Smoking

[Kermit power]

I have a sudden urge to start smoking!

Has anyone built their own smoker? Have any good advice? I've seen things on the web that range from sticking a fire in the bottom of an oil drum and hanging food in the top of it through to building what look like garden sheds with smoke fed through ducting from a separate barbecue (or another fire in an oil drum!) so I'm not totally sure of what is needed.

Can I make one smoker to do both hot and cold smoking? What sort of things can I smoke? Obviously things like fish and bacon, but what else works well? Cheese? Can any sort of cheese be smoked? Is smoking always a savoury thing, or are there sweet possibilities?

I fancy trying this out tomorrow or Monday before going back to the daily grind.

[Pferdestarke]

I haven't built my own because for what it's worth, you may as well buy one of these and spend the time smoking instead.

http://www.macsbbq.co.uk/Water%20Smoker.html

[Kermit power]

Pferdestarke said:

I haven't built my own because for what it's worth, you may as well buy one of these and spend the time smoking instead.

http://www.macsbbq.co.uk/Water%20Smoker.html

Except that's unlikely to get here before Thursday, and I could build one this afternoon for a fraction of the price!

[Todzilla]

I've seen loads of different home-built smokers made from all kinds of things - old fridges, barrels etc. I think it's basically a case of finding something that will take the heat (for hot smoking obviously) and is somewhat enclosed to hold the smoke in. If you already have a BBQ there are quite a few things that can be added to that in order to smoke things, at least for hot smoking. I was given a Weber Smokey Mountain for my birthday last year and it's been getting a workout ever since - I did the Xmas Ham on it and i've got a 5kg brisket and a 5kg pork shoulder on it as we speak (put them on at midnight, 7 hours of sleep later and they're ready for the next stage, another 7 hours of cooking!)

As far as cold smoking goes I don't really know a huge amount about it to be honest - but that'll be rectified in one of my NYR's!

And with regards to what you can smoke, pretty much anything. For hot-smoking at least it's basically just slow cooking with a bit of smoke at the beginning. Naturally cuts of meat that take a long time to cook properly (like the Brisket and pork shoulder) respond really well to this. But like I said, pretty much anything can be smoked, one of my personal faves is smoked eggs..!

So, I don't know how much of that will be useful to you in the short-term if you're going to make a smoker from scratch - i'm sure that there'll be some website with better details of the intricacies of construction (I know Hugh Fearnley-Whatsits made one on River Cottage, it might be worth trying to find that on YouTube). Either way, if you do make one i'm sure there be a loads of blokes on here who'll be interested in following suit so make sure you take photos etc and get a thread going on it!

Enjoy