How To Make a Cold Smoker FireBox?

User avatar
redzed
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 3852
Joined: Fri Apr 20, 2012 06:29
Location: Vancouver Island

Post by redzed » Fri Jul 20, 2012 18:19

Ab, your posts reveal that you might be smoking something other than meat. You really have to slow down here, read a bit more, or better yet, find someone who will help you at home with your project.
abrogard
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2012 12:44
Location: sa

Post by abrogard » Fri Jul 20, 2012 23:23

Thanks Dartfrog, that's twice you given me some good information.

I would like to know why you suggest a curing brine and why you are so pessimistic about it otherwise.

I have failed to find anything definitive about this anywhere. Perhaps I should illustrate what I mean by melodramatic example again. I never found anything like this:

. If your meat gets over 45 deg F then a process called 'diabolicfilthydisease' begins in the heart of the meat, closest to the bone and at sites connected to the outside by, for instance, blood vessels and this process manufactures toxins at roughly 1ml per day per kg meat that will kill you in concentrations as low as 2ml/kg - i.e. after two or three days growth.

So I would know unequivocally that I'm facing the growth of diabolicfilthydisease.

This is possibly the wrong forum being strongly oriented towards sausage and sausage being a relatively thin package with much surface area to mass.

I have relatively enormous masses with little exposed surface area.


Redzed thanks for coming to my assistance. I wonder what you suspect me of. What else can one smoke?

No, all I've got is a pig that my wife got and dumped on us before she even had a built smokehouse and with, as it turns out, only a rudimentary knowledge of what she was going to do. All based on childhood memories of what they do back in rural China.

I'm just trying to save that meat or at least know what's gone wrong and why I can't.

I can't slow down. I need to speed up. That's the whole point. Speed. The stuff is lying there getting warmer with nothing but salt to protect it.

Which leads to confusion in my panicked mind. Is it going bad? Meat left outside for more than 4 hours between 5 d Celsius and 60 d Celsius has to be condemned in Australia. Them's the guidelines.

But salt is a preservative. All large slabs of cold smoked meat simply hang in that temperature range for days.

A govt meat safety man told me on the phone that it'd be alright.

I am confused. Time is wasting. I'm going as fast as I can. I've got the smokehouse and firepit ready. But I'm worried and I would like to do more to the meat. Add nitrates. But I can't do it until they arrive on Monday.

So I thought I would put it in the smoke for a couple of days, helping the drying process, beginning the curing process.

But then I get advice that 'I certainly wouldn't do it' (add nitrates to the meat after it has been smoked for a couple of days).

Find someone who will help me with the project? I can't. I know no one. We are new here and know few people and this is a pretty unusual sort of thing to do.

Hence along with reading and ringing the Council and Govt health people I came to this forum.

Unfortunately, as I say, I think the principal area of expertise here is sausage. Not the same thing.

And the principal advice is to read more.

Here's some of what I read this morning - spurred by these frequent exhortations -

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/meat-smoking/cold-smoking
Cold smoking assures us of total smoke penetration inside of the meat. The loss of

moisture also is uniform in all areas and the total weight loss falls within 5-20%

depending largely on the smoking time. Cold smoking is not a continuous process, it is

stopped (no smoke) a few times to allow fresh air into the smoker.

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/meat-smoki ... generation
just about burning

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/meat-smoking/humidity

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/smokehouse ... e-humidity

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/smokehouse ... house-pipe

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/smokehouse ... egulations

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/smokehouse ... ouse-metal

I put that bit of a quote in there to illustrate the air, spasmodic smoking thing I mooted.

for the rest: no help whatever with my time sensitive hassle.

I'm going to do something and there's not much I can do. I'm going to start smoking it.

:)

p.s. I get it. Bit slow aren't I? Well, I'm feeling hassled. You think I'm smoking marijuana or something myself. Ah. Why? Because I write so much? Yes, I can see that. I've always been very verbose. Almost pedantic the way I take everything seriously and respond to everything etc...

It was easy to 'get me going' when I was a kid. Still easy now isn't it?

