Smokin'

I love that Eric Church song, Smoke a Little Smoke (or as my adorable nephew Eric sings, 'moke a little 'moke). But we're not in to that kind of smoking. This is the kind of smoking we do here...

Over the weekend, Brian and Matt built a cold smoking contraption. The first use for it will be cold smoking the hams that are currently finishing the cure phase.

Cold smoking is used to flavor and preserve the meat, not to cook it. So there is a heat source that burns the wood to produce smoke (this all happens in the red part of our contraption), then that smoke is piped to another chamber (fancy word for trash can). The long pipe allows the smoke to cool, and it is less than 90 degrees by the time it enters the cold smoking chamber where the meat is hanging.

64 degrees inside the cold smoking chamber. Convection currents cause the smoke to rise up out of the chimney cap.