Chipper
New member
Just finished cold smoking a piece of Salmon with my new cold plate. I learned a lesson on how heat can become a wild animal when cold smoking. First I cured my salmon for 48 hrs using a 50/50 salt/sugar Gravlax recipe I got off the internet. Tasted great with just the salt cure but it needed some smoke. The salmon has been drying and is ready to smoke. I have the smoke box of my #1 packed FULL of apple chips. I have my grease pan loaded full of ice sitting on top of my cold plate. I start the temp at 170 (as recommended by the cold plate instructions) to ignite my wood. I watched the internal temp start at 78 degrees (I'm in South Florida) then start to climb. Twenty minutes later I have good smoke coming out, and the temperature is still rising! I try turning down the dial to 125 but the temperature keeps climbing. It hits 100 and still keeps climbing, I have terrific smoke coming out now. I'm now entering Hot Smoking territory and it's still climbing. What to do? I know, I'll open the box to allow it to cool. Holy Chernobyl Batman! I ain't never gonna do that again! It was like popping open a nuclear reactor. I grabbed my Salmon, pulled the plug and waited for the smoke to clear. After a quick check on the forum and picking up some pointers I tried it again after the box cooled down. More ice added, the fish, unaffected, was placed back in. Only used about a third as much chips as before this time. Set the dial lower to 150 for ignition. Again after twenty minutes a small amount of smoke puffed out and I turned the heat off completely. Temp kept climbing slowly then settled at 100. Close enough. After an hour I took the fish out. Let it sit in the fridge overnight. I had a feeling I might have ruined it, but turned out, it was beyond delicious!
Next time I'll hunt around to find an ever lower temp to start ignition. I'll use more ice and will cold soak the box with the ice before the smoke. I'll use smaller amounts of wood and stretch the smoke using heat sparingly. It was a lot of fun and can't wait to do it again.
Next time I'll hunt around to find an ever lower temp to start ignition. I'll use more ice and will cold soak the box with the ice before the smoke. I'll use smaller amounts of wood and stretch the smoke using heat sparingly. It was a lot of fun and can't wait to do it again.