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Smoking and Cold Smoke

Smoking as a deliberate technique, hot or cold

27 rungs across 23 volumes

Dishes

Weeknight

Weekend

Project

Untimed

Africa

Guinea, Sierra Leone & Liberia

Build umami from smoke and dried shellfish, deliberately, because the fresh fish is often unusable raw

Konkoué catfish, dried bonga and dried crayfish are not simply flavourings of convenience.

Ghana & Nigeria

Get the rice technique right

Jollof is decided before the sauce is. The rules, from Ozoz Sokoh's fundamentals and Akoko's practice:

Ghana & Nigeria

Smoke on purpose, not by accident

Ikoyi's smoked jollof is timed "to the second" and served in a lidded vessel.

Côte d'Ivoire, Togo & Benin

Build a smoked fish stock instead of adding smoked fish

Smoked fish delivers three things that behave completely differently.

Cameroon

Stack the umami synergistically, then salt down

The bad version seasons with three stock cubes at the start; the good version builds glutamate and nucleotide from ingredients and then needs much less salt.

Gabon, Congo & the Congo Basin

Extract the smoke, do not dump it

Smoked and dried river fish carry the umami load of the region: free glutamate concentrated by drying, plus nucleotides, plus phenolic smoke compounds.

Uganda, Rwanda & Burundi

The banana leaf is a working component, not packaging. Wilt it, smoke it, and use it twice

Before any dish, understand the vessel, because it is one architecture and it produces most of the food in this volume.

Uganda, Rwanda & Burundi

Smoke the vessel, not the food

This is the region's signature move and the one that will most surprise a British cook, because British and French practice smokes the ingredient.

Asia

Iran

Smoke over open flame where the tradition specifies it, never the oven

Mirza ghasemi's aubergine must be charred directly over a naked gas flame or hot coals, never oven-roasted, because it is the actual smoke, not simply the...

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Read the fire, not the clock

Qefilyan's mangal cooking runs slow, around 40 minutes, turning frequently, seasoning minimally, salt, paprika, black pepper, thyme, with lamb fat threaded...

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan & Turkmenistan

Salt curing and casing for horsemeat sausage

Kazy's method is a controlled dehydration, not simply seasoning: whole strips of rib meat and fat are cured in salt, garlic and pepper for six hours to a full...

Europe

North Germany and the Baltic Coast

Cold-smoking below the point of cooking

Traditional Kieler Sprotten and smoked eel are cured under 25°C, a temperature that flavours and lightly preserves the fish without cooking it at all, a slow...

Austria and the Habsburg Table

Cure and cold-smoke, don't hot-smoke, for Alpine preservation

Tiroler Speck's specification is precise for a reason: dry salt with juniper, pepper and garlic first, drawing moisture out and beginning preservation...

The Czech Republic and Slovakia

Full salt penetration before smoke, checkable by the cut

Cold-smoked meat and cheese on both sides of the border share one non-negotiable prerequisite: the salt must fully penetrate to the centre before smoking...

Poland

Dry the casing before you smoke the kiełbasa

Genuine Polish kiełbasa is smoked, not merely seasoned, and the two smoking traditions are genuinely different techniques, not two speeds of the same one.

Denmark, Norway & Iceland

Give smoke time, not heat

Hangikjöt's own stated aim, in the words of one of Iceland's major producers, is maximum smoke and minimum fire, a genuine cold smoke rather than a hot one.

Sweden, Finland & Sápmi

Cold-smoke, and accept what the cold actually buys you

Suovas, cold-smoked salted reindeer, and Niklas Ekstedt's own restaurant practice both work on the same principle: smoke applied at a low enough temperature...

Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania

Treat cold-smoking as a distinct, multi-day discipline, not a faster version of hot-smoking

The Baltic coast's fish preservation runs on two genuinely different techniques, not two speeds of the same one: hot smoking, run hot and comparatively fast...

Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania

Read skilandis's cure as an engineering problem, and solve for Britain's climate rather than Lithuania's

Skilandis, cold-smoked at around 15°C for two to three weeks and then dried at 8 to 18°C and a controlled 75 to 90 per cent relative humidity for anywhere from...

Russia, the East Slavic Heartland

Smoke fish as two genuinely different techniques, not one at two speeds

Hot smoking runs at 70 to 100°C for roughly one and a half to two hours, cooking the fish through as it smokes.

Ukraine and Belarus

Cold-smoke kovbasa and fish as a distinct, multi-day discipline

Kovbasa and preserved fish both depend on smoking run low and slow, not fast and hot: a controlled cold smoke, held well below the temperature that would...

Scotland, the Highlands and Islands

Salt first, dry the skin, then decide which smoke you want

Every cured fish and every hot-smoked haddock in this chapter starts the same way: salt applied before anything else, drawing surface moisture out by osmosis...

Scotland, the Highlands and Islands

Give the smoke time, not heat, and know which one you're doing

This is Rung 1's principle taken further, into a preservation technique proper rather than a flavouring one.

Scotland, the Lowlands and the Central Belt

Hot smoking, fast and hard

Not this volume's own invention, the Arbroath smokie belongs properly to the Highlands and Islands, but the principle, a very hot, fast, enclosed smoke rather...

Ireland

Smoke and ferment the Atlantic larder deliberately, not as decoration

Modern Irish kitchens smoking mussels over hardwood before pairing them with a ferment, or working dulse into a seasoning rather than treating it as a garnish...

The New British Table

Smoke low, and let the wood be the point

Jerk cooked over pimento wood, genuinely available imported into the UK, at a real low-and-slow barbecue temperature rather than a hot, fast grill, gives the...

The Americas

Chile

Merkén, smoking and grinding

Sun-drying to a violet colour concentrates and stabilises the chilli before smoke ever touches it; a comparatively short, roughly thirty minute hot smoke over...

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