What Is Smoking

One of the oldest forms of food preservation, having arisen after the development of cooking with fire. Heat and smoke infuse a flavor into fish, ham, poultry, and meat and prevent the growth of microbes. Is an effective way to preserve food but care must be taken to avoid contamination and illness. By supplying a consisted temperature around 150 to 275 degrees F, with your wood chips at the heat source and food on the top rack with vapor continually flowing over your food. Will increase their palatability by adding flavor and imparting a rich brown color.
In Europe, the wood used most commonly for smoking is Adler, oak, and sometime becch. In North America, the woods used are alder, oak, hickory, pecan, mesquite, maple, and some fruit trees, like apple, cherry, and plum. Alternative materials have been used with the addition of seasoning ingredients.
Some ham and bacon suppliers smoke over burning corncobs. Barley malt for liquors is dried and smoked using burned humate. Hot smoking fish in New Zealand is done with the wood from the tea tree. And in Iceland cold smoked lamb, whale, mutton, and fish is done with dried sheep dung.
On the western farms, a smokehouse was used for preserving meats, this building was away from other building due to the fire danger, and the smoke emanating from it.
Smoking can be done in four ways: Cold smoking, Warm Smoking, Hot smoking, and Liquid smoke.
Cold smoking 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, food is typically preserved by fermenting, salting, or curing before smoking and should be cooked before consumption, food remains raw, takes hours to weeks
Warm smoking 77 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, food remains raw, needs to be cooked before eating.
Hot smoking 10 to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, food is cooked by the heat of the gases of the fire, and smoke adds the flavor Hot smoking is a fantastic way to add flavor to your food, it is much faster than cold smoking and creates mouthwatering results. It is worth bearing in mind that hot smoking is not an effective method of food preservation and your products will require consumption within a couple of days even if kept refrigerated.
Liquid smoke a product derived from smoke compounds in water. A brownish-yellow liquid made by capturing and condensing the vapors from burning wet wood chips (usually hickory). Liquid smoke is used to add a smoky quality to foods in an attempt to capture the flavor of wood-fire grilling.