How do I hot smoke food at home?
The stovetop and kettle-barbecue methods, which woods suit what, and the internal temperatures that decide when it is cooked.
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Time
- 45 min
- Read
- 5 min
- Safety
- warning
Short answer
Hot smoking cooks food at 60 to 120°C in smoke, so it is safe in the way any cooking is safe — provided you cook to temperature. A tin-lined pan with a handful of wood chips and a rack on the hob does small fish and chicken; a kettle barbecue with the coals to one side does larger pieces. Check the centre with a probe, not the clock.
Hot smoking is the accessible half of home smoking. Unlike cold smoking, it cooks the food, so the safety question is the ordinary one of cooking things through. The technique is really about controlling a low temperature for long enough to get smoke into the food before it dries out.
Safety
What you'll need
- Wood chips or dust — oak, beech, alder, apple or cherry
- A stovetop smoker or a heavy pan with a tight lid and a rack, lined with foil
- Or a kettle barbecue with a lid and vents
- A digital probe thermometer
- An outdoor space or very strong extraction
Step by step
- Brine or salt the food first.Twenty to forty minutes in a simple brine, or a light dry salting, for fish and chicken. This is for texture and flavour rather than safety here, but it makes a substantial difference — unsalted hot-smoked fish tastes flat and dries out faster.
- Dry the surface until it feels tacky.An hour uncovered in the fridge, or thirty minutes in front of a fan. Smoke sticks to a dry tacky surface — a pellicle — and slides off a wet one. This step is what separates good home-smoked fish from grey home-smoked fish.
- Choose a wood that suits the food.Alder and beech are mild and suit fish. Oak is the traditional British all-rounder. Apple, cherry and other fruit woods are sweet and suit pork and poultry. Hickory and mesquite are strong and easy to overdo. Never use treated, painted or resinous wood, or softwood such as pine — the smoke is genuinely toxic.
- Set up the smoker.Stovetop: a small handful of chips on foil in the base of a heavy pan, a rack above them, food on the rack, tight lid, medium heat until it smokes then low. Kettle barbecue: coals banked to one side, a foil tray of water on the empty side, soaked chips on the coals, food over the water, lid on with the vent above the food.
- Keep the temperature between 60 and 120°C.Higher and you are simply barbecuing with a smoky smell; lower and you drift towards cold smoking without any of its precautions. A thermometer in the chamber or the barbecue lid gauge tells you which you are doing.
- Do not add more wood than you need.A small handful. Food takes on most of its smoke in the first twenty to thirty minutes, and beyond that you get bitterness rather than more flavour. Thin blue smoke is what you want; thick white or yellow smoke tastes acrid.
- Cook to an internal temperature, checked with a probe.Fish is done at around 60 to 63°C in the thickest part and flakes cleanly. Chicken and all poultry must reach 75°C in the centre, or 70°C held for two minutes. Pork and beef follow the same rules as any other cooking method. Smoke stains the surface early, so colour tells you nothing at all about doneness.
- Rest it, then refrigerate promptly.Ten minutes' rest, then eat, or cool it quickly and get it in the fridge within the usual two-hour window. Hot-smoked fish keeps three or four days refrigerated and freezes well.
- Ventilate properly.Outdoors, or under a strong extractor with a window open. A stovetop smoker in a sealed kitchen sets off every alarm in the house and, in an enclosed space, produces carbon monoxide.
Tips
- Mackerel, trout, salmon fillets, chicken thighs, sausages and a whole head of garlic are all excellent first attempts and forgiving of imprecision.
- Soaking chips is largely unnecessary in a stovetop smoker and useful on a barbecue, where it slows them from flaring.
- A disposable foil tray of water in the barbecue steadies the temperature and stops the food drying out.
- Smoked food tastes noticeably better the next day. Smoke flavour is harsh straight off the heat and mellows overnight in the fridge.
Common mistakes
- Judging doneness by how smoked it looks — The surface takes colour within minutes and looks finished long before the centre is cooked. Poultry especially can look beautifully bronzed and be raw in the middle. Use a probe.
- Using too much wood for too long — Past the first half hour the food is not taking up much more useful smoke, and prolonged heavy smoke deposits bitter compounds. Most disappointing home-smoked food is over-smoked rather than under-smoked.
If it doesn't work
Tastes acrid and bitter
Cause: Too much wood, thick white smoke, or smoked too long — Fix: Use a small handful of chips, wait for thin blue smoke, and cut the smoke time. It cannot be fixed after the fact.
Smoke flavour barely there
Cause: Wet surface, or the chamber never got hot enough to smoulder — Fix: Dry the surface to a tacky pellicle first, and make sure the chips are actually smoking before the food goes in.
Fish dry and stringy
Cause: Too hot, or cooked past temperature — Fix: Keep the chamber near the lower end, and pull fish at 60 to 63°C in the thickest part.
Whole kitchen full of smoke
Cause: Lid not tight, or done indoors — Fix: Seal the pan lid with a strip of foil, or move outside. Hot smoking is an outdoor activity in almost every domestic kitchen.
Questions people ask
Can I hot smoke in an oven?
Not really — an oven vents continuously and will not hold smoke, and a smoking tray inside one fills the house. A cheap stovetop smoker or a kettle barbecue does the job properly. Some people get partway there with a foil parcel of chips under a very hot grill, but it is a poor substitute.
How long does hot-smoked fish keep?
Treat it as cooked fish: three to four days in the fridge, or frozen for a couple of months. It is not preserved by the smoking, so it does not keep longer than any other cooked fish, whatever the shop-bought equivalent's dates suggest.