Grow Your Own Magazine

I've just read about someone who smokes his garlic (oak smoked), it sounded really nice!

I wont have any garlic until next year, but would be interested in finding out how one would go about smoking them them?

We're big garlic fans in this house, and would love to give it a go

Does anyone know how to smoke garlic?

With some Rizla, and I would suggest a little tobacco to keep the burn going...

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

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A pal of ours has a smoker - I'm sure you can get them at B&Q. His is a sort of metal box like a small biscuit tin and you take the bottom section out, add your oak chips (also from B&Q - why aren't I on commission?) put that bit back, add your food to be smoked - he does a wicked sausage - lid on and bung it in the barbie for a bit. I reckon it would work a treat with garlic - which I love too. Many years ago when you couldn't get it easily, my daughter and husband were cleaning the kitchen for me (rare occurance, must have been me birthday!) and threw out my smoked garlic 'cause they thought it had 'gone off' ! Went off them a bit!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated October 12th

I can remember lads at school saying they smoked dry banana skins

Thank you

I'll have to look, will wait and see if it goes in the sale (I'd imagine it isn't cheap) or make our own (fantastic having a steel fabricator for a partner )


I'm really looking forward to getting one and giving it a go, after reading about the garlic, I really want some (he said about shallots too! yummmm)

Many moons ago I used to be a steel fabicator!

I made my own smoker but before I tell you how I made it I think I should point something out!

There are two tpes of smoking, hot smoking and cold smoking. Kippers and salmon are cold smoked. The difference is, that in hot smoking which is what I did, you actually cook the item as well as smoke it!
I don't think garlic would be very nice hot smoked, but I could be wrong!

Cold smoking can be achieved by using a fire pit with a flue running to a storage receptacle some distance away. This way the smoke impregnates the meat, fish or veg over a reasonably long time (sometimes days!) and cures it. It never gets hot so is not cooked. Produce can be stored for quite some time and it is often combined with salting.

I have tried 'hot smoking' and I made a smoker with two metal turkey roasting dishes I got from tesco's @ 99p each! Join the two together to form a top and bottom with a couple of small hinges rivetted to one edge. Make a little frame for the bottom out of anything you have lying around, in my case 1" X 1/8" flat bar bent into a long 'U' shape and fastened to the bottom with rivets or bolts. It needs to be high enough so that a small bean tin with methalated spirits (bought at chemists) in the bottom will fit snugly underneath!
Then all you need is something to keep the item you're smoking off the bottom of the tray (I used an old grid from a grill pan, but something like chicken mesh would do.

To use it, put oak sawdust in the bottom of the tray (or you can try other hardwoods, apple or hickory for instance) You can actually buy Barbour sawdust for a ridiculus amount of money if you're mad, or you can scrounge some from a cabinet maker or turner, or you could do as I did, and saw up a lump of oak!
I used mine for smoking trout....anyway, sawdust in bottom, meths in bean tin....item to be smoked on grill....shut lid.....light meths.......meths heats bottom of tray and smoulders oakdust and in approximately 20 minutes you will have smoked trout which melts in the mouth and is fully cooked!

PS Still think garlic would be better cold smoked as it will go quite mushy if hot smoked and because it is cooked will probably loose some of it's flavour!

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I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
W. C. Fields

Never thought of that Snadger. The garlic MUST have been cold smoked - it certainly kept well and was still firm but ooohh, the flavour!
Our friend used his hot smoker on the barbie for cooking and again, the flavour was fabulous.
You could hot smoke garlic if you were going to use it to spread on toast - like they do with oven baked garlic.

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated October 12th

I'm a carpenter (and a bench joiner too!) , so getting hold of the shavings or sawdust wont be a problem


I'll definately have to have a go at that!

I'll have a look into cold smoking too, I really want to have a go at the garlic next year

Can you buy books on it?

I smoke the majority of my 400kg garlic harvest

It usually sells very well & is popular with some very classy local hotels and restaurants.

As a carpenter you might find it easy to make a 'cold smoker'. I managed to improvise one from a tall wooden cupboard and a biscuit tin. We had a glut of very small fish (caught by my kids off the pier) so we dipped them in brine, and hung them in pairs over dowel rails high up in the cabinet (tied in pairs at the tails).
The cabinet had holes drilled in the sides near the top. The biscuit tin contained the slow-burning peat.
They were smoked for as long as I could keep the peat burning, and ended up dry. Made good nibbles.
A neighbour had a more sophisticated version, a wooden (plywood) box with racks in, and a pipe leading to it from a firebox a few feet away. I seem to remember that his firebox was made from an old oildrum, but he did have to acquire some proper 'fluepipe' (a secondhand boiler chimney). It cold-smoked some big fish very successfully.
Garlic would definitely need 'cold smoking' if you wanted it to keep at all. Hot-smoking is basically for fairly immediate consumption.

Hi wg, do you happen to work for a certain Nairn-based garlic company? I've been planting some of that Porcelain Garlic from there, it's magic. Do you hot smoke or cold smoke them?

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Dwell simply ~ love richly

when we do our shopping trip to France every six months or so we always end up buying a couple of strings of smoked garlic from the hypermarkets. we hang them in the kitchen and gives of a fantastic aroma and they don't half taste great as well.

would love to hear if anyone manages to do it simply and sucessfully

(didn't Jamie do something with salmon in a biscuit tin in his last series?)

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The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
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Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when your'e tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand
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They can't touch you for it!

I agree though French smoked garlic is divine.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

home made cold smoker This thread was posted a while ago, there doesn't seem to be any update recently though! I'm not sure about leaving a soldering iron on, safety wise?

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I could not live without a garden, it is my place to unwind and recover, to marvel at the power of all growing things, even weeds!

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No, but I do know Glen very well. We get our seed garlic from the same Canadian source but I grow mine organically.

Not sure if commercial posts are permitted on here but follow my signature if you are looking for some (hot-smoked) smoked garlic.

Sounds a bit dodgy.......
If you have a tall enough 'box' and the fuel is only smouldering, the same principle will work OK. A tall, narrow wardrobe, with 'smoke escape' holes near the top (not IN the top) and NO FLOOR, plus a biscuit tin to contain the fuel (I used peat, woodchips would be as good). Stand the whole thing on a concrete base (out doors, or in the middle of a draughty car-free garage if rain threatens). The traditional way to get the fuel to smoulder is to add a lump of heated metal to the 'firebox' and pour more fuel over it. Make sure that nothing which will get hot can touch the wood! Put the 'to be smoked' on a rack (or hang from rods) just below the escape holes. Get it lit, and leave it until it goes out (a few hours). Repeat if you want things very smoky.

Seeing as you seem to be quite an expert on smoking garlic what does it taste like? I've got some growing at the lottie but am not sure if I'll use it before it sprouts (I go through 'phases eating garlic ) and wondered if this would be a good alternative?

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Shortie

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children; one of these is roots, the other wings" - Hodding Carter

Ah now ... and here modesty deserts me ... I use reclaimed oak wood from whisky barrels which have held premium malt Scotch whiskies for 12 or more years.

A couple of unpeeled heads (yes, heads) of smoked garlic placed inside the cavity of a chicken before roasting it, imparts the most divine flavour through the entire bird.

Or preserved in olive oil infuses the oil with a delicious flavour to use in humus, salads etc.

A couple of piccies ...

Whiskey... Yum I fancied a lager this evening. Might have to see if I can dig out a little shot of whiskey instead

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Shortie

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children; one of these is roots, the other wings" - Hodding Carter

I do hope you mean whisky and not whiskey