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Mastering Meat 2

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An introduction to smoking

What is smoking?
For as long as they’ve been able to make fire, humans have been smoking food. It’s an
ancient cooking and meat preservation technique that produces extremely satisfying – and
delicious - results. There are two main ways to infuse meat with a delicious smoky flavour:

More about cold smoking
Although it can be used as a curing method, cold smoking is usually applied to a cut of meat
that has already been dry cured using salt. With this technique, hot smoke is channelled
through a long pipe or tube so that it cools by the time it reaches the meat and so doesn’t
actually cook it. This is a slow process that may take days depending on the type or size of
meat you’re smoking.

More about hot smoking
While hot smoking also has preservative qualities, it’s more of a way to add zing to your
cooking than a curing process. Hot smoking can be done on a barbecue, a stovetop or on a
gas burner. The meat is placed on a grid over wood chips or shavings, and the controlled

heat from the smoke actually cooks the meat.

It’s important that the meat to be hot smoked still spends some time in either a brine or dry
cure first. If you don’t do this, you’ll end up with a cut of meat that is smoky on the outside
only rather having that irresistible smoky flavour throughout. The salt helps to achieve an

overall smoky flavour, so this first step is really important.

With hot smoking, you’ll get best results when the meat is served at room temperature on
the same day it’s smoked.

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