Wade

Defrost them by placing them in the fridge overnight ready for the day they are needed. That is the Food Standards Agency recommended thawing method. After that add any marinade and leave them in in the fridge for 3 or 4 hours to flavour. Once cooked you will not be able to tell whether they were fresh or frozen.

Are you talking about the small cartilage bones? If so then don't worry Just treat it as you would normally. If it still has the rib bones in then just use a sharp knife to remove them then re-weigh the remaining belly meat and calculate the cure on the un-boned weight accordingly.

Great Part 2 For those new to bacon making, remember that the outside slices will be the saltiest and so do not let this put you off if you think they are too salty.

If the bottom vents are not sealing then you will will have a problem with temperature control. Firstly, are you using a Minion for the coals or are you starting off with them all lit? If the bottom vents are not sealing well then try using a little high temperature silicone grease underneath the vent slides. Most are rated to 200 C which will be fine for the vents. There are some available specifically for food use (e.g. "Foodlube") but this is very expensive. You can use a "normal" high temperature silicone grease on the vents though.

Hi Kev. Welcome. Which smoker did you buy?

Hi Nav. Welcome to the forum I totally agree with @Smokin Monkey - Your local Environmental Heath Officer will be your best friend if you talk to them early on. Several people have asked similar questions over the years and to start up a smoking business is not onerous if you are planning on selling directly to your customers. I have been running a smokery business for many years and here are a few tips to help you on your way... Decide on what your initial product offering is going to be. Do not try too many things to begin with or you will end up doing none of them well enough. Cook enough, and document each cook, so that your product is consistent. With most amateur smokers every smoke ends up slightly different - if you are offering a product every batch you sell to the customers needs to be consistent. Develop your own rubs and seasoning as this will differentiate your product. It will also be a lot cheaper than buying commercial products. There are plenty of good recipies out there and if you need help I can suggest some to start off with. You can then tweak these until you get your own distinct flavour brand. Keep a log of every smoke you do (this will be required by EHO anyway) and note any significant changes - e.g. meat supplier, temperature fluctuations, cook times, rubs used, unusual events. This will allow you to identify the reason for any variations between batches. Become as automated as you can. A smoker that can be digitally controlled will make life much easier than a back garden manual smoker. Once you have the product quality sorted, do some customer research on friends and family to make sure that you are producing a product that is not just your own personal taste ** Sort out how it will be packaged and labelled. You may need to invest in some form of packager/vacuum packer depending on what products you are selling - and also a label printer.. Talk to your local Environmental Health Officer - their contact number will be on your local borough council Web site. They like being consulted in the early stages and they will offer you some excellent free advice - which could save you a lot of wasted expenditure when you first start up. With them as your friends your life will be so much more straightforward. Make sure that you have a suitable food hygiene qualification. You should have more than the minimum level 1 certificate - a Level 2 is OK but they will be impressed if you have a level 3. These are not expensive and can be taken as online courses. Read and inwardly digest the Food Standard Agencies publication "Safer Food, Better Business, For Caters" https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/sfbb-caterers-pack.pdf. Your local EHO will give you a copy of this and it is what they will be assessing you against. Meet all the criteria in this booklet and you will be getting your 5* food hygiene certificate for your door. The certificate is awarded by your EHO and is often required by event organisers before they will allow you to sell at their event - so it is worth getting a good rating. Have some of each of your product Lab Tested for bacterial safety testing. It isnt expensive and I would be happy to help you out with this if you dont want to set yourself up with your own account. Again, this is something that your EHO will ask you about Do not expect it to make you a fortune from day 1... or day 2... or day x. It is something that you need to scale up over time. ** I was once asked to produce smoked Feta cheese. I disliked it and so didn't produce it regularly. It turned out to be one on my biggest sellers at certain events I attended. One of my favourite products just did not sell well at all. I hope this helps and I am happy to provide more assistance if you need it. Cheers, Wade

Why not make your own pickled (fermented) cucumbers - they are really easy to do. https://www.woodsmokeforum.uk/topic/199-pickles/?tab=comments#comment-878 This is the way pickling was done before we could pop down the supermarket and buy bottles of Sarsons 😁.

