On Mon, 7 Sep 2009 21:24:06 GMT, "Fred" wrote:


On 7-Sep-2009, "Don Phillipson" wrote:

Brining is prerequisite to smoking (strong brine
for cold smoke, mild brine for hot smoke). Before

I make a nice mild brine and smoke my trout 3-6 hrs
Lemon and garlic in various forms are essentail ingredients
I will sometimes use a little soy sauce as a partial salt substitute

I have a sceret recipe for smoking including some whiskey
Its a big hit!

We also cook w olive oil -
We can try to replace the fat comtent w olive oil
but sometimes its worth it to add a little butter just for flavoring

I would like to know more anout cold smoing
Can you elaborate a bit - ?
I tried it w some sockeye salmon (lox) but then I was afraid it would be
undercooked or smoked so I smoked them as normal a for a litte less time
I would like to know more about and have more confidence in cold smokimg?

Fred

Brining serves a purpose in various forms of "cooking." In cold smoking, it is
part of the preserving process as well as part of the seasoning process.
Smoking, both hot and cold, are primarily preserving processes that also happen
to taste good, at least to a lot of folks. First, keep in mind what "cooking"
is, at least as far as most people in the US consider it to be - in the case of
meat, it is basically nothing more than denaturing the protein, typically via
heat, and intended to make the food "safer" via heat. Therefore, personal
preferences aside, all you must do for safety issues is to get the food
temperature up high enough to kill any "bugs" that _might_ be present. Since
all the likely "bugs" _on_ beef that you'll kill with (reasonable) heat are
surfactants, rare cuts are no more dangerous than well-done cuts, but hamburgers
_can_ be made potentially safer by cooking the entire burger through to medium
or more.

IAC, brining/salting can serve several purposes. In the case of cold smoking,
it is part of the preservation process. In the case of, for example, modern US
pork and chicken, brining can help keep very lean meats "juicy" in cooking, esp.
if it is a relatively long cooking process - a "Boston butt" roast or a
dry-roasted chicken. Basically, it's diffusion of the moisture into the
intercellular spaces, which raises the denaturing temp of the protein, which
means less water cooks out in the process and some sources say that there is
osmosis of the water into the cells via the saline content of the solution. IME,
I've heard the diffusion is accepted and the osmosis is disputed. For my
purposes, it works, so I've not done in-depth research. If you really want to
know all about it, get a textbook on meat processing techniques - I don't mean
that in a smart-assed way, it's just a pretty complicated area that covers a
whole lot of material, and as I said, there is some disagreement, at least among
the food crowd.

If all you want to know is how to properly cold smoke some fish, just brine it,
use sawdust (or chips, but as small a pieces as you can get), keep the temp of
the smoking chamber _low_ (under about 70-80 degrees), and let it smoke for at
least 24 hours - longer is better, esp. for preservation rather than taste.

HTH,
R