Meat smokers and smokehouses
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Smokers and Smokehouses
Meat smokers and smokehouses are used to smoke products like meat, sausages,
poultry or fish.
The properly designed meat smoker must:
• Generate smoke (cold and hot)
• Be able to achieve and maintain desired temperatures inside
• Be able to cook the product to the required inside meat temperature, most
often 152° - 160° F (67°-72° C).
This last cooking requirement can be performed outside of a smoker by
poaching meat in hot water or baking it in the oven. The sophistication of
the device is unimportant; smoke can be created in both a 55-gallon drum
smoker and a home made box. Some meats are cooked in a smoker to make them
ready to eat, while some will only receive a smoky flavor and will be taken
out for prolonged periods of air-drying.
The design of a smoker remains relatively easy unless cooking meats or
sausages to the ready to eat temperature is a requirement. But why cook a
sausage in a smoker? This task can be accomplished much faster and more
easily by heating the sausage in water. Baking in an oven is also an option
as long as the temperature can be kept as low as 170° F (76° C). Heating
sausages in water is not a trick or shortcut, but an acceptable and even
proper way of preparing sausages for centuries. Boiled ham can be found in
every supermarket. If we boil the best hams in the world, then why not
sausage? Well, we do, some of the best sausages from Europe are first smoked
in a smoker, and then finished by poaching them in water at about 176° F
(80° C).
Keep in mind that we don’t use the word “boil” when heating meat inside a
pot full of water. We use “heat” to stress the fact that the water must be
kept at 158°-176° F (70°-90° C), and not at its boiling point, which is 212°
F (100° C). You could bring home smoked meats (not cooked yet) and place
them directly in a freezer. Then later, when needed, they can be thawed and
poached in water. When smoking meats with a separate fire pit/smoke
generator, we have more time to enjoy ourselves because we don’t have to
check the temperature so often. If the plan is to eat the sausage within a
matter of days, it doesn’t make much of a difference whether we smoke with
cold, warm, or hot smoke.
However, we are playing a completely different game if we use the smoker to
smoke and cook the meat. Now outside temperatures become important factors. The smoker
may need some insulation to maintain appropriate temperatures, especially
during the colder months.
Holding internal temperatures of 152° – 160° F (67°-72° C) can be difficult
in cold climates when the smoker is situated outside. Maintaining
temperatures by burning wood in a 55 gallon metal drum is a hit or miss
proposition. The best solution, which is incidentally used in commercial
smokers, is to rely less on the smoke generator or fire pit as our only
heating source, but to install a second independent heat source.
The heating process is now shared by two separate components:
• a fire pit to generate smoke
• an electrical heating element or gas burner to generate heat
By using two components we can produce a quality product in any climate. A
metal drum, unless insulated, is still a poor choice in hard winters, but
anything built with brick or thick wood is fine.
It should be noted that the whole design changes drastically when there is a
supply of electricity. With a stand-alone fire pit, we can use a barbecue
starter wire for heating wood chips or sawdust until they start producing
smoke. Inside the smoker we can place an electric heating element to supply
heat with a turn of the dial. By adding a thermostat to the arrangement, we
can preset the temperature of a smoker. A gas burner can also be used as a
source of heat.
Every smoker, no matter how simple or sophisticated, consists of the
following parts:
• a source of smoke (fire pit)
• a smoking chamber, any device or enclosure that will confine smoke inside
• sticks, hooks or screens (hardware used to hang the meat in the smoking
chamber)
•
draft controls (dampers)
The most important parts are the smoke generator (fire
pit) and smoke chamber. They could be part of the same unit or they could
stand separately. For example, a drum smoker can be placed over a fire pit
or it can be placed on a lower level connected by a metal pipe with a
separate fire pit to aid smoke flow.
Smoker with a fire pit inside (one unit smoker)
Wood fired smoker
Using firewood to slowly bring the temperature to 170° F (76° C) and
maintain it at that level for about 30 minutes is extremely difficult.
Irregular sizes of wood need to be constantly added on. One moment of
negligence and the temperature soars over 200° F. Without a safety
baffle, this can be disastrous for a smoker. All the fat inside the
sausage will melt, leak through the casings, and drop on the small
flames in the fire pit below. These little flames will not be little
anymore. If left unattended, a small controlled flame will turn into a
raging fire. The sausage casings will become so dry and brittle that the
sausages themselves will fall down into the fire pit.
