Smoked products not only have a pleasant aroma and taste, but also have a long shelf life. In mass catering, natural smoking is most often replaced by the process of processing with liquid smoke. Smoking cabinets are devices for cold and hot smoking. They allow you to make smoked delicacies from fish or meat at home. You just need to purchase suitable equipment or make it yourself.
Types of smoking
The design of the smoking cabinet will largely depend on the specific purpose of this equipment. The device can have different operating modes depending on what temperature needs to be maintained inside the cabinet.
The smoking procedure comes in three different types.
- Hot. The smoke temperature in this case should be at least seventy degrees. The maximum value can reach one hundred and twenty degrees. This procedure can take from fifteen minutes to four hours depending on the size of the products.
- Semi-hot. The temperature should be between sixty and seventy degrees. Only very fresh semi-finished products can be processed in this way.
- Cold. The smoke temperature should not exceed fifty degrees. The minimum permissible temperature is thirty degrees. This procedure takes a large number of time, which can range from several hours to several days.
Characteristics
Smoking equipment has differences in design and some characteristics. The design of a smoking cabinet completely depends on what type of smoking it is intended for.
All types of appliances must have three basic functions.
- Ensure even heating of food. The temperature and smoke in the cabinet should affect the semi-finished product evenly. Otherwise, the taste of smoked meats will be spoiled.
- The smoke in the chamber should be light.
- The design must ensure gradual penetration of smoke into the food.
Cold
Low-temperature smoking equipment consists of the following main elements:
- combustion chamber;
- smoking cabinet;
- chimney.
Bricks or metal are most often used to make the firebox. The design of the chamber should allow easy cleaning of ash during the smoking process. Since burning wood produces rather acrid, dark-colored smoke, the firebox must be equipped with a smoke damper. It will direct smoke into the chimney or remove it from the smoking cabinet to the outside.
Since the cold smoking process does not require high temperatures, the smoking cabinet can be made from the most simple materials, for example, from certain types of wood or of stainless steel.
The only exceptions are materials with high porosity, since smoke and moisture will accumulate in the pores, which will lead to the formation unpleasant odor in the cell.
Most convenient option there will be a barrel made of wood or metal. A hole is made at the bottom of the product to allow smoke to enter the chamber. To place products in the smoking chamber inside the barrel, it is necessary to secure metal grates or hang hooks. You can use moistened burlap as a lid.
A distinctive design feature of cold smoking devices is a long chimney. Metal is best suited for the manufacture of such a structure. However, it should be remembered that a metal chimney requires regular cleaning of soot. You can dig a chimney in the ground, then the soil will absorb condensate containing carcinogens.
Hot
Hot smoking takes place at fairly high temperatures. This temperature is achieved not by burning wood, but by burning special wood chips. Smoking time depends on the size of the products, but in any case it is much shorter than the processing time with cold smoke. The combustion chamber in hot processing devices should be located directly below the smoking chamber. The firebox can be made from gas burner for boilers or electric stoves.
The smoking chamber should be as airtight as possible, which will allow the semi-finished products to be evenly exposed to smoke.
The closing structure of the smoking chamber can be equipped with a water seal. It is a small recess in accordance with the size of the chamber and lid. Water is poured into the resulting reservoir. The structure is closed at the top with a lid. This allows the formation of a barrier that protects the chamber from the penetration of air from the outside and does not allow smoke to escape from the inside.
Hooks or grates for food are placed inside the smoking chamber. You can make the grate yourself or take a barbecue product. An obligatory element of the hot smoke processing chamber is a container for draining fat and dripping juice from semi-finished products. The tray should be easily removed from the equipment, as it must be periodically cleaned of accumulated contaminants.
Semi-hot
Devices for semi-hot smoking have the simplest design. Most often, this type of equipment is used for home processing of meat and fish products. It can be constructed from gas stove with a hood or from a steel box. The thickness of the walls of a stainless steel box should be at least one and a half millimeters, and of black steel - three millimeters.
