Wet Spaniel

I tend not to add extra wood in the latter stages of smoking as once the the internal temp of the meat gets into the 60's it won't absorb any more smoke so I'd rather save my chips for another cook.

Steve, we have hot smoked mackerel a fair bit, I'm lucky that is have a nice spot to catch them from whilst visiting Scotland so I tend to fill the freezer when I can. I give them a quick dunk in a basic brine and then often cook them whole and horizontal in a snowbee type hot smoker (metal box with grill you put sawdust in and place on heat source). I'm not sure if temps and time as its a bit of a 'suck it and see' process but they get smoked/cooked quickly over fairly high heat from a gas barbie, then served still hot. There's no exact science to how I do it, but the wife and kids love it.

It was pretty massive, much bigger than I could justify at home, I love the prinviple,on how they work with thneflames rolling across the top of the domed roof, your oven looks pretty substantial SM, more so than some that I've seen.

I loved it, can't beat cooking with wood.

Excellent ! Was on holiday in Sardinia last year and we had a massive pizza oven in the villa, didn't do pizza in it but we roast a small,pig in it, I vowed to myself after that that there would be an oven appearing in my garden. I need to pull my finger out and get building.

Well spotted Wade, thanks, blinking IPad and fat fingers = missing decimal point, should read 2.5g per kg

Hi Martin, from my own experience, there are only a couple of basics relating to safety if you are going to try to make a chorizo or salami, you need to use Cure#2 at the recomended rate (usually 25g 2.5 g per kg of meat) and salt content of 2.5% to 3% , everything else that goes into the mix is flavour related ingredients so you can play with those yourself. A mix of 75% lean pork to 25% fatty pork will do meat wise and obviously the main spice needs to be paprika, but some onion powder and maybe a splash of red wine would go well. If you can find somewhere cool and airy to hang the sausages, weigh them before you hang, then keep weighing them till they lose 25%-30% weight they are done. After you've had a go or two using a very basic metjod as above, then you can look into using starter cultures to change the PH, and humidity/temp monitoring, but to start with, keep it simple, it's not the dark art it's made out to be. Obviously my suggested route is the 'bloke in a shed' method but it's not killed me or my kids yet.

That looks good, I was just talking to the wife (well asking permission really) about adding a couple of turkeys to the menagerie this year. Looks like one of them wil be having a nice soothing honey/allspice bath come December

C'mon man, don't leave us in suspense..... You must have your tea really late.... How was it?? They look very good from here.

I've just taken a few mackerel out of the freezer that we caught a few months back, they're going in the smoker later today. If you are hot smoking them, a quick dip in brine helps take the smoke and then I like to smoke mine quite hot and fast. I often do them in a snow bee type smoker sat on top of the gas bbq. if you can get some herring from your man at Brixham, have a bash at making some kippers, I made some a few years back and they turned out really well. It was a recipe from Keith Earlandson's book and they were great fun to make, I imagine they would be even better with fresh caught fish rather than the supermarket jobbies I used

Smoking monkey, from the look of the legs and wings in that pic the bird looks like it's been split along the breast? When I spatchcock a bird I do it by cutting either side of the spine and keeping the breast intact. I'm not 100% it's just the legs look to be in a different orientation

Beer can chicken is good as it keeps the meat moist. Open a can of beer, slide the chicken onto it and cook upright.

Just to avoid worrying Matt, I think the temperatures involved relating to Nitrosamines was around 300 deg Celcius, so unless he is a really, really bad cook, hopefully we will still be seeing him posting after he's had a bacon butty or two.

Hi Matt, from another new member. You'll love the CSG. Does your wife eat fish as cold smoked salmon is an absolute breeze to make and a real winner in my house.

Matt, a good rule of thumb I tend to,use is allow two days for every inch of thickness of the meat, plus two extra days for good luck. Ive always found this works for me and I've never had what an American friend of mine calls "a silver dollar" - the disappointing circle of uncured pork in the middle of the joint when you slice it.