo smoker......

[pokerpete]

At every council tip there are dumped fridges and upright freezers...if you have room in your garden for one of these then why not make a firebox out of and old dusbin or such and vent the smoke through a coil of flexible flue
this would act like a condensate tube and cool the smoke before it got to the meat for cold smoking.

Then for hot smoking use a short flu direct onto the fridge.

If I wanted to make a smoker I know it wouldn't take me very long.


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Ermm.... Not sure about the local council tip being full of dumped fridges, unless your council provide a service to safely dispose of the refrigerent, as it is illegal to do so without the proper procedures. This all has to do with greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

[pokerpete]

It's been a few weeks since this subject was activated and now my cold smoker is operating I have a few questions to share.
The bacon I smoked for only 6 hours came out really well with a robust flavour but the colour hardly changed at all. Years ago I remember flitches hanging in the grocer's window being chestnut brown in colour. Does anyone know if commercial bacon is artificially coloured like some kippers. Colour doesn't worry me at all because the flavour is so good, just a point of intrest. I don't think I will smoke any of my bacon for much longer than 6 hours because I suspect the smoke flavour would overwhelm all others. Has anyone any experience with this please?
Regards
Vernon Smith

Might be something in this, or not. Was the skin, and flesh of your brined piece of bacon dry before you put it to smoke. If it was wet then the smoke won't take to to give colouration. Therefore cause a dry skin to happen by using a hair dryer, or something to get rid of any moisture on the surfaces.

[Vernon Smith]

Thanks for your response Wohoki. I slaughtered a pig this afternoon and I will put more bacon into cure tomorrow using Paul Kribs method. If anyone wants bacon and hasn't tried Paul's "simple as pie" procedure then you should. You won't get better bacon anywhere. Anyway, I will try smoking longer next time and see what results I get. Just for interest I mention that regardless of the colour of the live pig thecarcasses all turn white when they have been scalded. Elementary biology my dear Watson. The melanin pigment is deposited in the epidermis (outer skin layer) and this is completely removed by the hot water and scraping that also removes the hair leaving the carcass as clean and smooth as an egg. The dermis or rind (layer below the epidermis) is white in colour. I think I will get brown bacon if smoke for longer next time. I won't cheat with soy sauce either but thanks for the idea. Poker Pete mentions wetness but the two bellies were hung in a fanned cooler for several days until a nice pellicle formed. I think I must experiment a bit with the smoking time until I achieve the result I find satisfactory. I will post the results in a week or two.
Regards,
Vernon Smith

[Wohoki]

Actually, your not 100% right. Scalding and scraping will clean the hide down to a pale finish, but the traditional farmhouse technique of singeing and dry brushing leaves the hide the same colour as it was in life. There is a famous ham variety in the UK, the name of which escapes me, that is presented to the table with a ring of black skin left around the hock end to show provenance, and the reason that Vietnamese pot bellies aren't the small-holders swine-of-choice is the black skin, which is unpopular (shame, as they are great little pigs with a nice lean/fat ratio.)

[Vernon Smith]

Wow, Wohoki, I overlooked singeing because I haven't done it. I would be interested in trying it sometime but I need some information on how to go about it. The one thing that concerns me is the hair left under the skin. With care, all the hair comes out with scalding and scraping but the same might not apply to singeing and brushing. Have you any information on this please? Hair follicles and subcutaneous hair left in the dermis might not be very appealing in the saveloys that I am going to have a go at soon with Parson Snows' 20% rind recipe. Solomon Islanders have been singeing pigs for thousands of years. They make a fire with coconut fronds that burn fiercely because of the high oil content and chuck the pig in the fire. Perhaps the locals in Tristar's neck of the woods to something similar. Regrettably, the trussed pig is sometimes still alive when this happens. After being kicked around in the fire for a while, not surprisingly, the carcass turns black but after cooling down and scraping with sharpened clam shells it finishes up dark brown in colour regardless of what colour it was in life. I don't know what hair is left under the skin at the conclusion of this process but I suspect the rind would not be suitable for savs. Anyway, in a civilised farmhouse, how would the singeing be done? Any information would be gratefully added to my database. I can see that singeing, where appropriate, would be far less trouble than scalding. I butchered my pig this afternoon and laid down 15kg bacon in dry cure and 20kg ham in brine. Can't wait to get them in the smoker. Fyi I will post some curing teasers in chatter as soon as I post this reply.
Regards,
Vernon Smith

