HOT SMOKE VS COLD SMOKE
Wait wait wait, it’s not the same thing??
You may be asking yourself; how do they do smoked food cold and not spoil it?
You may have had smoked salmon before but it’s still raw…. But it’s cooked… but it’s cold… so it’s smoked… cold?
The reason there is 2 methods for smoking is that some foods require a light delicate smoke flavour while not being heated up to spoil the food, it’s actually a very good way for food preservation which dates back hundreds if not thousands of years.
Things like smoked salmon, smoked cheese, smoked milk, smoked caviar, require cold smoked methods due to the nature of how delicate they are under temperature, cheese for instance, would melt over a high temp & even though melted cheese is one of the greatest things anyone has ever created ever, it’s not always the desired goal.
Something like Caviar or salmon are so good when they are raw, adding a smoke flavour to them is the desired goal but if you heat them up, they have a completely different taste & texture.
So, let’s understand the difference & after reading this you will be shocked at how easy it is.
HOT SMOKE
This is what we do when we want to heat up the food & give it a great smoke flavour, as well as cook it for a long time, things like Brisket, Ribs, Chicken Wings, Sausages, Steaks all require relatively high temp for the fat & proteins to be broken down to give us that mouth-watering, dripping goodness we all crave when It comes to BBQ
COLD SMOKE
This method is still using the smoker because we need heat to create the smoke in the first place, however with the power of ICE! We are able to create cold environment for the food, so it doesn’t get hot enough to be destroyed or broken down by the heat, also an offset smoker is used for this method generally. If you were to use for instance a weber kettle with a direct heat source, then it would still work but not for very long cos the heat is really stuck in there.
So chuck your salmon over tray of ice next time you want to do a cold smoke, or if you want to do some smoked blue cheese (doing this for a recipe tomorrow) which will add an amazing amount of smoke flavour but not lose the integrity of the food at all!