The smoking box must be equipped with a lid, a container for collecting fat and grates for food. Wood chips are poured onto the bottom of the cabinet, after which the product is installed over the fire. The chips smolder under the influence of high temperatures, producing smoke in the chamber. You can drill a small hole in the lid of the product so that a small amount of smoke comes out when smoking.
How to make it yourself?
Making a smokehouse with your own hands for one or another method of processing semi-finished meat and fish products will not be particularly difficult. It is only important to know how the device works for a particular type of smoking. Ready-made instructions and equipment drawings can be easily found on the Internet.
The cold smoke treatment device is most often made from a wooden or metal barrel. Wood appliances are convenient because they can be insulated from the inside, unlike metal products. The insulation can be any material that does not emit toxic substances when heated: cellulose wool, mineral wool, felt Structures for hot working are best made of stainless steel.
As an example, it is worth considering homemade design low-temperature cabinet from a barrel with a volume of 100–200 liters. The upper part of the tank is completely cut off, and a hole is made in the lower part for connecting the chimney. From the cut part of the barrel you can make a tray for collecting fat. For semi-finished products in the chamber, it is necessary to make a grate or hang hooks on reinforcement bars.
It is best to make the chamber cover from wood. 5 to 10 holes are drilled into the product to allow moisture to escape. Instead of a wooden lid, you can use burlap. Before starting smoking, the material must be wetted in cold water and squeeze thoroughly.
To learn how to make a smoking cabinet with your own hands, see the video below.
Smoked fish or meat are foods loved by many. Of course, this food is considered a gastronomic time bomb, as it is harmful in almost every sense. But treating yourself to a smoked delicacy from time to time is not a sin.
Smoked beef, lard, and any type of fish go well. To diversify your picnic diet, you can buy ready dish at your own peril and risk, but you can prepare this delicious treat yourself if you are at the dacha or personal plot a high-quality cold-smoked smokehouse will be built with your own hands.
Types of smoking
What is smoking? It is a slow cooking process by simmering the raw food in the smoke that comes from smoldering wood. Thus, meat or fish is not overheated and is not exposed to open fire, and indeed high temperature. Many cooks are sure that right choice The type of smoldering wood is extremely important for imparting a particular flavor to a dish.
There are three options for cooking in a smokehouse:
- The hottest is the most fast way prepare the product. Meat or fish without excess fat is suspended over a source of open fire, exposed to smoke heated to 80-140 degrees. The temperature depends on the type of product being prepared.
- Semi-hot. In this embodiment, the smoke is cooled using a short pipe. At the same time, the temperature of the smoke drops to 50-60 degrees. Cooking in this case takes about a day.
- Cold is a variation of curing meat or fish. The raw product is cooked in smoke, which cools to 15-40 degrees. To cool the combustion waste stream to such a temperature, a special structure is constructed: a small trench is dug or a long pipe is laid between the hung products and smoldering wood. This method takes more time - at least several days, but the shelf life of the finished product increases significantly.
The smokehouse is designed not only for cooking meat or fish products, but also dairy products, as well as vegetables and fruits, which at the same time acquire new flavor notes. There are many ways to carry out the cooking process in a smokehouse.
Construction of a typical smokehouse
Thus, the design of the smoking unit will depend on the chosen method of preparing smoked meat or fish. If you want to do it, you can’t expect any difficulties - it’s quite possible to construct a decent smokehouse from any available metal object, even from an old rusty bucket. In the same case, if you decide to prepare the dish using the cold smoking method, building a smokehouse with your own hands will be somewhat more difficult. You will have to spend a little more time disassembling the device, planning and constructing the smokehouse itself. But this task is not impossible.
Like any cooking device, The cold-type smokehouse can be made in two versions:
- Stationary, at which it will be necessary to build efficient chimney of sufficient length, which will cool the smoke to the desired temperature. But moving the product being prepared away from the flame is not enough - you need to correctly direct the smoke emanating from the firewood, which requires a good draft force. Accordingly, the chimney must have sufficient height. The type of chimney can be anything: it can be built of brick, galvanized or stainless steel pipes - it all depends for the most part on aesthetic preferences. Only asbestos and polymer chimneys should not be used, as they can impregnate food with toxic emissions.
