Smokeology

When you think of smoking meat, you may be picturing old methods of curing meat whereby it is cold smoked for days or even weeks on end, which allows it to be left out of the refrigerator. That’s not what this book is about. What I do is called “hot smoking”: the method of simultaneously cooking and smoking meat (or other foods) at temperatures of 200°F to 250°F, in less than 24 hours in almost all cases. From this point on, when I use the short form “smoking,” I am talking about hot smoking. Although I touch on cold smoking in this chapter and include a few recipes for cold smoking cheese and a few other food items, the subjects of cold smoking and curing meats are fodder enough for books of their own.