Wade

Looking forward to hearing and seeing how you get on When you come to taste it, dont forget that the end slice will taste saltier than the rest of the bacon as the whole surface will have been exposed to the cure.

Hi and welcome to the forum. There is nothing wrong with being loyal to Weber - you usually pay a little more but the quality is always good. You can do most things in even a basic Weber kettle that you can do in most other smokers - You just need to get creative with the charcoal and baffles. Looking forward to hearing about and seeing what you are smoking Wade

You wimp. A bit of rain is good for the soul. 😎 I will be doing a turkey butterfly again this year in the smoker. I also have some Christmas spiced gamon curing as well. I dont usually bother making my own sausages for Christmas but with all the time we have I may get some made. I will also start the smoked salmon at the end of next week so it wll be ready for Christmas and also New Year.

There is no hard and fast rule regarding the cold smoking temperatures though some are practical maximums and others are safety maximums. Some are a combination of both. Butter - thgis needs to be smoked at a temperature where the butter does not soften enough to melt through the grate. Anywhere from 8 C to about 12 C is fine. Be careful though where you place the smoke generator as it does produce quite a bit of heat in a confined space and can quickly raise the temperature by several degrees. Cheese - fine up to about 15 C. Much above that and it may start to sweat Bacon - best smoked at between 8-12 C. In the summer this can be a challenge and so smoking overnight when it is generally cooler is best. If smoking for more than 8 hours, dont forget that you can smoke ovenight, place back in the fridge during the day, then smoke again the following night. Fish - this depends on the type of fish and how it has been prepared. With Salmon and trout that have been salt cured you are generally trying to dehydrate at the same time you are smoking. This is best done at about 20-22 C with a good air/smoke flow over the fish surfaces. Nuts - these do not really matter. I take them straight out of the smoke roaster and into the cold smoker. The inside of the smoker often reaches 40+ C before it starts to cool down Do not worry about a little temperature fluctuation but try to keep it as constant as possible

Hi Amy and welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear that you are the unexpected guest of our colonial friends ... which part of Canada are you in. Looking forward to hearing more from you when you get time Wade

Don't be sorry to ask questions. The only pointless questions are the ones that DONT get asked. We are here to help people to gain confidence - we have all had to start at some point and needed exactly the same reassurances.

It is perfectly safe to eat as the salt and cure levels are fine. After that it us down to personal taste. The sugar is there mainly to balance out the flavour of the salt - how much you add (within reason) is down to your personal taste. It is like making a cup of tea 🍵... some people don't take sugar whereas others will take 4+ heaped teaspoons. In my opinion adding any sugar at all to a cup of tea makes it undrinkable but it does not mean that it isn't safe to drink 🥴

Hi Chae As a general rule you should be looking at about 2.5% salt, so by using a total of 30g salt (27.5g + 2.5 g) your salt content at 3% is fine. If it is a little salty you can take this down a little next time. The amount of Cure#1 is fine too. For the sugar you should be looking at using half the %age of sugar to salt - therefore in your recipe you would only need around 13 g of sugar in total. If you are then going to use either treacle or maple syrup as well, you need to reduce the other sugar levels. Weigh the treacle or maple syrup before adding any sugar and if it is more than 13g then omit the sugar completely. Some people like a bitter sweet treacle taste on their bacon and so add more treacle - but to start with you are best to try a straight swap of sugar for treacle the first time, then adjust higher or lower for the next batch. I know that the term "Pink Salt" is used alot in other countries, however it is a term best avoided in the UK when talking about curing. It is called pink salt in the USA because they add a pink dye so that it isnt mistaken for pure sodium chloride. In the UK is is very rare to find it with the dye and is almost always white. Unfortunately when reading recipes some beginners assume that "pink salt" and "Himalayan Pink Salt" are the same - so to avoid any confusion it is safer to refer to it as Cure#1 or Prague Powder #1.

Let us know the recipe you used and we can help you adjust it so that you do not have the same problem next time. If you were using a cure mix then let us know which one it was. Cheers, Wade

You would be surprised how much heat the smoke generator creates when in a confined space like the barrel of a ProQ. With harder foods like cheese this often isnt a problem (though it can still make it sweat). Butter is slightly different though as, even if it becomes only slightly softened you are likely to find it slipping slowly through the gaps between the grate bars. The only way to really check in your environment is to give it a go. A £1 bag of ice from Tesco placed in the water pan would not break the bank though.