Ah well. I don't really give a damn. :)
ssorllih
Veteran
Veteran
Posts: 4331
Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2011 19:32
Location: maryland

Post by ssorllih » Fri Jul 20, 2012 23:31

A rented food freezer would buy all the time you need.
Ross- tightwad home cook
ssorllih
Veteran
Veteran
Posts: 4331
Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2011 19:32
Location: maryland

Post by ssorllih » Sat Jul 21, 2012 00:35

Ab, I believe that you are determined to forget everything you know and are hoping for a miracle. When you bring a chicken home from the market you put it into the refrigerator. Why in the name of all the is holy did you not find a means of keeping the pile of meat cold while you could figure out what to do with it? From all that you have said I can only conclude that you have a pile of road kill that has been too long in the heat.
Ross- tightwad home cook
User avatar
Darthfrog
Beginner
Beginner
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Feb 21, 2011 21:07
Location: Burnaby, British Columbia

Post by Darthfrog » Sat Jul 21, 2012 03:26

abrogard wrote:Thanks Dartfrog, that's twice you given me some good information.
You're welcome. And once you're through this "emergency", I hope that you continue to learn and grown in this hobby.
I would like to know why you suggest a curing brine and why you are so pessimistic about it otherwise.
Because immersing your meat in a refrigerated brine, coupled with the injection of 10% of the meat's weight in brine, is the easiest, surest way to properly cure it for a beginner. Curing the pork with the nitrite/nitrate salts you've got coming (they're different and the difference is important) is not something you slap on, as if they were ingredients in a recipe for tonight's dinner; it will take weeks or months, depending on technique. It's not the nitrate/nitrite salts that do the actual curing, BTW, it's the conversion by bacteria from nitrate (NO3) to nitrite (NO2) to the active free radical nitric oxide (NO*) that does the actual curing and interacts with muscle myoglobin to give the expected pink colouration.

As for the pessimism, I don't think you've done a proper _mise en place_ (i.e. preparation ahead of time). Part of what I consider my _mise en place_ is knowing what the hell I'm doing *before* I start cooking. I've never been partial to the "ready, fire, aim" method.
So I would know unequivocally that I'm facing the growth of diabolicfilthydisease.
I've never heard of it.
This is possibly the wrong forum being strongly oriented towards sausage and sausage being a relatively thin package with much surface area to mass.
No-one has told you you're in the wrong place and you're not. Yeah, we like sausage but we are interested in all forms of charcuterie. I would suggest that you re-consider the negativity you've received here as an indication that experienced people think you're in over your head.

However, you're bound and determined to go ahead with his. I sincerely wish you good luck, I really do. But I'm expecting that you'll end up throwing out a lot of rotten meat. Right now, my suggestion to avoid this outcome is to do a hot smoke and cook the pork to an internal temperature of at least 150 F/66 C. Then you have to figure out what to do with all that cooked pork.

--
Good Luck,
Rob
I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
User avatar
Chuckwagon
Veteran
Veteran
Posts: 4494
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 04:51
Location: Rocky Mountains

Post by Chuckwagon » Sat Jul 21, 2012 08:55

Abrogard,
You wrote: p.s. I get it. Bit slow aren't I? Well, I'm feeling hassled. You think I'm smoking marijuana or something myself. Ah. Why? Because I write so much? Yes, I can see that. I've always been very verbose. Almost pedantic the way I take everything seriously and respond to everything etc...
It was easy to 'get me going' when I was a kid. Still easy now isn't it?
Ah well. I don't really give a damn.
Everyone on this forum is in your support. Please do not think for one minute that they are not concerned with your problem. However, they, at one time or another, had to come to the realization that the knowledge required to properly maintain and preserve meat, is just short of astonishing. Most people have no idea what it takes to produce a quality, edible, safe, meat product. Most just take it for granted that they can walk into a supermarket and purchase a sausage or ham. Few people ever give any thought to how, when, or where it was made, or even who made it. Sausage making and meat preserving are skilled crafts.

I sense a common misperception indicated in your post that the end product somehow is dependent upon smoking. Smoking absolutely does not cure meat. Shucks pard, that bears repeating. Smoking absolutely does NOT cure meat. It may put off spoilage slightly, but to any large degree, it does not do anything other than make it taste great.