- Mobile option The smoking unit does not require the construction of a chimney. In this case, the transportation of smoke will be carried out by a dug ditch of sufficient depth, width and slope.
Read also: How to make a smokehouse at home
Instead of a full-fledged heat source in the smokehouse, a simple smoke generator can be used, the use of which greatly simplifies the assembly of the smokehouse. You can fill this device with small wood fuel - chips or sawdust.
The simplest smoke generator is constructed from any steel container in the form of a cylinder - for example, a large thermos, from which the flask is removed and used as a simple oven.
To begin with, we should consider general principles do-it-yourself smokehouse construction, after which - the design features of a wooden smoking chamber.
Fixed smokehouse design technology
In order to get a high-quality and durable cold-smoked smokehouse, which will stand motionless on summer cottage, You will need very few materials: several sheets of slate, durable brick, a chamber for the prepared dish (a bucket, barrel or tank, depending on the planned volume of cooking - the smokehouse can have a container made of steel or wood), as well as a metal grate.
The process of building a smokehouse with your own hands occurs in several stages:
Read also: Homemade smokehouse
If the site chosen for the construction of the smokehouse has damp or loose soil, a foundation should be made under the chamber. To do this, you need to dig a rectangular pit corresponding to the size of the structure. The depth of the hole should be at least 30 cm.
The structure of the foundation should be like this:- the bottom of the pit is filled with large crushed stone;
- walls are formed from foam concrete blocks or monolithic concrete, for which you need to build formwork;
- blocks are reinforced with metal reinforcement mesh with large cells;
- the rest of the volume is filled with cement-sand mortar prepared with a cement to sand ratio of 1:3.
If the soil is sufficiently reliable, and its erosion by ground or other waters is unlikely, you can not build a full-fledged foundation and get by with just a brick pedestal.
Construction of a mobile smokehouse
To build a camping version of a smokehouse, you will need a sufficient amount of dense polyethylene film, as well as a lot of any available material: fresh tree branches, good boards, twigs. Of course, a mobile smokehouse can only be built with your own hands.
Construction of a smokehouse takes place in four simple steps:
- At the resting place, a suitable area is selected: a gentle slope or the shore of a reservoir. The side to which the surface of the earth is facing should be windward so that the smoke does not fly away where it should not. As in the stationary version, a straight ditch of the same size is dug - 3 m long, 50 cm deep, the width does not matter. The ditch can slope towards the horizon, but the angle should not exceed 60 degrees.
- The ditch is covered with found branches and boards and covered with earth and turf. A fire is built at the lower end of the ditch, and a smoking chamber is installed at the upper end.
- In this case, the assembly of a solid container for cold smoking is not required; an ordinary frame made of boards is suitable, which should be covered with polyethylene. An exhaust slit is cut at the top.
- The prepared meat and fish are hung in the resulting improvised chamber. For the cooking process to begin, the lighted fire must burn out, leaving only heated smoldering coals. After all the flames disappear, the pit is covered thick cloth leaving a gap to provide traction force. The width of this gap is selected so that the coals smolder well, but do not flare up.
Assembling a smoking chamber from wood
So, a cold smoked smokehouse consists of three main elements: a heat source, a chimney and a smoking chamber. And if the first two elements in any unit are similar, then when constructing the third, you can let your imagination run wild. A good option Do-it-yourself wooden camera design will become, as it is quite simple, environmentally friendly and aesthetically attractive. With high-quality assembly and decent wood processing, such a smokehouse will last a very long time.
What could be tastier than homemade smoked meats? Many craftsmen are interested in a description of the principle of creating homemade products that are useful in the household.
The finished products are shown in the photo; cold smoked smokehouses can be made with your own hands. Products homemade is a welcome treat.
Self-made design
Cold smoking is the process of processing food using smoke at a temperature of 32 degrees. The process must be organized correctly, so the master will need to figure out how to make a cold smoked smokehouse correctly. It is important not to make a mistake with the construction scheme.
