Cold Smoking

Hey,Michael.

Andi has done that,maybe with the box her Smokette came in.

There is a tread that covers several people's approach to just that.

I also have a new one I do. I have a closed wooden box I built racks in for hanging. I use a short piece of pipe from the CS to the box. It works absolutely perfect! The temp is a constant 90. Perfect for Pastrami. Any food you do this to must have preservatives in it.

Sounds great but how do you smoke it it? What temp do you set the Cookshack unit at and how often do you refresh the wood in the cookshack unit?

I try and utilize both at once. But, for cold smoking only, I remove the racks from the CS unit, fill the box to CS capacity and let her rip. I have a small baffle in the box I can adjust, but rarely do...the smoke leaks out on it own from my homemade door.

You fill up the woodbox however many times it takes. It's done when it's done! LOL! When it's to your liking, that is. For drying, I let the heat go w/o smoke overnight, then pour the smoke to her during the day. Does that answer your question? If not, I'll try and explain further.

I recently did something like what Andi describes, but easier to do and conceivably cheaper:

I bought a clearance Sunbeam brand mini-kettle grill at WalMart for 10 bucks. It has a 12" cooking grid, a 9" charcoal grid, short legs, and a vented lid. It also has about a quart size vented round ash container below the charcoal grid. I holesawed about a 1.5" hole in the bottom of the ash container and attached a galvanized pipe that goes downward almost as long as the legs.

I then set this on top of the smokette with the end of the pipe over the smoker vent. To use (and I've only used it a few times so far), I put a pie pan with 6 ice cubes on the charcoal grid, about 8oz wood in the smokette, set to 150F, open the top kettle vents, close the lower vents, and get smoke coming out the top vents. This takes about 20 minutes. I then put cheese on the food grid and smoke for an hour with the smokette remaining set at 150F.

This seems about the maximum time for cheese - I did some for 2 hours and it was way too smokey. I did learn that ice needs to be replenished about every hour to keep the kettle area cool. Using a lot of ice kept the kettle too cold and the smoke seemed to condense as sooty liquid everywhere. Please note that the temperature setting and quantity of ice worked at outdoor temperature of around 90F - later in the year I may be able to get by with no ice at all. With that amount of ice, the whole kettle felt cool - maybe 60F. With no ice, it got hot enough to start to melt cheese.

One improvement I may make is to change the straight smoke pipe for an s-shaped trap to eliminate a few drips of condensate that wind up on the outside top of the smokette. Not a big problem, just a bit of cleanup.

If anyone would like more details, let me know.

I am still trying to visualize the set up. What I am thinking of is:

Smoke comes out the top of the cook shack unit then can be piped down the side of the cook shack unit into a box sitting beside the cookshack unit that holds racks for cold smoking the smoke then rises through this second box up and out. If the smoke will travel down the pipe this would work great but I question if the warm smoke will do anything but rise.

Then in terms of the smoking process itself Andi I am now starting to really understand �it�s done when it�s done" I really like your idea of loading up the wood during the day and let it dry all night - it may mean running the Cookshack unit continually for a day or two.

Again my questions to Cookshack is are the units build for this type of use? Is this an approved use? Will it void the warranty?

Sounds like a great new accessory for Cookshack to add to it�s line up just the shells of the standard units with a longer rack holder no heating element and a attachment method to the main unit.


Andi how about a picture?

Mike, I'll get one to you as soon as I can. Right now both CS' are in use with Kipper.

If the baffles of your cold smoke box are at the bottom, the smoke will have to go down and thru the food to get out.

And in my case, the little kettle just sits on top of the smokette with about a 9" long straight pipe above the top vent to collect the smoke. There's a small gap between the top vent and the pipe so no "back pressure" can build up.

I had originally thought about what you're hinting at, a smoke collection pipe leading from the top, going up because the heat rises, to some sort of a cooling chamber, then an outlet from the cooling chamber downward to a cold smoking chamber with racks, because the now-cold smoke would fall.

Since a simpler solution worked, I went with that.

If you're planning a larger cold smoker, I'd think about finding or making a non-insulated metal box with sliding racks ala Cookshack. You might look into getting the side racks and grills from Cookshack since then you'd only need the 2 hooks per side to hang them on. I'd use a top outlet and either a bottom inlet and put legs on the thing so it sat over your smoker, or put a low side inlet with an L-pipe; then you could have a drip pan on the bottom (though cold-smoking is going to generate a lot less drip).

Another relatively easy, cheap, and bigger alternative would be to modify a charcoal cylinder smoker.

It doesn't have to be so complicated! Up here in Alaska, we think all old refrigerators are actually cold smokers!

All you want is to maintain a 90-100 degree heat and generate smoke. How hard is that? I made one to use at 40 below zero out of my kids bus stop shack!

What you guys seem to be aiming at is not having to tend the fire in the middle of the night. No need, if you can maintain the heat. A damn hotplate works with an old cast iron frying pan for your wood! I've made smokers out of cardboard boxes in camp. I have made them with old woolen blankets. I've made them with Spruce boughs. Coolers, garbage cans, Evinrude boxes, just a windbreak. If one wants smoke flavor, one can get it!

It ain't rocket science!

I guess if one wanted to, they could just put some wood chips in a pipe, lite 'em up, then take a bite of food and a puff on the pipe for just-in-time smoked flavor.

Or on another note, why don't Minnesotans keep their second fridge in the garage? Because it's not designed to keep the food warm enough.

Cold-smoking gets a bit more complicated when the outdoor temperature is already high enough to melt your cheese without the addition of the extra heat from smoldering wood. Solving that problem is most of the fun - after all, it'd be easier to just buy some smoked cheese.

Just out of curiosity, how long does it take to cook something in your smoker when it's -40F?

Getting back to Michael's original question, a couple of problems with cooking something in the chamber, then cold-smoking with the "used" smoke:

1. Humidity will be higher than with wood-only smoke.

2. May get a different flavor as juices drip on the top of the wood box. Towards the end of cooking, it seems like the vapor coming out smells like BBQ more than smoke. Now that might be good or bad depending on what you're cold-smoking.

Hey, TJR! You may be onto something there!

"This genuine Smoke Pipe from Cookshack is guaranteed to put a smoke flavor on anything you eat...even chewing gum! Only $19.95! But wait! There's more!"

An 8 lb. piece of corned moose arm roast took 12 days. It was brought in at night to my garage pantry. I sat and peeled alder all day to keep the fire going in an old Dutch oven on a hot plate. It was the best Pastrami we have ever had!

That's some real cold smoking. Did you put any ice in the smoker? Haw Haw! Or maybe ice formed in the smoker...

You're far more patient than I. Altho there probably isn't a whole lot else to do when it's -40.

A true labor of love, TJR! Had my goat to keep me company, Bob Marley, and plenty of beer. Ya have to use a coozy with your beers in the winter....to keep it from freezing! But! If you could have tasted that piece of meat...it was all worth it. Did one last year with my CS and it was all good! The comfort of my garage, a movie on the DVD, and no frozen beer! The effect just wasn't the same, but the outcome was delicious!