So, I opened my mouth or rather my email and sent out a note asking my immediate colleagues at work if they would like some smoked cheese. By the time it had been forwarded I ended up with:-
11 x cheddar
3x Brie
3 x Stilton
…and only because I was going to smoke some haddock for our Sunday kedgeree!!! I just hope that they appeciate the lovely smoky aroma on the 06:41 to London!
After a couple of smokes with no contents to see if the the smoker appeared to be running properly and to give it a bit of character. Notice the tiles in the bottom to stop the smoke generator ‘leaking’ any heat and melting the plastic – not a good move! All the brown that you can see is smoke deposits from the previous smokes. Today was the day when I loaded it up (well not quite!!) and let it do its stuff. In went
1. Haddock – 6 hours
2. Gammon – 10 hours
3. A piece of Cheddar Cheese – 7 hours
4. A smoke generator full of maple dust
I’ll let you know in the week whether or not it has been a success, or where I need to improve it!
Here’s some photos that I took when we were building the fridge based cold smoker recently. The fridge was kindly donated by someone in the village and once Christmas was out of the way it was time to get the drill, jigsaw and pliers out.
In effect we
1. removed the old cooling equipment
2. fitted the smoke outlets
3. cut the slot for the grille on the bottom of the door
4. used some silicon to block up any extraneous holes
Some changes from last time
1kg pork leg
17g sage
130g rusk
The casings have been soaking for a couple of days – completely different feel this time
and the pork leg was ‘pulsed’ in the food processor rather than the sausage making machine which is a bit wimpy. Got 10 decent sized sausages and some mix left over to make a couple of sausage patties with.
Why did I want to smoke food? In a word or rather two ‘smoked salmon’. I love the taste, the texture, the smell, the anticipation, so after plenty of practice with cheese, sausages and haddock, it was time to have a go. First off, I cured it on a base of salt, with a salt and brown sugar coating. Prior to placing the salmon in the cure I ‘painted’ it with vodka. Some recipes suggest leaving the salmon to cure for just an hour, but I left mine for 9 hours in the fridge (effectively overnight). I then wiped off as much of the cure as possible before quickly washing the remaining cure off under the tap. I’m always in two minds at this point as one of the reasons for the cure is to lower the water content and here I am running the cured article under water!
To ease hanging the salmon in the smoker I threaded some garden twine through each fillet and made a simple loop. Then into the fridge to dry for 10 hours or so. I was trying to sort the timings so that the first smoke would be overnight. So into the smoker went the two fillets, hung by a couple of hooks from the top rack with all of the other racks removed. Not wanting to potentially ruin the salmon it was smoked for just over 20 hours using whiskey oak. Once out of the smoker the fillets were put into a freezer bag and left in the fridge for a day. So how did this batch turn out? Not bad at all, although some commented that it could do with a bit more time in the smoker.
Sal then went out and brought back over a kg of salmon! I tweaked the cure by adding in a couple of bunches of chopped Dill, and then smoked the fillets for 24 hours.
So Christmas was spent eating some fantastic smoked salmon, I can think of worse ways to spend my time!
As I wend my way through various recipes and types of food, from chilli apple jelly, to smoked salmon and on to a Gala Pie I found myself wanting to have a go at making some sausages. For Christmas my ‘outlaws’ kindly gave me a sausage making machine, so there were fewer reasons not to have a go! It all sounds very good, but what do I need, where can I find them?! The basics, i.e. meat and spices are easy to find, but what about a recipe or some hog casings? If in doubt turn to DIY Food by Tim Haywood and Amazon; DIY Food for a list of hog casing suppliers and Amazon for a book on making sausages. I duly ordered 2 x 20m of hog casings (that’s a lot of sausages) and a book by Paul Peacock.
I’m not going to go through each and every step that I (we, you need a partner to make sausages) took; just the recipe, what we learned and what we would do differently. First up the recipe. Living in Lincolnshire it had to be a Lincolnshire sausage so loads of Sage from the garden and some pork shoulder from John at The Cholmley Arms.
