Anyone tried cold smoking fruit & veg?

Aww maaan!

The really garlickly company do smoked garlic, it's superb! Smoked peppers should be divine too, I'm thinking you could smoke them until dry and pound to make homemade paprika... theoretically you should be able to do chillies too then?

You can also smoke eggs!

I'd be interested to hear if anyone's tried any of these, OH is hoping to have his smoker ready in the next couple of weeks I hope!

Take heed of your avatar HeyWayne!

Thats me done for as well

I know for fact that my ma-in-law cold smokes plums and pears, the pears taste yummy (so do the plums).

I'm toying with the idea of phoning and asking how she does it, might wait till Christmas though

Alex, maybe you could ask her before christmas, it seems a long time to wait. Would love to know how she does it.

There's a guy on another site who smokes shallots but not sure of the method he uses.

I've asked my wife about construction details of the smoker (see pict). Basically it's a brick built box with fine metal net on top, and some kind of a roof to protect it from rain. The one my in-laws got is industrial size but I guess it's possible to built one on a smaller scale. The only dimension you shouldn't really 'downsize' is the height, in order to keep the fruit away from the heat and achieve 'cold' smoking

Now the way they smoke it. It takes a few days (up to a week), the slower the better. The fruit need to be ripe and sweet but not soft. First you burn wood to build up coals. This can be any wood really. There should be enough coals to keep the smoking going for at least a couple of days.

Once you have enough coals and the flames are out, you can place a damp log of a (preferably) fruit tree (cherry or apple work the best) to slowly smoulder. The log need to be really wet (should've been lying outside for a while), if you simply wet it on the outside before placing on top of the coals it will quickly dry and start burning.

Otherwise you can use wood chips or dust (you can buy them online), these need to be damp as well.

At this point you place the fruit in a single layer, evenly spaced, on top of the metal net. The net should be warm to touch but not hot, if it is - let it cool down. On top of the fruit you place a layer of heavy fabric (heavy duty potato sacks for example), so that the whole surface of the net is covered. This will keep the smoke in and stop the wood from burning.

Check the coals regularly so that there is no flames, and if they appear spray them with water. The fruit need to be turned once a day. Plums take about two days and pears three to four days depending on the size. Ready fruit should have the consistency of dries prunes/apricots.

My plan was to use an old fridge outside of my greenhouse, back to back with my woodburning stove.
Plan is to give the stove a good clean out as I usually burn anything I can get my hands on. Half fill it with hardwood sawdust which I hope to aquire from a local cabinet makers FOC if possible. Light the top with a bit of BBQ lighting fluid and let it smolder downward.

Then all I need to do is hook a flexible pipe over my flue pipe and feed it into a hole I'll cut in the bottom back of the fridge. I intend putting an outlet hole in the top of the fridge with a cowel to keep the rain out.

Open the fridge door, put the stuff to be smoked on the shelves and bobs your uncle! THEORETICALLY!

Yeah Snadger, methinks of doing something similar with an old barrel. I'm just going to use a buried in the ground metal pipe (about 2m long) to cool the smoke down. The fire itself will be in a pit. We'll see if it works. Was going to try smoking some sausage first though

Spot on! A picture saves a thousand words! I only wish I could draw as well as you though!

Smoked garlic is unbelievably gorgeous. I could wear it as a perfume!

Hi Snadger,

I read it somewhere, the Mexican smoke their dried chilies ( it came with specifiek name, which I can't remember it now ). It is later use in salsa, but are you into eating spicy food...

Good luck,
Momol

hey Snadger and Smokers

Did you ever get your smoking fridge working?

If you like alternative preservation methods you might warm to an idea I found t’other day in my earlier search for solutions to shady places (didn’t store the address but will retrace if necessary) which was to bury a surplus fridge or freezer in a shady part of the garden with the door uppermost (i.e.level with surface) and use it like an old-fashioned clamp for storing root veg - the idea being that the winter ground temp stays cold and pretty constant a few feet down. Don't see why it has to be a fridge, any metal box would do but a fridge has the right associations.... The author said it worked best if you buried it 6 feet down but that sounded a bit of a hostage to fortune to me (and neighbours might think you have a terrible secret….). I like the simplicity of the idea and it’s less severe than freezing - but am not sure it would work. You could probably keep moisture, insects, mice etc at bay but wouldn’t the air go stagnant? A fridge full of slightly damp sand perhaps? But then rescuing a carrot would become a major undertaking in more than one sense . And are there any environmental risks to burying fridges? Duh! Off to Tescos again…

I was less impressed with this guy's alternative use for cars… (I think he was mapping existence post holocaust but I ignored that bit) - basically take the seats out, fill up the interior with soil to the level of the windows and he claims you’ve got a mobile coldframe/greenhouse. Not sure how you tend the plants, through the sunroof presumably . A big saving on petrol costs is evidently another advantage of that one.

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