Whilst I am running down the commercial side of it now that I am retired, Woodchurch Smokery has been a commercial smokery for 10+ years. Over that period of time you do tend to smoke quite a lot of different things in bulk.

I smoke the cheese for 3 hours in my offset smoker but in the larger fridge smoker the smoke is less dense and I find it needs 4 hours. Ir really depends on the size of your smoker and the smoke generator that you are using. Smoke butter just like cheese. I used to have a restaurant that I smoked it for in quantity. An important difference to smoking cheese is that you need to keep the smoking chamber cooler. Smoke as whole pats of butter (250g). Place on wire racks in the smoker and do the smoke in the evening when it is cooler. Place a large tray of ice under the butter to stop the heat from the smoke generator softening the bottom butter layer. Smoke for 3-4 hours (or to taste), vac pack and leave in fridge for a week before using to allow the smoke flavours to penetrate the butter.

About 4 hours

Here are some of my fresh mozzarella balls smoking alongside some cheddar

They do smoke - but not well. With many of the stronger blue cheeses the smoke flavour competes with the flavour of the cheese rather than compliment it.

Mozzarella is a soft cheese and you need to be careful when smoking it. There are two main types of Mozzarella - fresh and hard. The fresh mozzarellas are sold in bags of brine (often used in salads) and the hard mozzarellas are sold vacuum packed (usually used on pizzas). When you see smoked mozzarellas on the American forums they are usually using the hard version and this can be smoked just like cheddar. The fresh mozzarellas need a little more preparation as they contain a high water content and fresh mozzarella usually has a "use by" date whereas hard cheese usually has a "best before" date. When chosing the type of fresh mozzarella to smoke ensure that it is made with pasteurised milk. Some are made with raw unpasteurised milk and these have a higher risk of Listeria when stored. The first thing to do is to remove as much of the water as possible. Place the balls in a fine muslin and gently squeeze. Place them over a container in the fridge and allow to drain for 24 hours - giving a gentle squeeze every couple of hours or so. You can smoke them on a grate but many make a simple string cradle for them using butchers string and hang them in the smoker. When smoking keep the smoker cool and keep air passing over the cheese to help it lose more water. It can then be hung in the fridge for a couple of days to let the smoke flavour penetrate and to lose more water. The smoked fresh mozarella will keep for several weeks - the more water you can remove the longer it will keep. Do not try to mature it as you would hard cheese. If you are wanting to store it, use the hard mozarella.

It is that time again and we should be thinking about getting things ready for Christmas. There is a lot that we will need to wait until nearer the time, but there are a number of things we can start now. Bacon It would be a good time to get your bacon started so that the smoke has time to fully penetrate. Smoked Nuts Dont wait until the last minute - get those nuts out of the way will in advance. Cheese Dont leave it much longer before smoking your cheese. It really improves the flavour having a few weeks resting after it has been smoked. Things to start thinking about in early December Gamon Make sure that you have your injector ready and you have checked that it still works. Be ready to start your Christmas gamon in early December Smoked salmon You should be preparing to get this started the 3rd week of December. What are others getting ready to help cheer up this Christmas?

I have now finished watching all of the episodes and I think it was a great series. It shows the practicalities of real word general BBQ in an informative and entertaining way. I am sure that a lot of us have cooked for a crowd of family and friends with time running out, suddenly remembering that you have forgotton to start one of the dishes and at the last minute having to create and cook a completely separate dish for the surprise vegan guest who is allergic to celery!!! It also showed that it is possible to produce great BBQ without having to follow the BBQ world established "norms" of temperature and time. In many ways the program reminded me of our national smoking weekends just before the turn it deadline. 😱

Have just started watching it - now on episode 3. Really enjoying it. Yes, it is showing the contestants that are one-horse-ponys but at least they have judges that have real world experience of cooking BBQ. I love the ingredients they are being given and (so far) there have been some good real world challenges. Looking forward to seeing more.

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Turan is a great guy with a lot of knowledge. I have met him at several of the BBQ events and I like most of the recipes in his book. Some of his recipes I find end up a little too salty but they are some of the best starter recipes that I know of. As with any smoking, there may be wrong ways of doing things but there is no single right way. We all start from different positions and refine our methods until we end up with something that we really like.