A recipe that I was working from said to use 150 rusk : 150 water unless using hog casings so up by 100 each.
Making the sausages:
A length of hog casing was separated from the hank and soaked in multiple bowls of water for three hours or so. The dry ingredients and the water were
mixed together and left whilst the pork shoulder was ground using the largest grinding plate. All of the ingredients were then mixed together by hand
And then the fun began….
I’ve been racking my brains for a polite way to describe what happens next, but many many people who are far more articulate than me have tried and not succeeded. After feeding some 2m of soaked hog casing over the sausage horn we started. Nothing at first however hard we pushed the mixed ingredients into the machine. In the end we removed all of the innards of the sausage making end of the machine (archimedes screw etc.) and just pushed and pushed. Quite quickly we had filled over a metre of casings with sausage meat, trying not to allow too many air pockets to form.Those that did were pricked. Once we had exhausted the meat supply I tried to link them with some, but not with any great success.
This morning was time to find out… What better than on a Saturday morning than having a Lincolnshire sausage sandwich for breakfast!!They were very tasty (but I would say that wouldn’t I).
Some things that I will change for next time:
You will have guessed by now that I’m getting more and more into things that take a while. Brining and smoking, sloe gin, Reubens all need more than an afternoon to do their stuff. I do want to make a pork pie soon, but first I wanted to have a go at some paté. Not your regular ‘smooth’ paté, more your pressed together chunks of pork. Again I followed Tim Haywood’s recipe, mixing:-
500g pork shoulder
250g back fat
250g pig’s liver
2 rashers of unsmoked back bacon
all cut into 2cm chunks. This was put in a freezer bag and marinated in:-
5g fresh parsley
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 ground all spice berries
75g sherry
75g white wine
black pepper to taste
To make sure everything was really mixed together it was time to get my hands into the freezer bag with all of the ingredients and scrunch them around. As much air as possible was squeezed out of the bag and then it was put in the fridge for a couple of days.
Two days later I took the bag out of the fridge, drained any excess marinade and then popped it into the food processor. I said earlier on that I wasn’t after smooth paté, but 2cm chunks are a bit too big!! A few spins of the blade reduced them a bit, still leaving it chunky.
Taking a loaf tin, first some foil was used to line the tin, and then some clink film and finally 10 rashers of streaky bacon were used to create the ‘wrapping’ for the paté. An egg and 15g of salt were added to the paté mixture and scrunched around again by hand. Once suitably scrunched this mixture was packed into the loaf tin. Firstly the bacon was wrapped over the top, then the cling film tightly wrapped around and finally the foil. Earlier I had taken a piece of cardboard the size of the loaf tin and wrapped it in foil. This was placed over the top and then I used some string to make sure that the lid stayed on and applied some pressure to the mixture during cooking.
The tin, complete with uncooked paté was placed into a pre-heated oven, 180degree. This is not quite accurate, more it was placed in a roasting tin that was then filled with boiling water that came to the lip of the loaf tin.After 2 1/2 hours the tin was taken out of the oven and weights were put onto the lid. Left on the work surface to cool for a few hours, it was then put into the fridge overnight. This allowed all of the juices and fats to set, holding everything together. It was only at this point that I unwrapped the now cooked paté from its out layers of foil and cling film.
We had some friends around a couple of days later for a bite to eat. The paté was served up with some chilli apple jelly on the side, what a great combo! Suffice to say that there wasn’t any paté left at the end of the evening!
and left for 2 hours. To make sure that the fish stays fully submerged I put a sieve on the top. Left to dry overnight on a rack in the fridge, it was then cold smoked for 8 hours using whiskey oak.
The smoked haddock and smoked bacon were used to make Smoked Haddock Chowder as per Tim Haywood’s recipe. Great taste although a tad rich for my palate; next time I’ll use slightly less cream.
Cold smoked food from south west Lincolnshire
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My first attempts at curing and smoking food 