I'd like to lear to cold smoke Salmon, how long and how warm can you let the salmon get during cold smoking?


I just had a though. For $80 I could build a cold smoker.

I can get an dorm sized frig for around $50. A hot plate for around $8, and a chip box and some piping for he remaining $22.

Put the hotplate next to the frig set the chip box on top. and add an elbow and piece of 1" tubing from the top of the chip box to the lower side of the frig, add a 1/2" vent pipe to the top of the frig.

Then, just run the hot plate hot enough to get the chips to smoke. As long as I don't put a hole in coolant line I shold be good, and have a smoker that can run at 40 F

How are you going to get the smoke to go through the 1" tubing and not the sides of the wood box?

The wood box cant be air tight or the wood wont burn, and the smoke is gonna take the path of least resistance.

Also I think the smoke that does make it to the smoker will condensate on the evap coil. This will eventually plug the condensate drain with all the dirty water. If it plugs during a smoke the condensate pan will fill up and overflow on your fish.

Not trying to rain on your parade or anything, just bringing up a few things to think about before you spend $80.00.

On the other hand if you do it and it works, I guess I am full of beans, but I dont think so.

I was thinking the wood chip box could be air tight, except for a 1/8" hole on the bottom. It would need very little flow, only about 8" of travel to get into the frig.


Looking at the little frig in my office here, there isn't any kind of drain hole on the inside.

The cooling coil is build into the wall of the small "freezer" section.

It looks something like this:



I think your right though, with any air flow through the frig, the cooling coil is going to turn into a snowball, and the cooling efficency will drop. On the plus side, the cooling coil is at the top, so the air containg the smoke wll hit the food before the smoke is condensed out.

Hopefully I can get 12 hours out of it before it needs to defrost.

What about putting a small dc fan ( like one found in a computercase ) they draw a lot of air and you could rig it to run when the frigs compressor runs so it would only run during a cooling cycle and would shut down when the frig get to temp with some playing around with some sort of vent or timer you could set up a 20 min smoke cool cycle

sounds like a good idea, I think I have an old processor fan. I could put that on the end of my exhaust stack and pull smoke through the unit.

Actually that's what Alton Brown did in one of his episodes, although he used old lockers, not a fridge.

SandRaven...take a look at my post & pics dated 1/14/2005 titled "my new cold smoker". It's been perfect for me, especially with the dimension changes that I noted and a helpfull solution that I got from 'Smokin O to control the internal moisture. I can do full salmon filets, full pork loins, jerky out the kazoo, etc. and the material cost to build it is almost nothing. In my case it was nothing but that's because I did a trade with a carpenter for my phony Canadian Bacon/Ham.
CB

Since this is a Cook Shack forum, buy whatever Cookshack you choose, in get the cold smoking shelf and follow the directions. It works so far beyond my expectations I am always amazed when I try something new. It is easy to keep the temperature down to even the 50's and 60's if you watch it closely. So far I have made a couple of batches of various types of bacon, cheese, salmon etc. The hardest think to learn is to not oversmoke. Two times is more than enough for everthing I have done. Use the chips and chucks you can get almost everywhere.

I love Alton Brown, dry cure you bacon with Mortons sugar cure, or similar alternative. I have also tired varous home built cold smoking devices over the years. Using the CS system is as close to no pain and all gain I have found in almost any endeavor.

Jerry

I love my Cookshack Cold Smoke Baffle what I do is freeze a plastic Ice-cream bucket solid ( gets more ice in the unit with less volume) Fridge ice not as compact and do cheese as well !! Works great just do not over do the smoke on the cheese. But Salmon can take a fair bit depends on the brine used. But easy does it for best results.