A recent hobby of mine involves meat, some wood chips, and a smoker. Smoked meat is an ancient human practice. Most cultures still do some form of it to this day, and for a few it is still just part of life. Meat can be expensive to obtain, no matter if you buy it, hunt it, or grow it yourself. When you harvest an animal, especially a large animal, you need some way to preserve what you don’t immediately consume. Smoking is a good and cheap way to do this.
Most American’s introduction to smoked food is at breakfast. Mmmm bacon! Bacon is cold-smoked pork belly, and is essentially raw (but kind of preserved) when it comes out of the smoker. I’ve not yet tried to make my own, but it doesn’t seem very difficult to pull off. I’ll just need to buy or build a cold smoke box. Once I do that, smoked cheese becomes an option. I might just do that this year.
Smoking meat has been an American tradition for a very long time. This is especially true in the southern states among the poor. Take a cheap piece of meat, slow cook it at a low temperature and surrounded by the smoke from the cooking fire. It tenderizes the meat, and adds flavor. It gets even better when you add some seasonings and spices to the meat before cooking.
Like many foods, BBQ was once considered food for the poor, and is now elevated to something special. For instance, my lunch today at a local BBQ joint was smoked beef brisket (7oz), with a couple of small sides. That and a soft drink was $18.00. Hey, I get it, they have rent to pay, employees to cover, and so on. The price is right for what you get.
For about $30 – $40 you can get a decent 10 pound beef brisket and smoke it yourself at home. All it takes is a smoker big enough for the amount of meat, some seasonings, wood chips and time. I’ve only done brisket once, and it turned out ok. It would have been better if I had let it cook longer, but dinner was approaching, so I turned up the heat. The brisket forgave me, but there was the glimmer it could have been better.
I’ve smoked salmon (a family favorite), pork butt (pulled pork), beef brisket, turkey, Ribeye steaks, and prime rib. Prime rib is awesome smoked! The easiest thing to get started with on the smoker is pork butt, also called Boston butt. A simple rub and a few hours in the smoke produces something very tasty. Pork butt is very forgiving if your temperatures are a little off, or are not consistent.
I’ll try to put up a post for the next thing I smoke. Unfortunately, my smoker decided to quit around Christmas time, so I’ll have to get it fixed or replaced.
The one I’ve been using is an older version of this one. It lasted me about 3 years.
*Update* I found the older one, and I was surprised it was still for sale! This one here is what I’ve been using. I think I’ll replace it with the one above, as it looks like a better internal design.