Man has only three practical choices to keep meat from spoiling. The first is by altering the temperature - by refrigerating it or cooking it to a degree where bacteria are mostly inhibited by temperature. The second is by the introduction of an acidic environ by the interaction of specific genus types of beneficial bacteria acting upon a sugar as in the case of Lactobacillus sakei, Lactobacillus farciminis, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus curvatus, Lactobacillus pentosus, Pediococcus acidilactici, or Pediococcus pentosaceus. When the acidity reaches a level between pH 5.1 and pH 6.8, it is considered safe. Third, meat may be preserved by drying it. Sausages and meat products having water activity (Aw) of .85 or less, are considered safely dried, according to the USDA. In other words, meat products containing less than .85 "available water" have dried to a point where most microorganisms are no longer able to survive.

In my opinion, for what it may be worth, you should stop talking to the chowderhead supplying you with your nitrite. Put the pork into a freezer or cold locker immediately while you learn how to slow down brochotrix thermosphacta, pseudomonas spp., or a host of other spoilage-type bacteria by the use of salt and salt brine. Next, learn how to control pathogenic bacteria by the introduction of specific cures and procedures. When you have gathered a knowledge of the established procedures, then forge ahead. However, please know wholeheartedly, you cannot make up your own rules as you go along. Instead of worrying about smoking the meat, start studying how to first safely cure it using the proper amounts of the proper cures sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite. Ask questions to these forum members. They`ll help you and so will I. Just do it little by little. Line upon line - precept upon precept, pardner. You just can`t have all our information overnight... because we can`t possibly give it to you overnight. So freeze the pork for now and hit the books. The best place to start is at this link: http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/sausage-making/curing

Abrogard, please do not think I am "talking down" to you or patronizing you in any way. Farbeit for me to advise anyone. However, you asked for our help. We are offering our suggestions. Let me leave you with the following: You may be a track coach at the Olympics, but you`re not going to run before you know how to walk.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably needs more time on the grill! :D
abrogard
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2012 12:44
Location: sa

Post by abrogard » Sat Jul 21, 2012 13:57

Yep, thanks for all that. It's very kind of you all.

The situation sure does look pretty hopeless. Even the cold smoker is a bummer. I tested it today and it prefers to smoke out of the firepit rather than out of the pipe in the smokehouse...

Seems to be three choices:

1. wet brine refrigerated cure
2. cook it.
3. freeze it until later.

Can't do any of them.

1. No refrigerator space for 80kg of pig in brine.

2. Smoker wouldn't reliably hot smoke cook it. I read they generally don't. Needs oven finishing often.

3. Got no freezer to freeze it till later.

Yep. It is hopeless. I am in over my head. I don't know what to do.

:)
ssorllih
Veteran
Veteran
Posts: 4331
Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2011 19:32
Location: maryland

Post by ssorllih » Sat Jul 21, 2012 15:44

If you ask at the local market they will have cold storage space and will probably allow you to store the meat.
80 Kg of pork is worth at least 350 USD so even purchasing a new freezer can be justified .
I am sorry if you have felt that we were not willing to help you but as Chuckwagon has said curing meat is more complicated than almost anything else you can attempt.
During biblical times they would sacrifice an animal to the gods and then have a feast because the meat had to be consumed before it spoiled.
People have been killing animals for a million years and watching the meat rot wihtin a few days. How they learned to use salt to keep meat from rotting is probably lost in antiquity.
Remember there was a time when salt was used to pay a man's wages for the day, such was its value in some places.
Wherever they learned that salt would preserve meat there must have been an abundance of salt such that they could take a chance on wasting it.
When it became known that salt would preserve meat it became even more valuable.
I would give away half of a pig in exchange for enough salt to preserve the other half. fortunately we have available an abundance of salt and sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite and sugar. The only part of the equation missing in the meat preserving problem is the knowledge of how salt and sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite can be used to preserve meat. We can buy the salt and the nitrite/nitrate but the knowledge must be obtained by sturdy. Before people could read they became apprentices to learn a craft. They would start as soon as they no longer depended on their mothers and they would work for and learn from a master for several years. At some time they would have grown enough and learned enough that they could complete a job from start to finish without supervision. At that stage they were called journeymen because they could be depended upon to travel away from the master and work independantly. Only when they established their own business could they be called masters.
We are privileged today to have in writing all of the knowledge that an apprentice had to learn from the master because Men like Stanley Marianski have taken the time and made the great effort to write scholarly books detailing all of the processes that an apprentice had to devote years to learning. There is not enough room on the floor for everyone wishing to learn the craft of sausage making and meat presevation to sit at the feet of a master. Through the miracle of books we can all have a front row seat and learn from a master. But simply reading the book isn't enough. We must also apply the methods learned in the book to meat in our hands. Then we must study the results of our work and compare it to the products that we can buy. When we make better than we can buy we can call ourselves journeyman for that product. But there is much to learn and become skilled with.
There is a term sometimes still used today," he can't hold a candle to another". That was a statement of a man's skill. The senior apprentice had the privilege of holding the light while the master worked thus providing the best viewing position. As a man's skills improved the master would ask the apprentice to hold a light for him. Being asked to hold the light was a promotion and high honor.
Ross- tightwad home cook
User avatar
Darthfrog
Beginner
Beginner
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Feb 21, 2011 21:07
Location: Burnaby, British Columbia

