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Cold Smoking
Coldsmoking isn’t just the name of my cookery school, it’s a delicate process which has historically been used to preserve food. Cold smoking uses the preserving properties of smoke to make food last longer but don’t think you can just bung food into a cold smoker and you’re done. There is a little more to it than that.
I first got into smoking food many years ago attempting to silence my father who was having some difficulty in finding really good cold smoked salmon and doing so quite vocally.
My Old Man was in the restaurant & Hotel industry for as long as I can remember so I’ve been really lucky to have had exposure to great food since I was a child. My relationship with smoke goes back much further though and in a field of work that couldn’t be further away from the food industry.
As a firefighter I’ve been warning about the dangers of smoke for over thirty years. Now retired, the boot is quite literally on the other foot. I spend my days now extoling the virtues of this mystical gaseous substance.
Smoke has been used for millennia to preserve and flavour food. We now know through advances in science that smoke contains lots of interesting chemical compounds, some of which are harmful to us and a few that are very helpful when it comes to preserving food and adding flavour.
At Coldsmoking HQ we teach a range of artisan food skills centred around smoking & Curing. We don’t just cold smoke food. We love all things smoked and we hot smoke when we have the opportunity too.
Cold smoking though is a little different as we aren’t looking to cook the food so there are a few things we need to consider before starting out. Here are my ten top tips for cold smoking food. I hope at least some of them are useful to you.
Twitter: @ColdSsmoking
Turan T Turan