Indoor smoking

[Anonymous Modernist 749]

I just ordered a Cameron stove-top smoker (I live in an apartment, so outdoor options are prohibited) and was wondering if anybody had tips for the best ways to get smoke absorption with the limits of this setup. I'd like to try the pulled pork recipe in the book finished sous vide, but the 7-hour hot smoke is obviously not repeatable indoors. My current thoughts are:

1. Cut the food into small pieces to maximize surface area. However, it seems the smaller they get, the faster they'll dry out which will limit smoke absorption.

2. Smoke the food multiple times. I remember reading that once the food reaches a certain temperature, smoke absorption stops. Is this true? Is this actually because of the temperature of the food or is it the wet/dry issue discussed in the book? If temperature is an issue, would smoking, cooling, then resmoking work?

3. Use a heavier smoke like oak or mesquite. Would these overpower the pork or would they effectively counteract the limitations of an indoor setup?

If anybody has any other thoughts on indoor smoking, I'd be happy to hear them (foods that work best, wood types, temperature/humidity control, etc). I'm looking forward to trying the smoked potatoes, which specifically mention a stove-top smoker.

[Anonymous Modernist 218]

I have a Cameron smoker, and have used it mainly for smoked trout. A tablespoon or so of alder sawdust, a brined butterflied trout, 30 minutes on the stove. Fantastic. It really got me hooked on the use of smoke as a flavor. So much so that I went out and got a big green egg smoker/BBQ to do longer/cooler smokes!

I think the sweet spot for the Camerons is with smaller/thinner items that you want to hot smoke in 30 minutes or less. The sawdust is typically gone by then, so its hard to do a long smoke or a low-temp smoke. Your potato idea sounds great (if small or cut thin). I bet garlic might work in the Camron; this only took about 30 min in the BGE and was great in an aioli.

[Chris Young]

A stovetop smoker is a wonderful way for adding a light smoked flavor to food, but it will be a challenge to smoke large, thick foods for the long periods of time needed to fully develop an attractive smoked pellicle and deep smokey flavor. Here are my thoughts on how to produce flavorful pulled pork with your setup:

(1) Your thought about maximizing the surface area to volume ratio is exactly right: After cooking the pork sous vide, shred the meat prior to smoking it in your Cameron smoker.

(2) Use a relatively small amount of dry sawdust--do not wet the sawdust, it just makes the smoke very acrid tasting--and consider smoking multiple times. The reason is that the smoldering saw dust will increase the temperature and risks overcooking too much of the pork that you've carefully cooked at a low temperature.

(3) Saying cooked food doesn't absorb smoke is a myth. That food above a certain temperature doesn't absorb smoke is also false. This is covered in the book at length in the Smoking section of Chapter 7 (pages 132-149 in volume 2).

The secret to getting smoke to stick to food is to ensure the food is neither too wet nor too dry. If the surface is dripping wet, then the smoke sticks to this surface moisture and will drip off the food or evaporate with the juices before permeating the food. On the other hand, if your meat is overly dry, the smoke has difficulty diffusing into the meat efficiently. Also, too little moisture prevents molecules in the smoke from reacting with proteins and sugars in the meat, which is essential for creating a rich smoked flavor and attractive appearance.

So when you're smoking your pork, you want the surface of the meet to be warm and slightly tacky feeling. This requires a bit of drying, so keep your stovetop smoker slightly cracked to allow some moisture to escape while you're doing the smoking.

Hope this helps,

Chris

[Anonymous Modernist 749]

Thanks Chris. I put the pork in the water bath this morning, so it'll be ready this weekend. I'll report back on how it goes.

[Anonymous Modernist 749]

Well, Hurricane Irene took my first attempt (I had to throw out the shoulder after an extended power outage), so I didn't get around to trying again until this past weekend. I wasn't as careful as I should have been with the smoking (the meat got hotter than I would have liked it), but that didn't hurt the end product too much. The pork was still nice and tender and had a good amount of smoke absorption. I smoked it once for about 45 minutes. In the future, I'll probably smoke it twice for shorter periods of time (and maybe put a thermometer in there so I can stop it when the temperature gets too high). Overall though, I was very satisfied with the final result.