The video is a good guide but there are some things to bear in mind There are several types of Kilner jar - one with the big rubber seal and the other with the two part screw lid - round metal cover and a screw top. The ones with the big rubber seal are more heat sensitive than the ones with the screw lid. The screw lid jars are designed to be used in pressure canners (pressure cookers / retorts) and will happily reach temperatures up to 115-120 C. The ones with the rubber seals will not - the rubber seals anyway. Simply boiling the rubber seals would not have sterilised them - though we have to consider the relative risk of what was likely to be on the rubber and what she was preserving.. She is making chutney - which by its very nature is acidic, is high in sugar and has a low water activity. This itself will act to preserve the mix and inhibit spore growth. She did not mention anything about sterilising the transfer jug or the ladle. Again not a problem in this case - but if she was preserving a low acidity, low in sugar and high in water food (e.g. Salmon or vegetables) then this is more likely to be a problem for long term storage. For low acidity foods I always sterilise in my pressure canner but for things like chutney or jams I just use the oven method. 120 C for 30 minutes is sufficient to sterilise but 160 C for a shorter time will also do the job but will be more harmful to the jar seals.

That looks lovely. If you want to more flavour then you will need to add some nitrite (Cure#1) in your next cure. The Nitrite isn't there only as a microbiological control, it is what gives ham its traditional pink colour and the ham/bacon flavour. Without the Nitrite then you effectively have salt pork. To add even more flavour then follow the Christmas Gammon recipe for creating a flavoured brine for the cure. At Christmas I sell as much of this as I can realistically make. You can vary the flavouring you use but this recipe gives a nice subtle balanced flavour. I only call it my Christmas Gammon because I mostly only make it at Christmas (not because it tastes of turkey and mince pies !!) - it is good to have at any time of the year.

In order to truly sterilise the jars you need to get them up to about 115 C. Boiling water at 100 C does not kill all spore and can be hazardous. Also, depending on how big your pan is, it can mean only doing a few jars at a time. The most effective way of sterilising jars is to wash them thoroughly then place them on a baking tray in the oven set at ~120 C with the lids LOOSELY rested on the top. Leave them in the oven for 30 minutes then let them cool. Once cool enough to handle you can then start to fill them. Leave any unused jars in the oven to cool down and then you can tighten the lids fully and they will stay sterile for use next time. Depending on your size of oven, this way you can sterilise 20-30 jars at a time.

The difficult balance with salmon and trout is finding the method that removes the water but does not leave the fish salty. As you found out, with larger fillets (e.g. Salmon) these are more forgiving than the, usually, smaller trout fillets. You want to use the minimum amount of salt necessary to do the job but have it in contact with the fish for as little time as possible. When I first started to cure salmon and trout I found that it was almost always too salty and so I looked to the commercial smoked salmon producers for advice. When the salt removes the water from the fish the secret is to remove the resulting brine from being in contact with the fish as quickly as possible. If you place the fish in the salt then it has nowhere to drain to - it is better to place the salt on the surfaces of the fish and as it is curing allow the brine produced to drain away. You actually need fairly little salt on the fish to do the work - cover the surface of the fish with a fine grain salt/sugar cure and then lift up the fillet and shake gently. What remains on the surface if the fish is sufficient. Salmon I usually leave curing for 24 hours but trout only for 18. Next to continue the drying process you place it in the smoker at ~20-24 C for ~18 hours with good air flow across the surfaces of the fillet. This warm air flow is what removes the remainder of the water - not the salt. When giving it the Gin and Tonic flavour be wary about using actual gin because the high alcohol content can affect the texture of the fish. Try using juniper berries in a crisp white wine instead. Go sparing on the juniper berries though as they can easily become overpowering. The mix of the white wine and the juniper gives a very acceptable flavour of "Gin and Tonic"

Hi Gooders Just be careful of some of the celebrity curing books. Most will not use Nitrite in curing for risk of litigation and offset this by increasing the amount of salt. Sometimes this works but other times it doesn't. Small amounts of "mould" on the surface will not normally be a problem. Sometimes you get a cloudiness in the brine which can result in "strings" forming. This is not ideal but when this happens it is time to wash off your meat. A few specs of mould on the surface will not usually be a problem - scoop them out if you see them appear. Also check the brine by giving it the "sniff test". Your nose is very sensitive to microbiological decay smells. If is smells bad/off then discard it. If it has no smell or smells just a little musty then it should be fine. When brining you do need to keep it cool though. If the bucket will not fit in your fridge then place the pork and brine into a large plastic bag, squeeze to remove the air then seal the top. It can then sit in bowl and it takes up much less space. Another alternative is ask someone if they have a spare fridge you could borrow. As you had boned your pork leg the brine will have had a larger surface area through which it can penetrate so you will probably find that the 10 days is sufficient. From what you describe, providing the brine does not smell "off" then you should be fine if the brine was strong enough. An alternative method is to make up your cure as if you were dry curing and dissolve it in water that weighs 1/10th of the weight of the meat. Inject this into the pork and place the pork into a plastic bag. Any brine that does not stay in the meat, add to the bag before sealing it. The pork will cure within a few days and this is a great method for pork on the bone. This method shows how this is done - you don't need to flavour the brine though. Let us know how you get on Wade

Are you looking for a gravadlax style of trout or are you looking to do a traditional smoke?