[Wohoki]

According to my Gran (God rest her) in her part of Northamptonshire they just used faggots made of twisted straw that were lit and rubbed over the pig, and never held in place for long enough to cause the skin to blister, and then the pig was scrubbed with a natural bristle brush. I'm not saying they never scalded, but straw is cheaper than boiling water. I'd also assume that they disguarded the skin; as you say, the folicles wouldn't be too nice between your teeth.

Another thought, I went to a pig roast in Cambodia and they used coconut husks to singe: might be something you can get in the Solomons?

If I had a freshly killed swine to de-bristle I'd use a propane blow-torch with a yellow flame on it: odour free and fairly cheap. Or straw, of course.

[Vernon Smith]

I've got some photos that might be interesting to would be smokers (not the tobacco kind) and I can't work out how to import the pic to the forum. All my pics are saved as normal jpeg files. None of the commands on the above tool bar seem to work either. I can't even get a bold or italic font. Neither can I get the smilies to work.
What's the trick please? I must be missing something
Regards,
Vernon

[Spuddy]

Hi Vernon
You need to upload them to some webspace or hosting service first then link to them with the "IMG" tags.
This forum software doesn't have it's own image hosting system like some others do so you can't just upload the pictures.

Also you need to click on your profile and make sure that:
Always allow BBCode: Yes
Always allow HTML: Yes
Always enable Smilies: Yes


Let me know if you need any help.
BR

[Oddley]

Hi folks I posted a tutorial on how to upload and post images a while ago. I hope it helps.

Spuddy this topic comes up now and again. It may be an idea to make the tutorial a sticky.

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=1610

[Spuddy]

Good idea Sir Robert.
I'll do it now.

[Vernon Smith]

Bloody hopeless! I just spent an hour with Imageshack to no avail. As soon as you scroll down to the box that says "direct link to image" you can't select it. The only option that works is "show to friends" and that goes nowhere. Nothing to right click on. No notepad available.
Perhaps the operating procedure has been changed but anyway its more trouble than its worth. There must be an easier way of putting pics on the forum.
Regards
Vernon

[Vernon Smith]

Let's see what happens with the photo of my 24 hour smoked bacon

[Oddley]

I see you got image shack working then. Wow nice bit of fat on that bacon.

[Vernon Smith]

Yes Oddley but only by sheer luck. You must have heard the statistician's theory that given an infinite number of chimpanzees banging away on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite period of time they would sooner or later type the complete works of Shakespeare.
That's what I used to get image shack to work.

What do you think of my 24 hour smoking? The pig had more fat than I would have liked but it served the purpose and I can't resist bacon fat anyway. The colour is very dark and the smoke flavour is very strong so I think I will do the next batch sometime this week for only 12 hours.
Wohoki, you say you smoked some for 5 days once. Perhaps my smoker puts out more smoke than yours because anything in my smoker for that long would turn pitch black. Mine is an old chest freezer that I described earlier. Photo below.



Works a treat dunnit! If anyone wants more info I will gladly give it.
I have a ham to smoke following the next batch of bacon then some savs but I haven't got around to putting the sav ingredients together yet.

By the way, I read somewhere that salami can be smoked too. Anyone tried smoking some yet? I have some salami maturing nicely and perhaps I will lightly smoke some following the ham.

I'll post some pics of my piggery under livestock a bit later if anyone is interested to see how really "hands on" we are here. Literally a one stop shop from breeding to finished small goods.
Cheers for now,
Vernon

What's happened now? My photo doesn't seem to work. I can't see what else I can do. Oddley you seem the expert. Please advise.

[Paul Kribs]

Vernon

Looks like you've somehow got the [img]and%20the[/img] back to front.. you can edit it, BTW the link to the photo works other than that.

Regards, Paul Kribs