Backyard chefs accustomed to heating with a few wood chips placed on charcoal or gas-heated lava rocks can get by with a small bag of chips purchased at the supermarket, where they are available in such flavors as hickory or mesquite or Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrels. For cold-smoking in a large smoke-house, however, the practitioner must be concerned with quantity as well as quality and should have a large supply of suitable wood at hand. It’s best and certainly cheaper to cut your own, using whatever good hard-wood is readily available to you—pecan, oak, hickory, alder, and so on. It is also important to consider the size of the wood pieces, depending on availability and on your cold-smoking rig.
Sawdust
The sawdust from hardwood makes a dense smoke for a long period of time if used properly. Ideally, it should be smoldered in a pan instead of being put in direct contact with the fire. A cast-iron skillet over an electric burner is ideal. Of course, sawdust can also be piled over hot coals or charcoal. It can be used dry or damp. My favorite is fresh sawdust from green wood. A good supply can be caught in a strategically placed wide-open pan while you are sawing your winter firewood.
If you don’t cut your firewood, you might visit a sawmill, cabinetmaker, or some tradesman who deals in wood. Many small sawmills simply throw sawdust away, blowing it out onto a pile that will eventually have to be burned or hauled off. But these days more and more sawdust is being used as a by-product, so that you may have to pay for it.
Sawdust from any good hardwood will work, provided that it has not been treated with chemicals.
If you have a walk-in smokehouse, you should consider building a small wood fire on the dirt floor. When this fire burns down to red-hot coals, cover them with sawdust. In about 30 minutes, you’ll have a dense smoke. You may have to add more sawdust from time to time. If your wood burns out, you may be able to start it again with kindling, but it’s probably best to start a new fire outside the smoker, then bring in some hot coals with a scoop. Cover the new hot coals with sawdust, and you’re in business again.
You can also combine sawdust with chips and chunks.
Wood Chips and Chunks
Various sizes of chips and chunks can be used for smoking, but they are really better suited for use in hot-smoking applications. Buying packaged chips from barbecue supply houses can be quite expensive, but you may be able to find some at a bargain price from large wood-chip operations. In my part of the country, hardwood chips are being hauled out by the trainload.
Dry, soaked, or green chunks can be used in a pan over electric heat, or they can be piled over charcoal or another heat source.
Green or soaked wood chunks can also be used for cold-smoking. These can be piled over hot coals, but green chunks don’t work too well in a pan. Again, buying wood chunks from a barbecue supply house gets expensive. It’s best to saw off an inch or two of a good log, then chop the wheels into chunks with a hatchet.
You can also cut green limbs into small wheels.
Logs and Limbs
If you have a large walk-in smokehouse with a dirt floor and a talent for maintaining a fire, you can use green logs for both the smoke and the heat. This is the old-timey way. It’s hard to get green logs just right, but once hot, they will smolder for a long time without making a blaze. A preliminary fire is built in a trench with dry wood and kindling, and sometimes it’s helped along with charcoal. Then the green logs are placed on either side of the trench. As the logs burn, they can be inched closer and closer together. Also, if the trench is properly sloped, the logs will tend to settle down automatically as they burn. With luck, two new logs can be put down and consumed without having to build another fire. Thus, four green logs properly arranged will smolder for days, producing lots of smoke and not too much heat. Almost always, a freshly cut green log will not burn as hot as a dry log; part of the reason is that the heat is used up in vaporizing the moisture in the wood. Technically, this is called the latent heat of vaporization and explains why boiling water at sea level doesn’t get hotter than 212°F.
Smaller logs, cut from limbs or saplings, can be placed directly atop a source of controlled heat, such as an electric burner. A rectangular cast-iron griddle or fish cooker heated over two stove burners can be used to heat green limbs or sticks of stove wood. Again, green wood is my favorite, but dry pieces can also be used if they are merely heated instead of being part of the fuel.
Where There’s Smoke . . .
In cold-smoking, you’ll need enough heat to produce smoke—but not enough to overly heat the smokehouse or smoke chamber. Obviously, much will depend on the size of the smoke chamber, the location and intensity of the fire, and the outside temperature.
•Electric Heat. The familiar hot plate, usually with one or two coil-type rheo-statically controlled heating elements, is by far the easiest way to go for most small-scale cold-smoking operations. They are quite efficient because a wood-chip or sawdust pan can sit directly on the coils; in short, they can easily heat the wood to the smoke point without heating up the smoke chamber too much. Some of these can be purchased from sausage and smoking equipment suppliers, but these are often expensive. You should be able to rig your own, using an old hot plate or a new one from a discount store. I recommend a cast-iron skillet to hold the chips or sawdust. Some of the small commercial “smokers” have a tin pan with a wooden handle.