You need to look for the densest briquettes you can find as they will usually burn hotter. Not a definitive test - but if you drop one from head height onto a stone slab and it bounces without breaking then it will be quite dense. If it splits or shatters then it isn't likely to be good quality. Also look in the bottom of the bag they came in. You will always get a little, but if you see a lot of charcoal powder in the bottom then it it an indication of poor quality briquettes.

If you are using the Supracure from Weschenfelder, unless they have changed the recipe recently you will be producing bacon at 5% salt - which is way too high for most peoples tastes. It has another downside too - it uses not only Sodium Nitrite but also Potassium Nitrate. Potassium nitrate is banned in the USA for bacon production and, whilst it isnt banned, it is also not recommended by the EU for bacon production in Europe. When I last checked a couple of years ago the amount of ingoing Nitrite that it put in the bacon was also 2 x both the US and EU commercial limits for bacon production. Producing your own cure is the best way. The basic cure mix is very easy to make up and you can tweak the salt and sugar content between batches to get it to your personal liking. Also you can adjust the flavours. I would start off with a 2.5% salt and 1.25% sugar with Nitrite at 150 mg/kg. For the base cure mix, for each 1 Kg of meat you would require 2.4 grams of Cure #1 22.6 grams of salt - which with the salt in the Cure#1 will achieve levels of 2.5% 12.5 grams sugar - this helps to balance out the salt taste The amount of flavouring is approximately 10 grams per Kg of meat. Here is a link you may find helpful https://www.woodsmokeforum.uk/topic/301-using-nitrite-and-nitrate-safely-when-curing/ If you drop me your address in PM I will hapily sort you out with your first batch of Cure #1 Wade

The best briquettes I use are Heat Beads - they give out a lot of heat over a long period of time - especially when used as a minion. Some who are not used to the fact that they take a little longer to light say they dont get on with them, but for long cooks I have not found anything to beat them. Weber briquettes are good too, so are some of the formed and cube briquettes. What you are looking for are briquettes with high density. https://www.bbqworld.co.uk/weber-barbecues/accessories/australian-heat-beads-4kg-bag.asp https://www.bbqworld.co.uk/weber-barbecues/accessories/weber-briquettes-8kg.asp https://www.pubshop.co.uk/catalogue/restaurant-grade-briquettes-charcoal-10kg-cm827-p-77089.html

Check the thermometer first by placing the tip into boiling water for a ninute or so - it should read 100 C +- a degree or two. What fuel are you using in your offset? If it is not too far out you may also need to look at the fuel you are using and try something that burns a little hotter.

I am a Bexley boy myself. Lived in Joydens Wood from the age of 5 and went to Dartford Tech - now Wilmington Grammar. Currently living near Tenterden in Kent. You cannot go wrong with either a WSM or a ProQ . If you need tips on temperature control just shout.

When initially reviewing the Callow I noticed that the lid thermometer was way out so I tested the thermometers that were in several other brands. I also ordered a selection (~10) of different manufacturers thermometers to test from different places online. Guess what - they were also very inaccurate - even the Weber thermometers. The only way to go is to use a digital thermometer - preferably dual probe.

It all looks delicious . Great use of space for indirect cooking on the BBQ too.

Hi Ashley and welcome to the forum. Where in Kent are you? What are you intending on smoking and for how many people - and will it be both hot and cold smoking? There are some good all-rounders and we can certainly guide you in the right direction.

Good looking ribs

Looks good . The main area to seal is the smoking chamber lid - but dont get too paranoid if you still see a little smoke escaping from there.

Just to clarify this a little... The cooks on the WSM and the ProQ work out equally well. The reason I prefer the ProQ is because you can split the smoker body to get easy access to the bottom cooking rack. Purely for convenience during a cook.

Before you make any mods to it you should cook with it a few times - to see if you actually need any. Some sealing tape around the door is often good but see how will the door seals on its own before you do that - a little smoke being lost around the door isnt a major problem.