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It’s the smell. It just transports me. That earthy, fundamentally organic smell of wood smoke, tinged with a hint of leather and spice. This is why, at a time when most people are giving up smoking, I decided to start.
From a young age, I’ve associated the smell of smoked food—particularly smoked meats and fish—with the comforts of home. When I was a youngster, my father built a small smokehouse in our backyard. Made of welded steel panels, it stood maybe eight feet tall, four feet deep and just as wide. The bottom contained a reservoir for burning wood chips and sawdust; the top half had a swing door that revealed metal rods for hanging the smokables. Over the years a procession of hams, home-made sausages, wild game, bacon and all manner of freshwater fish emerged from that little metal box, glistening reddish-brown and deeply infused with the smell of fruitwood smoke.
Over the years I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to smoke meat and fish myself, but until recently I held the misconception that smoking is extremely complicated: a dark art best left to the professional charcoutier or backwoods survivalist. It wasn’t until I saw an ad last summer for a small domestic smoker that I took the plunge, and quickly learned that smoking your own food is quite simple.
The Bradley smoker I purchased has an ingenious design. Most domestic models require that you burn and tend a small fire made of loose wood chips, but this one burns its own pressed wood chip pucks, or “bisquettes”, which move through the smoker on an automated feed system. The bisquettes are proprietary (read somewhat expensive) but fool-proof, and they come in wood flavours like maple, pecan, alder, cherry, apple, oak, mesquite and hickory.
I fill the smoking cabinet, set the temperature control, load my bisquettes, turn the smoker on and leave. After a while I return to perfectly smoked foods that would make my father proud. The manufacturer’s website has a comprehensive list of smoking procedures, mouth-watering recipes, and a friendly discussion forum where newbies and gurus alike can share smoking experiences, techniques and advice. The forum is vegetarian-friendly and has a whole section devoted to smoking vegetables, nuts and cheese.
Wood smoke is a decent antimicrobial and antioxidant, but it isn’t enough to safely preserve food. Most smoking today is for flavour, and smoking meat or fish requires basic preparatory steps to ensure food safety. One of the most common processes is curing: rubbing the protein with either a dry salt-and-sugar cure, or immersing it in a salt-and-sugar-infused liquid brine. This flavours the protein and slows the development of harmful microorganisms. The process can be as brief as overnight (for smoked salmon) or as long as a week (for bacon). Once cured, the brine or rub is rinsed off with water and the protein is placed on racks to dry, forming a firm, shiny crust that helps to seal in moisture.
Once dry, your protein is ready to smoke. Hot-smoking raises the temperature of the smoking cabinet high enough to actually cook the food. Cold-smoking exposes the food to 80-90˚ F smoke for an extended period of time, but no cooking takes place, and the resulting meats and fish have a raw texture, like the cold-smoked salmon known as lox.
Over the last year I’ve smoked rich and oily spring salmon, pork chops, chicken and sausages. I recently made my own hickory-smoked bacon with Windsor Meats’ pork bellies, from hogs raised in Langley. This summer I want to try smoking vegetables from the farmers’ market. Smoked garlic smeared on crusty bread, anyone? Smoked tomatoes for a pasta sauce? If it fits in your smoker, it’s smokable.
I don’t ever plan to kick this habit. Of course I’ve heard about the health implications of smoked foods. And here’s what I say: everything in moderation. Here’s hoping smoke gets in your eyes.
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Bradley Smoker Company is based in Delta. Bradleysmoker.com
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Robert Olaj is an East Van omnivore with a serious smoking addiction. In a former life he worked as a pastry chef for restaurants and hotels around Vancouver.
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