It is necessary for the hot smoke to become cold. To do this, use a tunnel that connects the firebox to the compartment where the products are placed. The length of the tunnel can vary between 2-7 m. This distance is taken into account to calculate the length of the chimney.
If the firebox is located at a distance of more than 7 m from the smokehouse, draft problems, as a rule, cannot be avoided.
How does the device work?
Principle of operation homemade smokehouse can be represented as follows. Food processing can last from 3 days. The process may continue for several weeks.
The main thing is to ensure that the smoking process occurs evenly. Do not mix in the smoking chamber different kinds food.
You need to prepare food in one go. It is important to sort products by size.
More about the design of the smokehouse
To make a firebox, you need to dig a trench with dimensions of 50x50. These values may be higher. Often the width and depth of the pit are made to be meter wide.
The bottom of the firebox can be made of brick, and then covered with a tin sheet. Prepare cement mortar not necessary. It is enough to compact the bricks close to each other. The sides are also finished with brick. Here you will need a clay mortar for masonry.
When creating a drawing of a cold smoked smokehouse, you need to take into account both the distance of individual parts of the structure and the dimensions of the materials.
A trench is specially dug under a chimney with a diameter of 25 cm. The top needs to be covered with a sheet of iron. To prevent smoke from escaping, sheet material covered with earth.
A filter is installed at the junction of the smokehouse and the chimney. The main element is a metal mesh with small cells. Dense material is placed on the mesh. The filter protects finished products from soot.
It is important to make the smokehouse durable and reliable. In this case, the structure will stand stable and will not fall if someone accidentally touches it. At the top, the smokehouse is equipped with stainless steel rods.
Their thickness varies from 8 to 10 mm. They are durable and are used to hang food prepared for smoking. Usually food is hung on special hooks. An alternative replacement is a regular grill.
The simplest scheme
A smokehouse is considered a budget option, allowing the master to save building materials and time spent on construction.
The chamber with the products is 2 m away from the firebox. The basis for the smokehouse can be a metal barrel.
Note!
Stages of work
Having determined the dimensions of the smokehouse for yourself, you can begin construction. First you will need to dig a hole under the firebox. Its bottom is covered with a tin sheet. Thanks to this, it is possible to ensure more uniform smoldering of chips and sawdust.
The next stage of work is the installation of a chimney. The dug trench needs to be covered from above. Only non-combustible materials are suitable for this purpose.
The pit can be covered with a sheet of slate. The top of the chimney is covered with soil to ensure tightness.
The smoking chamber is installed in a barrel with the bottom cut off. A metal mesh is mounted below, on which burlap is placed. By combining these materials, the task of filtering out soot particles is effectively solved.
A metal grate is bolted to the top of the barrel, 20 cm away from the edge. It is not necessary to use this option; you can limit yourself to rods with hooks.
Note!
To fully understand all the nuances, you need to watch the corresponding video clip.
When cold smoking, food loses moisture gradually. During the drying process, the smoke penetrates deeper into the products. The result is meat and fish delicacies with a delicious taste.
When the carcass of an old animal is smoked, its meat will remain harsh. In order not to be disappointed, you need to be guided at first by recipes that have already been tested by many. Experimenting with flavors is best left for later.
In the finished factory-made smokehouse there are several grates and a tray. It is better to choose a product with a large capacity so that smoking is carried out more evenly.
For lovers of long hikes, you need a smokehouse made of metal with a thickness of 0.8 mm. In the country, you can install heavier options, where the thickness of the steel case is 2 mm.
Photo of a cold smoked smokehouse with your own hands
Note!
» From the material given by the master, you will get acquainted with the process of creating a cold smoked smokehouse, namely a smokehouse. This direction in the manufacture of smokehouses is quite new today, but we will take everything apart and understand how everything works, the principle of operation, what material is better to use for its manufacture.
With the advent of small smoke generators on sale, it also became necessary to manufacture smoking chambers for them, basically a simple box with a door, a tray, a thermometer and hooks inside for hanging the product. But our author went a little further and made a beautiful and neat smokehouse.
