Guide to Smoking Meat Most commercially sold smoked products that we find in sausage and deli meat section of our local outlets almost always come from cured parts of pork. Large parts of pork like ham, bacon, butt, loin, back far, and smaller parts such as hocks and jowls are used for smoking and these usually have longer curing times, so the solution done by most smokehouses to hasten the curing time is to inject the curing solution into the meat. You have an advantage if you cure and smoke meat at home since you can use any type of meat and you can also cure and smoke the entire animal, and not just parts of it. If you cure and smoke at home then you can be sure about the ingredients you are using and you can always choose healthier ingredients. One that cures and smokes the traditional way need to have all the authentic ingredients that are put into the curing solution, but you can also create your own flavors by using ingredients that you like for your own traditional recipe. One other thing that you must always remember is that the longer you processa meat, the better the quality. Since high quality products have long curing processes, it comes out in the market as a costly item. However, when one starts to substitute those traditional steps with chemicals to speed up the process, it will doubtlessly make the food less healthy. If you do the curing and smoking at home, you are sure that you are eating a high quality meat product while saving money.
A Quick History of Tools
This traditional craft of curing and smoking meat is making a comeback. The main reason why people before cured and smoked their meat was because of necessity to preserve the meat and so it was practiced by almost everyone in those years. However, it is now attracting gourmands who want to do it themselves or people who has eaten so much supermarket stuff that has been pumped full of water and preservatives that allowed people to forget what bacon is supposed to take like.
Lessons Learned About Smokers
The process of making smoked products basically follows these steps: they include first and foremost, meat selection, curing- which includes salting and putting sugar to give it a sweet flavor and then make it set for a certain number of days (12 to 14 days is common), take it back out wash them and make it dry for around 2 days, it is then followed by conditioning and drying then by bringing it to a meat bench where you would apply seasoning ingredients like black, red and cayenne pepper, honey or molasses and make it stay before smoking, cooking, cooling and storing. What is fun about smoking your meat at home is that you can create your own traditional recipe from scratch or you can modify the recipe pass down from generation to generation to suit your tastes. There is no one set time for curing and smoking, you can try experimenting on this on your own.