Hot Smoking

Thanks to modern geology, salt is plentiful today. But there was a time when it wasn’t. The story of salt - beautifully told, by the way in Salt A World History, by Mark Kurlansky, is one of “coveting, fighting over, hoarding, and taxing”. Battles have been faught over salt, and our need for it has caused widespread suffering and even death in the efforts to collect and distribute it. The story of salt is somewhat akin to our modern fixation with oil. As Kurlansky writes: “The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.”

The story of smoking is bound up in the story of salt. For while there are many fables about the accidental discovery of the powers of smoke — hanging the meat too close to the fire, and gosh! what a revelation — the real reason smoking took on was through a lack of salt.

Back to Kurlansky: “For both meat and fish, smoking was a northern solution to a lack of salt. Salt is needed for smoking but in smaller quantities, because the smoking aids in conservation.”

But now that we have both salt in abundance and deep freezes (and, for a while, the oil to power them) smoking is still popular. Today we celebrate it for its taste rather than its preservative qualities.

The smoked salmon many of us will be eating this Christmas is actually processed through cold smoking. This is a complicated method that is best left to the hands of experts, of which there are many in Ireland. But hot smoking, where the foods are cooked at the same time as they are being smoked, is easy to do at home, even in your own kitchen.

You will need:

A smoking box. You can buy these or make them. Any tin box will do, though beware biscuit tins, because their lids are too tight fitting. Hugh Fernley Whittingstall famously makes one from an old bread bin. We inherited ours from a friend.

If you have a posh one, they might well come with little burners that use meths to light. You can put these boxes quite happily instead, over your gas grill if you have one. They also would work on a barbecue, or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, a camp fire. You can buy little gas grills in adventure stores. Half the fun is gathering bits from here and there and improvising.

Once you have the box you will need the ingredient to create the smoke. Usually this is wood shavings, but you can also use tea and rice. You can buy wood chips on line, choosing from oak, cherry, maple, hickory… or you can source them from a local joiner. I remember a famous smoked salmon in County Donegal that was smoked on the shavings left over from the local coffin maker.

Once you have these in place you are ready to go: you can smoke chicken, salmon or any white fish, mackerel, mussels, lamb.

We first learnt about hot smoking techniques from maverick chef Seamus O’Connell. Seamus also recommended smoking whelks (in horseradish mayonnaise) and duck liver (to make into a pate).

You might want to glaze your ingredient first, just treat it like a ham, glaze with a mixture of mustard and brown sugar and stud with cloves. You can also marinate before smoking, Japanese marinades are particularly suitable. Kikkomans sell a marinade, or you could make one with equal quantities of mirin, soy and brown sugar.

Once you’ve smoked your ingredient you might want to serve it with a hot sauce. A good choice is a cream sauce, made with a rich stock (fish for fish, chicken for chicken etc), reduced with some wine, and then cream added. You can add herbs to the sauce. Seamus memorably added some lemon geranium leaves to a sauce whilst it was cooking, then removed it. You could also use tarragon for chicken, or dill for fish.

Afterwards it’s delicious to toss the smoked foods in a vinaigrette. This is especially suitable for smoked mussels. Once again, Seamus: hot-smoked mussels with basil, balsamic and olive oil vinaigrette with a dice of roasted pumpkin. Frank Hederman makes a wonderful mustard vinaigrette for the smoked mussels he sells in various markets.

Lastly timings: keep the heat moderately low, mussels take about 10 minutes, as do salmon fillets. Give lamb steaks about 15 minutes (use rosemary to smoke over, and in the sauce), a breast of chicken takes 15 to 20 minutes.

So, though we will be buying our usual cold smoked salmon for Christmas day, this year we’re celebrating with some hot smoking in the kitchen. It’s festive and a bit of theatre and utterly delicious.