Smokehouse review:
Important! It is best to use wood to create a camera hardwood so that there is no foreign smell and resin.
And so, let's look at what exactly the author needs to assemble the house?
Materials
1. board 25-30 mm (hardwood)
2. galvanized roofing nails
3. timber
4. screws
5. soft tiles
6. smoke generator
7. aluminum sheet
8. steel wire
9. thermometer
10. loops
11. water stain
12. nails
Tools
1. jigsaw
2. hacksaw
3. drill
4. screwdriver
5. hammer
6. ruler
7. pencil
8. corner
9. brush
10. stationery knife
11. metal scissors
The process of creating a smoking house with your own hands.
And so, it was mentioned above that it is best to use hardwood wood for the manufacture of a smoking chamber, because wood conifers will exude a resin spirit and, accordingly, the resin itself when the temperature inside the chamber rises, the temperature itself is of course small from 18 to 25 degrees, but still ..
First of all, the master assembles the frame of the house from timber and screws everything together with self-tapping screws.
The resulting frame should be sheathed with a board, preferably with a groove or clapboard.
The roof of the house is also finished with boards close to each other, because inner part The chamber must be sealed and have no cracks or holes in the casing. A doorway was made in the front part of the house and the door itself was hung.
The master covered the outer part of the smokehouse with stain water based, you can also burn it with a torch or blowtorch, which is more appropriate. In no case is it advisable to cover the surface with chemical-based varnishes, because when heated they will evaporate harmful substances which can negatively affect your health, so it is better not to take risks with the use of chemicals.
Attached all the components to back wall smoke house.
This is exactly what it looks like.
By the way, this smoke generator can be made independently, but we will talk about this in the next article, come visit and do not miss updates on the site.
As you can see, there is nothing particularly complicated in the construction of this house, all materials and components are in the public domain, you already have an example, be sure to bookmark it so as not to lose it.
Using this smokehouse, you can smoke a variety of products, and most importantly, they will be 10 times cheaper than store-bought ones.
This concludes the article. Thank you very much for your attention!
Come visit more often, don't miss out on new items in the world of homemade products!
The article is presented for informational purposes only!
Looking ahead, we will talk about such beauty
How to make a wooden chamber for a smokehouse?
Any smokehouse includes three basic components:
- smoking chamber;
- a heating element;
- chimney.
The wooden chamber for the smokehouse is easy to build and has an aesthetic appearance, is not toxic, but correct processing materials and careful assembly will last for many years. To build a camera with parameters 1x1 meter with your own hands, you will need the following materials:
- frame blocks with a cross section of 25x50mm or 50x50mm, length from 1.3 to 1.5 meters;
- lining or boards for cladding with a section of 20-25x150mm;
- thin wood screws or nails;
- moisture-resistant sealant;
- roofing material - corrugated sheet, flat sheet, etc.;
- hinges and door handle;
- temperature sensor
It is necessary to clarify that the smokehouse is made from only deciduous wood. First comes the assembly of the frame. The height of the camera with subsequent placement on the pedestal should be 1.3 meters. If you are planning a cold smoked smokehouse with a smoke generator, then the height is left at 1.5 meters, 20 cm of which are added to the legs. Initially, you need to decide on the roof slope, because... with a single-pitched form, the front of the chamber should be 20 cm higher than the back.
First of all, we form the frame using the following elementary blanks:
Assembling the blanks A frame like this emerges
The next operation is covering the bottom of the frame with a board to fix the shape of the structure.
Next, if the roof is gable, guides in the form of isosceles triangles with a median to the base are cut out of the blocks. The tops of the triangles are connected to each other with a block. Now you need to decide on the location of the doorway and decorate it by filling boards 20-25 cm long at the top and bottom.
Assembling the frame for the door Gable roof option
The design of the roof depends on the shape:
- single-pitch - boards 1.3-1.4 meters long are knocked down close to each other;
- gable - additional blocks are attached to the upper bars of the sidewall frame to support the future roof, boards 0.8-0.9 meters long are nailed with one end to the ridge, the other to the sidewall block.
