Everything that you read says to experiment and try things out. I wouldn’t say that I was overly adventurous for my second outing with the cold smoker. After the first time I had a request from a friend to smoke some cheese for her, so not really the time to try new things. This time around it was a case of trying a different wood, beech, and that was it. Into the smoker went:-
8 Lincolnshire sausages – 6 hours
4 pieces of cheddar – 8 hours
1 piece of Shropshire blue – 8 hours
1 piece of Sainsbury’s blue (really brave here!) – 8 hours
So to the results – the sausages were far better than last time, the base product needs to be good otherwise you’re adding flavour to rubbish. The cheeses are really nice. Just smoky enough without over-powering your taste buds. With all of them you get the smoky taste and then the flavours of the cheese come through after.
The beech doesn’t impart such a strong flavour as the whiskey oak which allows the other flavours to come through.
Next up brining for the first time and some pheasants!
My first attempts at curing and smoking food 