We have begun an experiment to cure, smoke and air-dry a leg of venison and wanted to share the various stages and progress to date to help us perfect our technique. The locally sourced meat - literally from land neighbouring Hot Smoked’s HQ in Devon - is as naturally reared as you can get and venison is one of the leanest meats available.

First the leg was packed in 5kg of cooking salt mixed with peppercorns and whole juniper berries. As the meat is on the bone we also injected a brine (salt and water mixture) into several points along the length of the leg to help cure the meat from the inside. We used an old wine box with some extra wooden partitions which we left on a utility room sink unit (this bit is important) with a half a concrete block on top. We left the leg in its salt nest for almost one month during the course of which moisture drained out into the sink. When we opened up the box, the leg had shrunk by about 30% with the salt having effectively absorbed the moisture in the meat to prepare the meat for smoking.

The next stage was to thoroughly rinse the salt from the meat as any residues will be absorbed into the meat and make the results too salty. Then the entire surface was rubbed with distilled vinegar to help kill off any lingering bacteria. Now to the food smoker. We cold smoked the leg in a ProQ Excel Food Smoker using the new cold smoke generator filled with oak wood dust. This cold smoking exercise will hopefully deliver two benefits, one, a wonderful smokey flavour and two, a thorough sealing of the meat to accelerate the preserving process.

The final stage was to wrap the haunch in muslim and it is currently hanging high up in the rafters of an outhouse with plenty of ventilation as this outhouse has no end wall and we are in a pretty windy spot! The leg has been hung inside a useful contraption, a GameSafe, a nylon mesh pop up oval which will stop any marauders getting into contact with it. So far it’s been hanging there for almost a month and the plan is to leave it for several more - even for 6 to 8 months we are told, whilst it thoroughly air dries.

For now, we’ll make sure it is kept protected, cool and well-ventilated and will report back! If, in the meantime, anyone has any tips or thoughts on the process we’ve undertaken so far, we’d love to hear!

Alyson

Hot Smoked

This weekend - with a posse of guests to feed - we tried out cold smoking with the new ProQ Cold Smoke Generator in our ProQ Excel food smoker. We were pleasantly surprised how much smoke this nifty little device created and it’s dead easy and really quick to set up and light. We smoked a lump of inexpensive medium flavour cheddar and a whole brie for about 6 hours and added these to our cheese board at the end of the evening. We didn’t use the full 100gm of oak wood dust which comes with the product as we went for a minimum cold smoke time of 6 hours rather than the full 12 hours which the cold smoke generator is capable of.

The results were fantastic! The cheddar in particular took on the full oak wood smoke flavour and it really was transformed into something a lot more interesting than the rather tasteless soapy cheddar we started with. The results for the brie were a lot more subtle and the smokey taste was concentrated in the outer layer - actually that tasted really great. To get the smoke flavour to run all the way through we should probably have cut the brie in half or made some holes through the outer skin.

All in all, we were all really impressed with the results of this new cold smoke generator and as it really needs so little set up we’re going to experiment some more with some new wood flavours we’ve just taken on - including apple and cherry dust. Could be interesting with a goats cheese or other hard cheese.

David at Hot Smoked.