Pork fat is a very useful product present in our diet. Salo can be prepared in various ways, it can not only be salted, boiled, baked and marinated, but also smoked. Smoked salo at home is a delicacy, which, if properly prepared, will diversify our table in the most pleasant way: a sandwich made of smoked bacon with onions and black bread is a delicious, we might say, cult food.
Smoking is one of the most ancient types of cooking and preserving foods, although not the healthiest. Smoked bacon, of course, is less useful than, for example, boiled, salted or pickled, but it is very tasty, but because you can sometimes afford to eat a few pieces (nutritionists recommend that there are smoked foods no more than 2 times a month).
Let's talk about smoking lard at home.
On the options for a smokehouse
It is assumed that you have the opportunity to organize in the household a smokehouse inside which the smoke-processed products are suspended. For example, a good smokehouse is easy to make from an iron barrel.
Cold smoking of fat assumes the presence of a stationary or temporarily arranged smokehouse, in which the product is exposed to long-term treatment with cold smoke. That is, the design for cold smoking should have a sufficiently long chimney, in which the smoke manages to cool down. For hot smoked bacon in a city apartment, you can use a mini mini smokehouse. The fat of hot smoking is prepared faster, the product is exposed to hot wood smoke.
On the choice of wood for smoking fat at home
The taste and aroma of the smoked product, in our case fat, directly depends on the choice of wood. We exclude coniferous rocks and birch because of the smell and excessive gumminess. Do not use poplar. Good results are provided by alder firewood, as well as wood of all hard hardwoods (beech, ash, oak, hornbeam), aspen, linden. The best smoking is on the wood of home fruit trees. Adding the rods of some trees and shrubs (black currant, mountain ash, juniper, etc.) gives a very pleasant effect, giving the smoked product additional flavor and aroma shades. In smoking, dry or slightly damp wood is used in three types: rods, small chips, shavings and sawdust (it is desirable to combine all three types of raw materials during combustion). It should be taken into account that the best smoking occurs when smoldering wood, and not with active burning, which should be taken into account when arranging and adjusting the smokehouse.
How to prepare lard for smoking?
Before smoking, lard in the form of individual pieces for some time in a simple brine or brine-marinade (it is prepared with the addition of spices and other ingredients).
The recipe for smoking lard at home
We prepare the brine for the subsequent smoking of bacon - it's easy: we dissolve so much salt in the boiled water that a raw chicken egg pops up. This is the basic brine, to make the fat is more fragrant we will complicate the composition, that is, we will prepare marinade.
Marinade for smoking lard - recipe
In the proportion of ingredients, in addition to the ratio of the amounts of salt to water, there can not be rigidly defined variants of the ratios, everyone does it in their own way.
Preparation
Add to the boiling brine (see above) peppercorns, cloves, bay leaf, coriander seed, cumin and other unmilled spices. Let's boil for 3-8 minutes. In the cooling warm solution, you can add aromatic greens and garlic. Salo with the skin is cut into oblong pieces of a rectangular shape with a weight of about 300-400 g. Before smoking we keep the fat in brine or marinade for 1-2 days.
In the variant of hot smoking, the fat will be smoked for about 3-5 hours. In the option of cold smoking, fat can be smoked for 1.5 to 3 days (depending on the construction of the smokehouse chimney, the intensity of the smoke supply, the feeding cycles).