JamesF

From the website it looks as though the cure and seasoning contain salt, sodium nitrite, sugar and lemon pepper. I can't see that's likely to have degraded much. The pepper might not be quite as zingy as it once was, but otherwise I think it should be fine. James

This time next year Rodney, we'll be millionaires! James

My completed tea light "spoon" James

Test run of around an hour completed today. It was a bit tricky to get things started as the wind is still gusting a fair bit. Living on top of a hill doesn't help I also spent another fifteen minutes in the workshop bodging up this from a scrap of galvanised steel sheet. Not a brilliant photo, so perhaps its purpose is clearer here: I know the usual hack is to put a screw through the side of the tea light, but I've not found that very satisfactory. My experience is that they start leaking around the screw, or the screw comes loose and the tea light flops about. The actual tea light containers appear to be barely any better than tinfoil these days. It's a huge improvement, but not quite perfect as the entire thing conducts heat quite well and gets as hot as the wax. I think the next stage is to fold a "step" into the handle part and use it as a tang to fit a small piece of dowel on for a heatproof handle. James

Thank you. I do have a couple of racks with smaller spacing but I need to take the angle grinder to them first. Clearly they came from a slightly larger oven I like the idea of using the mesh though. We have some sheets so I'll give them a go. James

I have to keep my ProQ Eco smoker in the greenhouse because, fairly obviously, it honks of smoke, which doesn't go down too well with the lady of the house if it is left indoors. The greenhouse specifically because I'm the only one who goes in there, so no-one is going to go piling stuff on top of it or anything like that. Unfortunately it seems that some snails developed a bit of a taste for cardboard over the last few months and the box is no longer as sound as it once was. Over the Christmas period I have therefore been scavenging in my scrap wood piles, hunted down a few other bits and pieces that I'd put to one side because I knew I'd find a use for them one day, and have come up with this, absolutely no expense spent. The standard ProQ smoke generator slides into the wooden runners at the bottom and since taking the photos I've added some supports for the drip tray. Overall it has a capacity of around 100 litres, probably about the same as a fairly standard UK electric oven which may not come as a great surprise given that an oven is where the racks came from If the weather calms down a bit I shall attempt an empty test run tomorrow and if that's successful we'll be buying cheese to smoke over the weekend. James

It's doing ok so far. I am slightly concerned that in a longer smoke (when I recently did some salmon) overnight, the outer cardboard tube felt slightly damp in the morning when there had been no rain, but it seemed to dry out ok once I'd put it back in the greenhouse (where I'm keeping it for the time being as it still smells too much of smoke to want to keep in the house). For what it is I certainly can't complain about how it performs, but I can see a day coming in the not too distance future when I'll build my own cabinet, possibly to fit the racks etc. that are in the eco smoker. The one possible niggle not specific to the eco smoker is the use of the tea light to start the dust burning. I've seen the trick with putting a screw into the side to be able to move it in and out and used that, but then found that when it burnt down far enough the wax leaked out around the screw. It's also a bit awkward to get lit if there's any kind of breeze (usually the case around here as we're on quite an exposed site). I'm thinking I might 3D-print a holder for the tea light to make it easier to slide in and out, and perhaps chop a piece out of the side of a tin can to allow it to be used as a shield whilst lighting the candle. Oh, I have also discovered that tea lights are not all the same size. Some of ours are too tall and won't fit James

And here's the result. Taste is perhaps just a little too smoky at the moment on the outside, so although it's at the bottom end of the desired weight loss I'm not going to put it back in the smoker for any longer. Perhaps it would have been more had the air temperature not dropped quite so low when it was smoking (it was -4.6°C at dawn, according to the weather station). It feels dry though, and the pieces are firm but tender. I'm going to give it a couple of days in the fridge to allow the smoke to diffuse through the flesh and try it again. Might have it for lunch with some scrambled eggs from the chickens. James

Not really sure what I'm doing here, but my wife came back from Lidl this morning with an extra 500g of salmon fillet cut into three strips. Apparently it was due to turn toxic and kill anyone who so much as looked at it as soon as the clock strikes midnight tomorrow and they were getting rid of it cheap, so she thought she'd buy it for me to experiment with. I'm thinking a salt/sugar cure for tomorrow, then rinse and dry it and leave it overnight in the fridge and aiming for perhaps ten hours in the cold smoker the following day. Not decided what wood to use yet either. James

I thought I'd give some apple-smoked halloumi a go today (together with a couple of pieces of spare cheddar). I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, to be honest. I patted the cheese dry before cutting it into smaller blocks and putting them in the smoker, but by the time I took them out after three hours they'd got a bit "sweaty" again. Enough to leave obvious moisture marks on the chopping board I put them on when I took them out. Before and after: I'm wondering if it might be better to take the halloumi out of its packet and just leave it open in the fridge overnight before smoking or something like that. James

Cool. Background about the reason for sale is always helpful. Another interest of mine has a reasonably active used market for items with four-figure values and the level of attempted scamming is quite unbelievable so I'm always very cagey about near identical ads, especially from posters with little or no history. James

You know, when I read this post from a first-time poster and then look at this one from just a couple of months back, I can't help feeling that there's something not quite kosher going on.

The local butcher sells an apple-smoked cheddar, so we're definitely going to compare the two in a few weeks time. I'm quite excited by the prospect. I think I'd say that if you aren't able to make a small smoker yourself and/or you need something that can be packed away when it's not being used then the eco smoker is probably not a bad choice. If you have the skills to build your own then I'm not so sure as compromises have obviously had to be made to achieve the goals of creating a low-price smoker cabinet that would encourage people to try it out. For instance, having to open up the top and lift out the trays every time you want to load/unload it will clearly lead to wear and tear over time. The flap at the bottom sometimes pops open on mine, too so control of the air flow is a bit irregular and smoke does leak out from gaps around the folds and tabs. Ideally it also needs to be kept indoors to prevent the cardboard getting damp or being damaged, but the smoky smell is a bit too much to want in the house for a while after the smoking is done. I've left mine in the greenhouse for a few days to "air" before bringing it back indoors. I'd be quite apprehensive about trying an overnight smoke, too. Those issues could be eliminated in a DIY version. The other "compromise" of course is that you can't use it for hot smoking, but we know it's not intended for that in the first place. None of which is intended as any particular criticism of the product. I think it achieves what's intended and I'm happy to have been given it. It's plenty big enough to try out smoking bacon and fish as long as you don't get too ambitious size-wise and I reckon it could quite easily keep up with cheese consumption for the average family as well as being able to try a few other things too. I'm already looking forward to my next attempt. Some sort of fish is definitely quite tempting. Haddock certainly appeals. I do enjoy a nice kedgeree. James

Just kicked off the second attempt using apple dust. Only I don't have all the cheese in that I'd planned. Some of it has "disappeared" from the fridge and no-one seems to know where... James

All done now. Before and after a smidge over three hours in the smoker... The pieces on the right are Tesco own-brand extra mature cheddar and on the left is Pilgrim's Choice mature cheddar. I can't say I really know what they're like even before smoking as we normally buy our cheese from the local butcher (where else?). The smoke generator didn't burn as far as I expected. This was after a little over three hours with ProQ's beech dust. The blocks of cheese are now in the fridge and tomorrow evening I'll vacuum pack them. If it doesn't rain I might also have a go with a different flavour of wood dust and the remainder of the cheese (above is only half of what I bought). My preference is to try apple, but if the rest of the family clearly vote for something different then I'll go with that instead. James