Smokehouse Ideas

[Loch Valley Fold]

After the crappy way our butcher did our ham this year we've been talking about building on of our own just need ideas on size for a family of 6 (us 4 + my parents) don't know how often it's going to be used each year but I'm willing to try anything once & the curing times for weight
Cheers
Jane

 

[Jogeephus]

You can build your own smokehouse very cheaply. It doesn't have to be big. Here is a picture of one I built in an afternoon and it costs very little money to construct and it works like a charm. Its great for cold smoking and some medium smoking but if you are going to turn up the heat you might want something else. It will smoke around 100 lbs of meat at the time.

 

[Loch Valley Fold]

Thanks Jo that is kind of what we're looking at building I did see 1 on the net that was made out of an old freezer

 

[JSCATTLE]

I made mine with a few 4x4's and some old tin . Its about 5 x5 and 7 feet tall . All scrap . I smoked a pork belly / bacon and a sugar cured ham yesterday on my masterbuilt eletric smoker I got for Christmas . Turned out well. I only fire up the big smoker for sausage or half a hog .

 

[Jogeephus]

Wood has really good insulation qualitites and it tends to absorb the flavors and smells of past smokes making the next smoke all the better. I have a friend who built one out of an old refrigerator. He set this on top of a brick fire box and its pretty nice.

So what did the butcher do to your ham?

 

[Loch Valley Fold]

We'd only started rearing our own pork in 2010 The first were way too salty we wanted them smoked & didn't find out until after that he didn't do smoking the, bacon was also way too salty which we learned later he does the same way as the hams. The last 2 we got done (oct/nov'11) the hams are ok but the bacon oh my goodness that is bad. I would say it has been left too long in the cure or whatever it is he does to them it doesn't cook up properly maybe it has something to do with the pigs being over fat I don't know. All the other cuts that we had done are great but we want to try something different with the hams, bacon & whatever else we can smoke

 

[Jogeephus]

Yeah, its better to make your own then you can make it to suit your own tastes. Reason I asked is I had a guy do one for me once and he didn't smoke them either but injected them with liquid smoke. Something must have been wrong with his injector or he had some dimwit doing it and it tasted like liquid smoke and there was stains in the meat. It was terrible.

 

[101]

Well I can tell you, speaking from my experience, that smoking meat can be an addiction !!! But sure can be a lot of fun and you can do so many different things for different tastes. I like to read the forum on a site called, ( The Smoke Ring ) there is a lot information there on building smokers to to smoking just about anything you can think of, also recipes and a lot of very helpfull folks on there also, so welcome, good luck and have fun !!! 101

 

[Loch Valley Fold]

Thanks for the tips we have at least 8 months to get 1 ready for the hams although I may be asking for one before so I can start practicing I do like smoke chicken so may be cranking up our bbq to do some