So what do you smoke when it's raining and you're not around ? Lots of spices !

[curious aardvark]

Okay it's not fruit or nuts, but until we get a herbs and spices section this is as close as I can get (hint, hint, hintity hint)

Filled up and lit the smokevark (explanatory thread here for the new folks :-)
loaded a bunch of foil trays with spices.
And that's pretty much it, except for stirring the trays up a little every 3-4 hours - or when the rain lets up alittle

Got some relatives coming down over the weekend - going to help out with our annual fundraising day for guide dogs for the blind (seeing eye dogs)
My aunt took some smoked paprika back with her last time she was up. Promised I'd smoke some other spices for her to try.

So here we are :-)



Seasalt, paprika, coriander, chilli flakes, dried onion, peppercorns - I use tellicherry as the have areally fruity flavour and are real cheap fom costco :-)
Smoking about a lb of each give or take.
I'll leave them in there for around 12 hours, stir the surface spices into the main body with a chopstick every now and then.
And that's all it takes to mass smoke spices.

Might put some cheese in later - just remembered I've got a couple blocks in the fridge

[Bearcarver]

Great Idea CA !!

Bear

[ALX]

Nice variety Alex.........

[Baja_Traveler]

So what sawdust did you use? What wood do you think is the best for spices? I'd like to try smoking some salt...

[Fishawn]

I like it

[Mario]

looks good

[1Cavman]

Read your build thread.. Very Cool Alex

[curious aardvark]

So what sawdust did you use? What wood do you think is the best for spices? I'd like to try smoking some salt...

I use oak sawdust - simply because it's all I can get :-)

Well not strictly true. But oak sawdust costs £30 (around $45) for 44lb delivered. The smokevark will use just under 1lb for every 14 hours smoke.

Any other type of sawdust would come in a very small bag and cost very silly money. (around £6 [$9] a PINT !)
So I use oak :-)
all I can say is it works and tastes great and I can afford it :-)
If money wasn't an issue I'd probably go with apple or plum. But oak is good too.
reminds me - I was going to put afew baylaves ontop of the sawdust -brb...


Don't know idf it'll work - but sprinkled some sawdust on top of them to help.
we'll see lol


Anyway, remembered I had a couple of blocks of cheese in the fridge.
red leicester and mature cheddar. About 2.5 lbs of each.
And now it looks like a properly full smoker
Cheese will get 3 hours and then vacpacked.



hate to waste good smoke

[Baja_Traveler]

I did my first cheese ever last friday using an alder/cherry blend for the same amount of time. I found it interesting that the light colored pepper jack didn't darken at all, and the cheddar only mildly so. Now that it has been sitting in the fridge for almost a week, the darkness is starting to show as rack marks where the cheese was touching the rack. The bummer about cheese is the wait, but I'm looking forward to trying it to see how it came out...

Here's mine right out of the smoker:

[curious aardvark]

well hell if it's been in the fridge a week - start eating it !!!!

I reckon 3 days and it's good to go :-)
Plus you've cut it into good smallish size pieces - and the smaller the piece of cheese the quicker the smoke flavour permeates the whole piece.
So go eat some smoked cheese !

And the thing to remember: is that flavour does not equal colour.

Anytime you see commercial 'smoked' cheese and it's got that dark brown or orangey 'rind'. It's gonna taste like crap.
And it's not actually smoked but showered in liquid smoke in a factory.

You should get a slight discolouration. But if there's a very obvious colour change - it's probably not going to taste that great.

Update on the bayleaves.



seems to be working :-)