Have you ever made your own smoked fish at home? What about smoked turkey? Or pork? Or duck breast? With the new book Home Smoking Basics by Maria Sartor you can learn to smoke anything.
“Smoking food has a millennial-old tradition; yet, during all that time, the process itself has not changed. Today, however, we no longer smoke food to preserve it, but rather to enrich it and make it taste better. What was once a way to preserve food has now become a method to prepare ‘delicacies’. Smoking food also has a nostaglic quality: it has something that, in our highly technological world, takes us back to our roots.” – Home Smoking Basics intro
Sartor takes you through the different methods for smoking – both hot and cold smoking – which you can do with an electric smoker or in your own homemade smoker. Instructions are included for how to build your own barrel smoker and are surprisingly simple and inexpensvie. Now is the perfect time of year to be taking on a project like this, imagine all the fun you could have smoking fish or duck out in the cool, crisp air. Then you could make a stockpile of smoked delicacies and give them as gifts over the holidays.
Once the different smoking methods have been covered there is instruction as to the brining or dry curing that takes place before you put your meat, fish or poultry into the smoker. The next section offers basic recipes for freshwater and saltwater fish – trout, char, eels, salmon and more. The recipes for hot smoking lamb, beef, pork, hare, venison, goose and more come next along with instruction for smoking eggs, cheese, tofu, garlic, even almonds!
The rest of the book is devoted to the recipes Sartor has developed since getting into the smoking game. Smoked Halibut with Avocado and Grapefruit Salad, Smoked Oxtail Ragout, Smoked Lamb Fillet with Figs in Port Wine, Smoked Mullet and Mussel Stew, Peppers Stuffed with Smoked Ricotta…
