Peter Dugmore - REALLY SIMPLE COLD SMOKING, BBQ AND SALT CURING AT HOME

REALLY SIMPLE

Cold Smoking, BBQ

& Salt Curing

AT HOME

by

Peter Dugmore

Cover Photo: Barbecue by alisdair: Flickr Creative Commons

Author's Note

WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN; WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT AND FOR WHOM IT IS INTENDED

As its title implies, Cold Smoking, BBQ & Salt Curing at Home is a book primarily about the techniques and methods of cooking and curing with smoke and salt simply ... economically ... and without having to leave the comfortable surroundings of one's own home or garden!

Its aim is to simplify the process for those who would like to prepare cured food all types of smoked and dry-cured food for themselves (but who may until now have had misgivings about their ability to do so), and to offer a whole range of new techniques and insights to those who are already familiar with the process (but who are looking significantly to up their game).

Foundational or "platform" recipes are offered for a wide spread of different foods, but more than most other books of its kind this book focuses on the equipment and accessories required to smoke or cure them.

The book identifies the unique characteristics (including regional characteristics) of different woods and fuels used in the food smoking process, and suggests the right fuel for the right application .

While it gives full, and detailed, coverage to traditional smoked foods like pork, beef, lamb, poultry and fish, the book also introduces a further range of smoked foods which could, for many readers, represent new and exciting food territory; foods like smoked fruit, nuts, dairy products (cheeses and butters), molluscs and other seafoods which are quite simply delicious!

In terms of its popularity particularly in the New World barbecue sits at the heart of all smoked food cooking.

But at the risk of being pilloried for heresy barbecue is not the only means of smoking food at home! Mention smoked foods in many parts of the world and people will automatically think of deli-style cold-smoked , or dry-cured , fish, meat and poultry (like smoked salmon and dry cured and country hams, bacons and sausages).

This is an aspect of home-smoking which doesn't feature strongly in many American books on smoke cookery and food curing. Yet it's generally less equipment-intensive and costly than barbecue, and not difficult to do. And the results are every bit as good as those you'll find on the cold counters of delis and charcuteries around the world at a small fraction of the cost!

One important aim in writing this book, then, is to de-mystify dry-curing and cold-smoking or smoke-curing of foods, and show how simple this style of food preparation is, and how comfortably within the capabilities of most people, at home!

Photos (l to r): H. Forman Smoked Salmon with Homemade Bagels by Beck (Girl Interrupted Eating); and Rendezvous-Hams by Southern Foodways Alliance: Flickr Creative Commons

That said, if one Googles "Top Ten American Foods" barbecue will almost certainly feature in the honours roll. Depending on the regional prejudices of the list compiler, the particular dish could vary from a Texas barbecued beef brisket, to a Kansas City pork sparerib to an Owensboro lamb shoulder with many other regional favourites in between. Barbecue , as a method of cooking however, is central to all of them and no book on food curing and smoking, like this one, could even think of leaving it out.

The appeal of barbecue is not limited to North America, either! Australia (where it's called "the barbie" ), South Africa ( "the braai" ) and a growing number of countries in parts of Europe and South America are increasingly adopting, modifying and experimenting with barbecue as a method of outdoor preparation of food, quite distinct from simply grilling.

To extend and hopefully bring new insights into the appeal barbecue has for Americans and to internationalise its appeal as one of the most varied and delicious ways of cooking (and socialising!) outdoors was another central motivation for writing the book.

Cold Smoking, BBQ & Salt Curing at Home is not a traditional, formulaic, recipe book in the sense of offering a compendium of smoked food recipes. Instead, it seeks to offer a "building-block approach " to recipe-creation.

The direction we have taken is to offer a generous, representative selection of "base" recipes, which cover most of the food types featured, and which provide a launch platform from which to create more complex and adventurous recipes of your own.

For a more detailed perspective, should you need it, we also provide links to smokehouse and barbecue recipe books we have personally enjoyed and can recommend.

(Our follow-up book in this series on smoked food cookery in which we hope you, the readers of the book, will collaborate will be a true recipe book in the sense in which the term is generally used).

For the most part, though, this current book concentrates on the technical aspectsof smoked and dry-cured food preparation, and as such will, we believe, have an appeal:

Firstly , for everyone who has an existing interest in cooking with smoke and salt as a method of preparing food, as well as everyone who is attracted to the idea and would like to learn more about it.

Cold Smoking, BBQ & Salt Curing at Home explores, in detail, not only what makes some woods and fuels better for one application, and others for other applications, but also which woods work best in different regions. It considers, in some depth, the different cuts of meat which are suitable for smoking, and the different methods of preparing foods prior to smoking or dry-curing them. (While our contention is that it's hard to imagine a cooked fish, meat or fowl that couldn't benefit from smoking, there are some which qualify for the tables of kings and potentates, while others probably do no more than top the menus of the Ritz and the Hilton!)

Illustrated charts are provided showing the major cuts of meat from each of the main animal groups pork, beef, lamb and venison.

The book breaks new ground in considering a spread of food types which are not generally associated with food smoking, and also provides a range of stock or "platform" recipes to cover them.

And it looks, in detail, at the advantages and disadvantages of a selection of different commercial home food smoking and dry-curing equipment pits, large vault and box smokers, vertical and water smokers, kettle and other grills even stove-top smokers suitable for the smallest apartment or loft balcony, or for a quick-smoked, no fuss, convenience meal you can rustle up in minutes.

Secondly , the book is for readers with rather more specialised interests like those who want to learn the specifics of dry-curing , and of cold-smoking , or salt and smoke-curing , as well as conventional hot-smoking (as distinct from barbecue).

A section of the book explores " emergency " food smoking for hikers, campers, hunters, fishermen and survivalists, who would like, while still in the wild, to smoke any bounty garnered from the outdoors, but who frequently don't have access to conventional (or any!) smoking equipment to do so.