The next step is to arrange mounts with grooves for placing products. You can make them with your own hands from a board 90 cm long. First, it is drawn in half lengthwise, then drilled with an interval of 10 cm using feather drill holes with a diameter of 3-4 cm. The resulting product is sawn along the line and shelves are obtained, which are mounted in two rows on the sides of the chamber.
The smokehouse is covered with clapboard on top of the boards to increase thermal insulation. A corrugated sheet or aluminum sheet to size is laid on the roof, then a 15x15 cm window is cut out and a fungus is made to allow smoke to escape.
Cover the roof with a stainless steel sheet
The door is also made by hand. A frame is assembled from the blocks, covered with boards and clapboards, or simply stuffed boards and clapboards onto two parallel bars, a handle and hinges are attached, and hung on the jamb. All seams and joints are sealed with moisture-resistant sealant, and the top of the smokehouse is covered with mastic and varnish. The final touch is drilling a hole for the temperature sensor and installing it. The wooden smokehouse is 50% ready.
Types of smokehouses with a wooden chamber
The rest of the design directly depends on the source of the smoke. You can use smoke from a fire entering the chamber through the chimney. In this case, the smokehouse is equipped with a firebox in which large wood logs will burn. The second option involves supplying smoke to the chamber from a smoke generator.
First, let's look at the instructions for creating a smokehouse with a firebox with your own hands. The arrangement process in this case begins with the choice of location. It should be remembered that during operation the smokehouse emits a lot of smoke, which should not disturb the owners or neighbors.
If the soil at the construction site is loose and subject to flooding, then it is better to start by laying the foundation for the smokehouse. To do this, dig a hole the size of the future structure and a depth of 30-40 cm. The bottom is covered with a layer of crushed stone, and the pits are laid along the walls concrete blocks, tie them up with reinforcement for strength and fill them with cement mortar.
If the soil in the area is hard, groundwater lie deep and there is no threat of flooding, you can do without a foundation. As a chimney suitable metal or ceramic pipe, asbestos and polymer are excluded, because release harmful substances when heated. The preferred length of the pipe is about 1.5 meters and the diameter is about 15 cm. If the pipe is placed on a foundation, it is lined on all sides with brick, sandstone or cement blocks; if not, the position is fixed with blocks placed on the sides.
A pedestal for the chamber is built from cement blocks over one end of the chimney, the parameters of which are 1x1 meter and a height of about 60 cm. In the case of a foundation, an iron square welded to the size of the chamber is built over one end of the pipe. At the other end, a firebox is built from refractory or ceramic bricks and a metal door is built in.
Smoke generator from a thermos
Making a smokehouse with a smoke generator with your own hands is much easier. Sawdust or wood chips are suitable as fuel for it. A smoke generator can be made from any metal vessel with a tight lid, such as a large-volume thermos or a can.
The body of the smoke generator will be a thermos
Remove the top rim of the thermos and take out the inner flask. The case is no longer needed.
The most difficult thing is that you need to grind off all the sides to get a clean flask like this:
A hole is punched at the top of the container into which a chimney pipe with a diameter of about 3-5 cm is welded. On the upper plane of the pipe, about four centimeters from the vessel, a hole is drilled for a pipe with a diameter of about 6 mm, to which a hose from the compressor is subsequently connected.
We make such an oval hole in the flask We weld the future chimney into the hole We make an outlet for the compressor from a tube We weld the outlet to the chimney The result is achieved
Holes are made in the lower part of the vessel for ignition and for pouring out ash.
The hole at the bottom will allow condensation to escape in cold weather.
The smoke generator works as follows: fuel is poured onto the bottom and set on fire, air is pumped into the pipe from the compressor, which expels the resulting smoke into the chamber.
Any dish, be it meat, lard, poultry or fish, smoked cold or semi-hot at home is a source of pride for the owner. If you have prepared smoked meats wooden smokehouse, assembled with your own hands, then the reason for pride is at least doubled!
