Cold Smoker

I always used a little chief smoker. Perhaps you could use this for design inspiration. I love smoked fish.

-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov

I had one of those many years ago Wayne. The smoker worked great. The one problem was how expensive meat was to make some jerky. I think the weight loss was something like 10-1, so 10 lbs of meat would give you one pound of jerky. I never did catch enough fish to use it, so I eventually gave it away.

Since the heating element is low heat, you could probably make a wooden box to smoke it in. Maybe Oak, then you can get some flavoring from the box as well as the chips.

Good luck Tony.

-- Bill, Turlock California, http://www.brookswoodworks.com

I love charcoal and chip fired smoking, and have thought about a cold smoker. In Hervé This’s book “Molecular Gastronomy” he talks about smoking at about 100°F with an electrical charge on your food grate (probably about what you’d get off of a leg of a neon sign transformer), to do fish in a few minutes at the low temperature rather than hours at a higher one.

I’ve always gotten stuck at the point where I was trying to set up something to automatically regulate the temperature, but I keep thinking that if I stumble across an electric hotplate at a garage sale I’m most of the way there. Use that to heat the chips, have a cooling flue of some sort, and put the materials to be smoked in the secondary container and use a sign transformer on the grill plate. Everything else out of wood.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

I use this one. It’s a hot smoker or so. I don’t know what the temp would be if you had it turned on low.

I turn it all the way up to high and get around 200-225. So it’s not ultra heat.

yesterday I smoked 6 chikens and they were in there for 12 hrs. I left 3 still in there for another 3 hours till the picnic time. They were still moist, not dry.

It uses a water pan so as long as there is water it keeps it around 212 deg. I made my own smoke box to replace the one that came with it.

The original one allowed the wood to catch fire and the smoke laasted for about 5 minutes.

I took a 4 X 6” rectangular tube, welded on a bottom and welded bolts to the side and attached the top with nuts. There is no real gap between the tube and the top so smoke seeps out and I end up with charcoal when I empty it. I get about 45 minutes of smoke. I made 2 of them so I’m going to weld a pipe on the side so i can slip in a handle to take out the done one and put in another to keep my smoke longer.

But I did see plans somewhere for using a cardboard box, electric hotplate, alum pie plate and smoking in there.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

I did a web search. This was the best site I came up with….

http://www.squidoo.com/smokehouse/

Darn, some smoked fish sounds real good about now….

-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov

You guys are making me hungry…....I think I have some lox…...hhmm….not sure about the cream cheese, capers and bagle though…

-- Bob, Carver Massachusetts, Sawdust Maker http://www.capecodbaychallenge.org