A single or double heating element will generate enough smoke for most chambers, but a walk-in unit may require two or three hot plates. An old electric kitchen stove or stove top will also work if it is properly installed (these usually require 220 to 240 volts, whereas most hot plates operate on 110 to 120 volts).
•Gas Heat. Any small gas burner can be used much like an electric hot plate, and portable units with gas cylinders will work where electricity isn’t available. The larger refillable tanks are better (and cheaper in the long run) than small gas cylinders. Also, natural gas can be used if you have it. Of course, the burner should have a valve to adjust the flame. It’s best to use a cast-iron skillet to hold the wood chips or sawdust for these units.
•Other Burners. Any sort of camp stove can be used for generating smoke in a skillet or wood pan. You’ll need a long-burning stove for cold-smoking, unless you can be at hand to add new fuel as needed.
•Coals. You can heat sawdust and wood chips with hot coals, produced by burning wood, charcoal, or hard coal. Usually, the sawdust is piled onto and around the coals. The danger is that the sawdust or chips will become fuel for the fire, quickly burning up and raising the temperature in the smoke chamber.
•Wood. It is possible to combine wood for fuel and wood for smoke in large smokehouses with a dirt floor or, sometimes, in units that have the fire a good ways from the smoke chamber. For this purpose, I prefer to start the fire with dry wood, then add some freshly cut green wood for smoke. As the green wood burns into coals, more green wood can be added, thereby keeping the fire going and the smoke coming, if all goes according to plan. Parallel logs can be used in walk-in smokehouses, as pointed out earlier in this chapter. Be warned that this method requires lots of attention, but also remember that letting the fire go out from time to time isn’t disastrous, except possibly early in the process when blowflies or other insects are a problem.
Personally, I find this method the most satisfying way to cold-smoke meat and fish. I believe that the quality of the smoke is better than smoke generated in a pan, but I have no explanation for the difference, be it real or imaginary.
•Combinations. You can combine the methods above, using, for example, green wood logs during the day and electric hot plates during the night.
The Best Woods for Smoking
Although some people champion one wood or another for smoking meats, fish, and game—often saying to use one wood for red meat and another for fish—I don’t put too much stock in their claims, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use any good hardwood that is readily available. For either hot-smoking or cold-smoking, I almost always prefer freshly cut wood to seasoned wood, but again, there are opinions on this matter. If you prefer green wood, you’ll have to cut your own or make a deal with a local woodcutter. The little bags of wood sold by barbecue supply houses are dry. I think that cutting your own wood is part of the fun. A chain saw is handy, but a good bow saw will also cut lots of good wood in short order.
In most parts of the country, suitable woods can be gathered easily from woods and fencerows. Here are a few favorites:
•Hickory. Most of the country people in my neck of the woods use hickory for cold-smoking. That’s what my father and grandfather used. Hickory does indeed make very good smoke, but I think its reputation was built on the long-burning qualities of the green wood. What the old-timers wanted was a wood that would smolder all night.
A friend of mine asked me how to identify a hickory tree. Look for remnants of nuts that squirrels have gnawed scattered around base of the tree. I have been told that the nuts can also be used for smoking, but, it seems to me, these would be better for hot-smoking, where only a few would be used during the cooking process.
•Alder. This wood is quite popular for smoking fish in the Pacific Northwest and some other areas, and alder chips and chunks are packaged and sold all over the nation. Some practitioners who prefer alder go so far as to say that it’s the only smoke to use for fish and poultry. I’ll allow that some of the best salmon I’ve eaten was smoked with alder, but it was smoked with freshly cut green alder. If you have plenty of alder free for the cutting, fine. If not, use some other good hardwood and lie about it.
•Guava and Other Fruit Woods. The guava tree grows in southern Florida and other tropical or subtropical regions. It is especially popular as a smoking agent in Hawaii. Citrus, plum, cherry, pear, and other fruit woods can also be used.
•Pecans. These are my personal favorite for both cold- and hot-smoking, partly because I grew up in pecan country. The nuts fill out in the fall of the year, and the tree limbs get heavy. A high wind, and sometimes ice, can cause large tree limbs to break off, especially if they are heavy with green nuts. These limbs are ideal for smoking, and most grove owners are glad to let you to haul them off. Of course, wild pecan trees also make excellent wood for smoking. If you live near a large pecan sheller, consider trying pecan shells instead of sawdust in a smoke pan over an electric burner. The shells are sometimes marketed for this purpose in expensive little bags, but you may be able to get shells free from a sheller.