A nice straightforward method I dip mine in a smoked salt brine and then add powered smoked salt before roasting. It helps to bind the salt flavour to the nuts without making them oily. Would love to try yours sometime. It is great to see how others do things. Wade

Was the Prague Powder #1 or #2. Also can you confirm that it contained 6.25% Sodium Nitrite. Assuming it was #1 at 6.25% Nitrite then you have applied just under 30 mg/Kg of Nitrite to the meat (30 ppm). The maximum level permitted commercially is 150 mg/Kg though it has found to still be effective at 50 mg/Kg. You are still significantly below this level. With bacon, although the Nitrite is used to provide some bacterial protection, its main purpose is as a flavouring and also to inhibit the rancidification of the fat. From what you have described it should be safe to eat - though ensure that it passes the "sniff test". You will be able to tell if the fat has started to go off. I suggest that you eat it quickly and freeze what you cannot eat straight away. The marks from the rack will be fine - just cut them off.

You should only store the cured/smoked salmon in the fridge for a maximum of 10 days. Longer than that and it should be frozen. Even frozen it will only last for about a month before it starts to become opaque. I am required to have my commercial smoked salmon lab tested for shelf life and, when vacuum packed and kept refrigerated, it is technically safe to eat (from a purely bacteria count level) for up to a month. If stored for longer than 10 days though, the risk is from the c.butulinum spores. Most fish will have the botulinum bacteria and spores in their gills and this will cross-contaminate the meat when the fish is filleted. This isn't usually a problem as there are botulinum bacteria all around us in every day life and they don't usually have the right environment in which to produce toxin so usually do us no harm. The problems begin when any of the spores are packed in an oxygen reduced/free environment at neutral pH - this is when they slowly start to produce the botulinum toxin. Vacuum packing is ideal for this to happen. Unfortunately there is currently no practical, cost-effective, food safety lab test for botulinum toxin and so we have to rely on laboratory modelling. The UK FSA, American FDA and European EFSA give similar advice that, when vacuum packed, the levels of any toxin produced will be below human toxicity levels if eaten within 10 days. This obviously also has a safety margin, however with something like botulinum toxin it is not worth taking the risk. Usually we eat fresh fish within a few days before it goes off, however we also cure it which helps to extend its usable shelf life. As we eat the cured smoked salmon and gravlax raw this is where we see the highest risk. If eaten within 10 days then it is safe - store it for longer then the risk will increase exponentially. To kill the botulinum spores the fish would need to be heated to at least 115 C for about 15 minutes (pressure cooked). Any toxin can also be broken down by heating to above 85 C for at least 5 minutes but this would then not be gravlax or smoked salmon. Stick to a maximum of 10 days at <= 4 C and you will be fine.

The straight answer is to use the "best before" date as your guide. The real world answer is that the harder the cheese the longer it will keep- and vacuum packing will certainly help. With cheese the main risk is listeria. Whilst commercially packed cheese will be produced in a listeria free environment, deli cut cheese can be subsequently cross contaminated from the soft cheeses made with unpasteurised milk. Factory packed cheddar and red leicester should be fine for up to a year in the fridge but make sure that after smoking it you have allowed the surface to fully dry before you pack it - smoking can make the cheese surfaces quite moist and this moisture could assist the growth of bacteria cross contamination at home. The softer edam/gouda has a higher water content however it is also made from pasteurised milk so when packed in the factory (or still fully wax covered) you can treat it the same as the cheddar. Be careful about possible contamination at home though when cutting. The action of smoking will help to inhibit bacterial growth, however the amounts of smoke deposited on the cheese will not inhibit it completely. Be very wary of smoking soft cheeses or cheeses made with unpasteurised milk. These will usually have a "use by" date and you should adhere to this. There are exceptions (e.g. soft mozzarella) but you need to ensure that your smoking process also sufficiently reduces its water content. When unpacking the smoked cheese before eating, you should do a couple of simple tests. If any mould has developed, or it has developed any unexpected sharp smells, then I would discard it. These are rare and are usually a result of the cheese not being dry before being vacuum packed. Botulinum spores also like moist, oxygen-free environments. Its presence is rare in factory procesed hard cheeses but they can be present in processed or sliced cheeses. This makes it technically possible as a cross contaminant when slicing the cheese at home before smoking. The more acidic the cheese the less likely botulinum toxin will be produced.