Building a "LARGE" Smokehouse.

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i posted this over in curing thread. i repost it here too.its more than sausage.its recipes from around the world.

guy has the best site ever


http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage recipes.htm#DRY
traditionally back in the day first people to america didnt eat pork.they brought sheep. theres old writing from Williamsburg,Va. about cured lamb hams and also writings referencing this in eastern Kentucky. pork came later.many followed dietary laws of bible.
 
Here's our new smokehouse. It's small but it's plenty big enough for the 2 of us. Made of cedar and sits on a concrete pad. I lined the lower 3 feet inside with concrete board for fire protection. The small structure on the left holds an assortment of wood chunks.
20221128_081847.jpg
 
I made a 12X12 log smokehouse out of locust logs that were all over the land I bought like old telephone poles. No bear will get into it and it won't rot. I smoke entire deer, hogs, turkey, trout and even some cheeses that I just leave hanging in there to hack on through the winter as I need it. The firepit is about 10 feet away and the smoke / heat feeds via a pipe underground. While I have the fire going I keep a 40 gallon pot of water heated to cook down wild edibles (such as poke) that require a few good boils. I do that mostly in the spring and just smoke a small amount of stuff that I put in the springhouse to keep cool for summer meats.
 
I can't remember if I shared. If so it wasn't here. Keep in mind I'm married to a metal fabricator. We had a little chief smoker. He wanted a cold smoke so cut the burner portion off the smoker and made a new bottom for the top portion and a top for the bottom portion. To make those he used dryer vent (metal) and welded them onto the smoker pieces. Then ran a metal dryer hose from one to the other so he can have the heat away from the meat. It's pretty classy looking 😂
One of our goals has been to make bacon with not chemicals (yes, technically salt is a chemical but read what I mean please ;)). We made a batch of salted bacon. Even rinsing it, it's pretty salty. It's great for in beans and such but not for just frying up to eat with eggs. This batch we used garlic salt and smoke. That's it. He cut the big ol' pork belly into 3 pc. The first piece he rubbed the garlic salt into then went out and began smoking it. The other two, he used a little more garlic salt on and laid them in the draining tubs (so liquid could drain off). We sampled the first piece - there needs to be an Italian chef emoji. 😗 mwah! It was delicious, but we decided it could use just a little more smoke. So he ran a little more smoke on it. Then got the other two pieces going. We will test those tonight. As usual, no chemicals ~ the flavor is far superior to anything we've had from the store. And so simple! Anyhoo, if y'all want to try something simple with great results, there ya go.
PS Next year I will ask for the jowls also so we can make jowl bacon. EG - more bacon!
 
LadyLocust said:
I can't remember if I shared. If so it wasn't here. Keep in mind I'm married to a metal fabricator. We had a little chief smoker. He wanted a cold smoke so cut the burner portion off the smoker and made a new bottom for the top portion and a top for the bottom portion. To make those he used dryer vent (metal) and welded them onto the smoker pieces. Then ran a metal dryer hose from one to the other so he can have the heat away from the meat. It's pretty classy looking 😂
One of our goals has been to make bacon with not chemicals (yes, technically salt is a chemical but read what I mean please ;)). We made a batch of salted bacon. Even rinsing it, it's pretty salty. It's great for in beans and such but not for just frying up to eat with eggs. This batch we used garlic salt and smoke. That's it. He cut the big ol' pork belly into 3 pc. The first piece he rubbed the garlic salt into then went out and began smoking it. The other two, he used a little more garlic salt on and laid them in the draining tubs (so liquid could drain off). We sampled the first piece - there needs to be an Italian chef emoji. 😗 mwah! It was delicious, but we decided it could use just a little more smoke. So he ran a little more smoke on it. Then got the other two pieces going. We will test those tonight. As usual, no chemicals ~ the flavor is far superior to anything we've had from the store. And so simple! Anyhoo, if y'all want to try something simple with great results, there ya go.
PS Next year I will ask for the jowls also so we can make jowl bacon. EG - more bacon!
Click to expand...
We need pics. Mommy bacon
 
LadyLocust said:
View attachment 104560View attachment 104561View attachment 104562
So what we actually discovered is it seemed to lose salt by sitting. The first batch had more flavor. We put it in for one more smoke and will salt it when we slice it up to put in the freezer.
Click to expand...
Pretty cleaver. We want to try smoking some bacon too.
My first smoker was a Little Cheif. I bought it when I was about 17 or 18. I smoked a lot of salmon and steelhead, plus made a lot jerkey with it.
For cold smoking cheese I would take the rack out of the smoker and place it on top and then I'd place the cardboard box over the rack. It worked fine for about 40 years.
Next smoker was a stainless steel Cook Shack. I smoked hundreds of pounds of salmon and halibut in it. My favorite was a sweet smoked squaw candy. I couldn't turn down the heat enough to smoke cheese though. So I added a Smoke Daddy canister to the outside. It worked fine except it was limited in size for the wood chips.
My current non electric smoker is pictured in my post above. It works great. I use an old table top BBQ inside the smoke house to burn charcoal in for heat. I put the rack over the charcoal, add chunks of wood, then shut the lid. If I limit the amount of charcoal I can keep the heat down to less than 100 degs for smoking cheese. Any hotter and it melts.
 
Mountain trapper said:
Pretty cleaver. We want to try smoking some bacon too.
My first smoker was a Little Cheif. I bought it when I was about 17 or 18. I smoked a lot of salmon and steelhead, plus made a lot jerkey with it.
For cold smoking cheese I would take the rack out of the smoker and place it on top and then I'd place the cardboard box over the rack. It worked fine for about 40 years.
Next smoker was a stainless steel Cook Shack. I smoked hundreds of pounds of salmon and halibut in it. My favorite was a sweet smoked squaw candy. I couldn't turn down the heat enough to smoke cheese though. So I added a Smoke Daddy canister to the outside. It worked fine except it was limited in size for the wood chips.
My current non electric smoker is pictured in my post above. It works great. I use an old table top BBQ inside the smoke house to burn charcoal in for heat. I put the rack over the charcoal, add chunks of wood, then shut the lid. If I limit the amount of charcoal I can keep the heat down to less than 100 degs for smoking cheese. Any hotter and it melts.
Click to expand...
I used my Little Chief for cheese and it did okay. Did you wrap your cheese in cheesecloth?
 
Thought I would share two things: I think Hubby nailed the bacon 🥓 on this last batch. He did 2-1/2 days in garlic salt, rinsed then 3-4 rounds of cold smoke. The flavor was spot on delicious. Thing two was he used some of the grease in a cast iron pan to cook his spuds 🥔 and they didn’t stick at all! With bacon from the store, they always stick no matter how much if the grease you use. Left the cast iron beautifully seasoned 😁
 
One more thing with this bacon we’ve discovered. You know how Grandma used to keep a can on the stove for bacon grease? Well I always thought it was gross because I don’t like my eggs to taste like bacon or whatever is being cooked. With the homemade bacon- no chemicals- Hubby used the grease (lard) and it smelled baconish when it was cooking but didn’t have that acrid flavor. The potatoes were delicious! Y’all gotta try this! I can’t understand why anyone could eat that store bought stuff if they had had real bacon 🥓 🤤
 
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