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Hello from Yorkshire


Wet Spaniel

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Morning,

thanks to Wade for pointing me in the direction of this site.  I'm a keen smoker and curer based in the Yorkshire Dales.  I fell in love with barbecue after a visit to southern Georgia.  I mostly have been smoking on a diy smoker and a ProQ excel but have also just bought a char broil electric smoker.  My goal is to build my own reverse flow smoker....once I've learned to weld!!!

i also enjoy shooting and fishing really like curing the fish I've caught or processing the meat I shoot.  I've currently got some venison salami in the man fridge from a red deer taken in Scotland a short while back, and some Sumer sausage from the same beast that is in the freezer as my 8 year old demolishes it if I leave it in the fridge.

Apart from meat, I really love beer too - I have a diy 100 litre real ale home brewery which has been in storage for a couple of years, it's new home, a workshop in the garden is currently under construction and I'm keen to get back into production.

im looking forward to picking up some top tips, and hopefully, maybe I can pass on some things I've picked up along the way too.

all the best

 

Jonty

Edited by Wet Spaniel
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Hi Jonty and welcome to the forum. 

The ProQ Excel is a great all round smoker. It is good for both hot and cold smoking.

It sounds as if you are never short of meat or fish. You mentioned that you hunt deer in Scotland, Is this something that you do regularly? I bet you get some funny looks coming back down the M1 with them tied to the bonnet of your car :thumb1:

What fish do you usually cure and how do you cure them. I smoke a lot of salmon and trout. There is a growing interest in the UK for home curing and smoking which is very encouraging. Do you make your own bacon or maybe tried making Venison bacon?

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Hi Wade, a plasterers bath in the back of the pickup saves a lot of strange looks on the trip back down south.  I lease some land (with a small group of others) on the west coast , I only get up there once or twice a year which doesn't make it the most cost effective venison, but it is very satisfying to have taken the beast literally from field to fork so to speak.  I've not made venison bacon but usually make salami, bresaola, summer sausage and jerky, the rest gets (rather badly) butchered into joints, steaks, mince and casserole.

i smoke quite a few salmon (especially this time of year) for friends, mainly farmed as I am not such a great salmon fisherman and if I do get one, I prefer to put it back, same for trout, I'll maybe take a wild one every once in a while.  Where we stay in Scotland is very good for mackerel fishing and I will stock up on them, they are brilliant hot smoked.  My salmon/trout curing is pretty similar to yours in the post on here, maybe 2/3 salt to 1/3 sugar for 12-24 hours and then I use a pro q cold smoke generator which I think is a great piece of kit.

i do make bacon, started with shop bought cure till I realised it wasn't the dark art that I first thought so now make my own, same with the charcuterie, hopefully if I can, I'd be happy to help anyone else get their heads round it - but I suspect I'm in pretty good company already on that front.

I've just had a call to say that my new char broil smoker will be delivered on Friday so I suspect my first picture posts may be of something shiny!!

cheers Jonty 

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1 hour ago, Wet Spaniel said:

I do make bacon, started with shop bought cure till I realised it wasn't the dark art that I first thought so now make my own, same with the charcuterie, hopefully if I can, I'd be happy to help anyone else get their heads round it - but I suspect I'm in pretty good company already on that front.

That is great. We welcome all advice and support on here for people who are just starting out. Please feel free to give us the benefit of your experience whenever you feel it is appropriate. :thumb1:.   As you know, although there are wrong ways to cure there is no single right way - so it is always good for folks to hear the different methods that people use.

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