•Sassafras. This tree often grows quite abundantly on fencerows in my part of the country. The small trees, from 4 to 6 inches in diameter, are easily felled and easily handled, and they make good logs for burning in a walk-in smokehouse. Sassafras wood is easy to cut when green, but when it seasons, it becomes very hard. It was once used for railroad cross ties and in making chicken coops. When you cut some sassafras saplings for smoking purposes (or when you pull some roots for herb tea), also pick a few green leaves. Dry these, crush them in a mortar, sift, and use the powder (very sparingly) to thicken soups and gumbos. Powdered sassafras leaves are a Native American seasoning and thickening agent, marketed at high prices under the name of filé powder in Cajun markets and in the spice sections of most large supermarkets.
•Beech. Wood of the beech tree is used for smoking in some areas, and at one time, it was popular in France for cold-smoking herrings.
•Mesquite. This tree has always been popular in parts of the Southwest, where it grows in very dry areas. It is highly regarded as fuel when other trees are scarce. Owing to its demand on the patio, mesquite is now bagged and shipped to Florida, Maine, Alaska, and points in between. The smoke is good, but the wood’s early reputation was earned as a fuel, not as a smoking agent. It makes a hot fire with long-burning coals, which is great for camping and chuck-wagon cookery. Unless you have a ready supply of mesquite free for the cutting, I wouldn’t recommend buying it in large quantities for cold-smoking. But I wouldn’t make that statement in Texas, west of the Pecos.
•Mangrove. Wood of the mangrove tree is very good for smoking. Its high reputation for smoking mullet in Florida became an environmental concern. It is now illegal, at least in some areas, to cut or otherwise harm mangroves.
•Roots. Palmetto roots are highly touted in parts of Florida. Recently my wife ate some ham from a feral hog bagged near Sopchoppy, Florida, and smoked locally with a combination of palmetto and hickory. She says it was the best she has ever tasted. Out West, manzanita roots are highly touted.
•Maple. This good wood is popular in some quarters. According to A. J. McClane, maple or apple is “the only wood” to use for smoking clams or oysters. He doesn’t say why.
•Oak. Although it is used to flavor some expensive Scottish smoked salmon, which I understand is eaten in Buck-ingham Palace, as well as for smoking hams in England, oak is really not very popular in America as a smoking agent. Ideal for a campfire, oak produces good hot coals but not much smoke as compared to other hardwoods. In any case, oak can be gathered freely in most parts of the country, and I recommend it highly when it is green, when it is easy to cut and split. Green oak doesn’t burn quickly, which makes it a good choice for walk-in smokehouses, where parallel oak logs can be helped along, if necessary, with charcoal or a little dry wood.
•Pimento, Myrtle, and Juniper. The wood of the allspice tree, called pimento, is used for smoking jerk in Jamaica. The tree is a kind of myrtle—and evergreen—which is generally considered to be a no-no in smoke cookery. But remember that myrtle is also used to smoke meat on the island of Sardinia. I also understand that juniper has been mixed with other woods to smoke salmon on a large scale.
•Driftwood. I have read that driftwood makes a good smoking agent, but I don’t understand how it could be consistent unless you can distinguish oak drift-wood from that of hickory or eucalyptus. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
•Other Wood and Combinations. Hard-woods such as walnut, chestnut, sweet bay, ash, or birch can be used to advantage for making smoke. Of course, some culinary sports and advertising specialists will hold out for local favorites, and some discriminating practitioners will say that a combination of certain woods is the best way to go. A fellow from South Carolina, for example, has said, “I prefer smoking with one-third hickory, one-third oak, and one-third fruit tree (plum).” Who could argue with that? Dr. Eph Wilkinson notwithstanding, I’ll have to add here that my father would have let out a belly laugh if somebody had suggested that he mix sassafras with his beloved hickory.
•Corncobs. Back when local gristmills and home (or farm) corn shellers were everyday equipment, cobs were often used for fuel as well as for smoking meats—and for other activities conducted in small outdoor structures. I’m sure that purists will have opinions on whether the white cob or the red is better for smoking. In any case, cobs tend to blaze up and should be watched carefully.
•Peat and Organic Smokes. Peat is used as a smoking agent on some of the British islands. Of course, one sort of peat is not as good as another for smoking purposes. Also, remember that in some barren lands such as Iceland, sheep chips are used for smoking.