Post by Darthfrog » Sat Jul 21, 2012 15:57

abrogard wrote: 3. Got no freezer to freeze it till later.
A wise friend of mine once told me that there isn't much that anyone can't do who is the slightest bit handy with a cheque-book.

BTW, "diabolicfilthydisease" parses out to diabolic filthy disease. Is that an Australian slang expression for rotting meat or is someone pulling your leg?

Also, when you said your meat is salted, how much salt did you use? Is there a coat of two inches of salt on every surface of the meat (in which case it's probably safe for months or more) or did you sprinkle salt using a shaker?

--
Cheers,
Rob
I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
abrogard
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2012 12:44
Location: sa

Post by abrogard » Sun Jul 22, 2012 00:04

I like that history, Ross. Fascinating. For a while there I was back in the Middle Ages, watching meat being cut up by bloody, dirty filthy hands (and knives I suppose), surrounded by the stench of open drains, lack of toilets, horses, pigs, etc...

A very different time, eh?

I'm old enough to remember a portion of that past time - the hand tool portion. I can remember when we were surrounded by the sounds of men using hand tools. The sounds of human muscular effort betraying the amount of work being put into the task and the amount of skill being employed, and often betraying the emotional state of the worker or perhaps his whole psychology.

I'm thinking woodworking tools here in particular. The steady sound of a saw with all you could hear in that: the length of the stroke, the speed of it, the downward pressure, the smooth rhythm or otherwise. And similarly with all tools.

Nowadays I plane a piece of wood to the sound of the insane screaming of the high rpm motor. My filing of metal is not a sound akin to the woodsaw loaded with human significance, telling a story of a man peacefully at work, but is again the mad scream of a high revving motor....

We used to live in a human environment. Surrounded by the sounds of humanity. Now we live in an insane machine robot environment. Cut off from each other.

I always talk too much... you've set me off again.

Yes, Darth, get out the checkbook, that's the shot. I'm leaning in that direction. Just got to persuade the other half, the cause of all this.

Yep, I made up the disease.

There was no 'inch of salt'. Salt was just rubbed strongly and carefully into the flesh and skin on each of the three occasions.


I'm icing it down and trying to find freezer space (or buy one) while awaiting curing solution from the city, amassing info, working on the cold smoker.

Interested to learn that prosciutto (at least one variety) is raw, right to the table. A 'dry curing' process.

And to learn that smoking of itself is considered a curing process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation)

Thanks for all the interest and help, guys. Much appreciated.

:)

p.s. Late breaking news: I got the wife to ask the supplier. He has agreed to let us put the pig back in his cold store. A breathing space.....
ssorllih
Veteran
Veteran
Posts: 4331
Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2011 19:32
Location: maryland

Post by ssorllih » Sun Jul 22, 2012 01:05

Ab, I did not write for your entertainment but to remind you that valuable skills are worth working to acquire. People have to work hard , diligently and for a considerable length of time to become skilled at any craft. If you would produce good food for your family then you will devote the time and effort necessary. Don't delay for long you know how long you have been in possession of this meat and you know how much salt has been applied. It is your ball game you get to decide how it is played.
Ross- tightwad home cook
Post Reply