How to Choose an Electric Smokehouse?

A smokehouse is a device for cooking food with smoke. You can easily buy smoked products in any supermarket or market, but often people do not trust such a service. Many negligent sellers rub spoiled food with vegetable oil and sell it as fresh. It is also impossible to be sure that manufacturers comply with sanitary standards in the process of preparing products.

One of the best ways for smoked meat lovers is to buy your smokehouse. Of course, anyone who has the time and desire for this can make such a device with their own hands. The rest is better to buy a ready-made smokehouse.

According to the type of smokehouse, they are divided into:

• devices for cold smoking;
• devices for hot smoking.

To obtain a semi-hot-smoked product, fish or meat is subjected to various temperature conditions in the range of 35-50 C. At the same time, the cooking speed increases, and the result tastes as good as cold-smoked or hot-smoked products.

Features of a cold-smoked smokehouse

Cold smoking is a process during which the drying and processing of the product are carried out with chilled smoke. At the same time, its temperature should be about 20°C. When preparing dishes in this way, drying is carried out rather slowly, the duration of the process can be up to three days.

A feature of a cold-smoked smokehouse is that it consists of two chambers and a chimney pipe between them. In the furnace tank, sawdust is burned, the smoke from which, passing through the chimney, is cooled. Then it enters the smoking chamber, where the direct process of cooking with cold smoke takes place.

Features of a smokehouse for hot smoking

During hot smoking, food processing is much faster. This is achieved because cooking is carried out at high temperatures (30-150 C). However, hot-smoked products are stored much less than cold-smoked products, since moisture and fat remain inside.

A feature of this type of device is that it consists of one tank, which contains both combustible sawdust (special wood chips) and products. Hot smoke envelops the raw material and then exits through a special chimney.

Smokehouses running on different types of fuel

Depending on the type of fuel used, smokehouses are divided into:

• gas;
• wood;
• powered by electricity.

How to choose a gas smoker

A gas smokehouse is a fairly popular type of equipment. Its weight can be up to 10 kg, and the resulting products have a special taste. Gas smokers can be used for both cold and hot smoking. They are fueled by natural gas, most commonly propane. Special briquettes are placed inside the smokehouse, which, when burned, emit fragrant smoke. It is better to make briquettes from different types of wood, then the taste of the products becomes more saturated and “dense”. When choosing a gas smokehouse, you should pay attention to the smoke divider (it is better if it is present) and the fuel cylinder used.

The advantages of this type of device are its compactness and convenience. You can use such a smokehouse both at home and in field conditions. This device is recognized as one of the safest smoking units.

Among the minuses, it can be noted that gas is more expensive than wood, and the device itself is available only to those who have a sufficient budget.

How to choose a smokehouse that runs on wood, coal, and briquettes

This is a unit, cooking on which is carried out thanks to the smoke from coals. In such smokehouses, you can use both ordinary coal and special briquettes or wood chips, which is preferable, as they give less smoke. In the process of cooking on such a device, the heat from the coals cannot be regulated.

Currently, there is a new generation of coal smokers equipped with a thermometer. And if such a model is also equipped with a grill, then it can be considered an indispensable attribute for a country house. Such a device was developed by BOYSCOUT.

The advantages of a coal smokehouse are ease of use and maintenance, as well as the relative cheapness of fuel. Charcoal gives food a unique smoky flavor that cannot be achieved with gas models.

The disadvantages of such a smokehouse include a long ignition (sometimes the start-up time can reach 20 minutes) and the inability to regulate the temperature.

As for the cheaper (camping) charcoal smokehouses, their range is quite extensive: from small disposable BOYSCOUT products, which include alder chips, salt, and pepper, to two-tier smokehouses from the same company. The former is intended for those who spontaneously decided to have a picnic with smoked meats, the latter is applicable for transportation in the trunk of a car during scheduled trips.

How to choose an electric smoker

According to the principle of operation, an electric smokehouse is similar to a gas one. The only difference is that the entire smoking process in such a unit is fully automated.

Briquettes are fed automatically, and the camera of the device is digital, with the ability to adjust the temperature. In cheaper models, the temperature is maintained at a constant level. The smokehouse itself may look like a cylinder or a cube. Grids are included. Typically, electric smokehouses can support both cold and hot smoking modes.

The advantage of the best electric smoker is that the cooking process does not require human intervention, it is fully automated. More expensive models have a huge number of smoking modes, which allows you to experiment with different recipes.

The disadvantage of this unit is the high price.

Conclusion

Choosing a good smokehouse in our time is quite simple. Moreover, food prepared by one's own hands in each of the smokehouses described above turns out to be equally high-quality and tasty. If you like to sit around the fire, choose a charcoal smoker. During cooking, you have to participate directly in the process itself, which does not let you get bored.

If you are a busy person who wants to save as much time as possible for other things, you are better off choosing a gas or electric smoker.