Note:
when we use wood to burn an open fire we assume that the flames are not
very long. The reason they are short is that they are cooled by the air
above. Once the temperature in a closed firebox goes up the flames
will also become longer providing there is a supply of fresh air. For
example in a well designed masonry heater the temperature can reach
1800° F (1000° C) and the flames may reach 5' in length.
Flame and heat protection is a big problem for small smokers since the distance between the fire
pit and the hanging meats is so short. That is why smaller smokers must have
a safety feature called a “baffle” built into it to prevent this kind of
scenario. Most often a baffle is some type of a perforated metal plate that
physically separates the fire pit from the smoking chamber.
One of the best baffles is river gravel placed on any
suitable screen.
Left drawing shows a very functional although not a typical baffle. This
stainless steel enclosure with hundreds of holes creates a formidable safety
screen for any possible flames from below. The smoker has also a separate
fire pit that is connected by a 6" steel pipe. Its outlet is visible under
gas burner that is used for cooking only.
Smaller factory made smokers also employ smoke generating unit inside and
some protection is needed like a baffle or a flame/heat shield.
Sausage Maker 20 lb smoker
Sausage Maker 100 lb - electric
Sausage Maker 100 lb - gas
There is a small smoker made by Bradley Technologies with a
separate smoke generator that employs an original way of producing
smoke. Prefabricated blocks of wood (flavor bisquettes) are fed
vertically into the smoke generator unit and one by one burn there
generating smoke. The smoke generator has a short pipe that fits into
the smoking chamber. A nice unit but there is a catch....you are
dependent on the company or its distributors to deliver bisquettes which
come in different flavors (hickory, apple, alder and others).
Bradley Technologies smoker
Bradley smoke generator
Smoker with a separate smoke generator
To prevent flames and fully utilize the little space small smokers have at their disposal, a
separate smoke generator should be used. The smoker should stand on some
sort of base, either a pipe or dug out soil trench, and enter the bottom of
the smoker. The popular 55-gallon metal drum looks especially nice when
standing on a round base.
One unit smoker – cooking with an electrical hot
plate. Note a stem thermometer on top cover. With smaller smokers, it
is difficult to control the heating process by burning wood unless
we use a separate fire pit or an electrical heating element.
A heat
source can be an electrical hot plate or propane gas burner that
will give the smoker extra portability.
The same smoker burning firewood. The smoker is
working great but now it requires much more attention.
The benefits of of a separate smoke generator are numerous:
ability to provide cooler smoke
better flames and heat control
easier control of a smoking/cooking
process
Angin-Poland
You can't burn wood like this one in a one-unit smoker
Mirek-Poland
Using free standing smoke generator/fire pit we don't have to worry about
flames. Don't let looks of those
barrels fool you-those smokers are capable of producing the highest quality
products. They can be simple common drums or expensive masonry types with
all kinds of bells and whistles. The design of a great smoker has remained
the same for centuries - two separate parts: smoker and a fire
pit/smoke generator.
In industrial
smokehouses steam, water spraying, and other microprocessor
controlled functions take care of the entire smoking and cooking
operations.The smoke generator is a separate unit standing outside
of the smoker and is connected to it with a pipe. Electric blowers
blow the smoke inside of the unit. Any small heat fluctuation coming from the smoke
generator will not have much effect on the temperature inside the
smoking chamber. This gives us more freedom because there is no need
to open the smoker’s door (or top cover) to check the smoke flow.
Different methods are used to generate smoke in commercial
smokehouses. A widely used technique is to pyrolyze hardwood chips
or sawdust. Wood pieces are fed into a gas or electrically heated
metal surface at 662° –752° F (350°-400° C). With other methods, a block of wood is pushed against rotating a metal wheel
and temperatures become high enough for the wood to start smoking.
Electrical blowers push the smoke into ducts leading into the smokehouse.
Reich smokehouse
600 lb smoker-Photo courtesy Koch Equipment, Kansas City, MO
The above information comes from the
book "Meat Smoking and Smokehouse
Design" by Adam Marianski
Many different types of smokers, some of them very pretty,
can be viewed on our site in Photo Galleries.
Copyright © 2006
wedlinydomowe.com. All rights reserved.
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