How To Preserve Food By Smoking

Smoking meats as a means of preservation is an old technique that has been used for centuries. Smoking meat is a process of curing where meat is exposed for long periods of time to a hardwood smoke. Smoking involves lower heat levels than actually cooking the meat for a meal.

The smoke imparts an acidic coating around the meat that inhibits the growth of bacteria. The smoking process also dehydrates the meat thereby removing water, which is essential for bacterial growth.

There are two types of smoking: Hot Smoking and Cold Smoking. Hot smoking involves heating the meat to temperatures of 150F (65 cm) whereas Cold Smoking is done generally at temperatures of no more than 100F (38C). Cold smoking is usually done to flavor foods and by itself is not an adequate food preservation method.

Hot Smoking:
The wood used for smoking should be a hardwood such as oak, hickory, apple, etc., but never a pine. It should also be somewhat green because smoke is the primary purpose of the wood not the fire itself. You might even need to soak the wood if it is too dry. The meat needs to be cut into thin strips. This is because the smoke when smoking doesn't penetrate the food very far. The meat needs to be draped over a framework, like hanging clothes in a closet.

Be sure that the meat does not touch any other piece of meat. The meat needs to be enclosed. Use your imagination. A smokehouse is ideal, but in a pinch you can enclose the meat in anything including a tarp of something. The enclosure needs to hold the smoke around the meat and allow the temperature to be maintained at about 150F. The better your enclosure the better it will retain heat and will require far less wood.

Meat smoked for 12 hours will be preserved for about 1 week. If you smoke meat for two days it will last at least twice as long, possibly 4 times as long.

Properly smoked meat will look like a dark, curled, brittle stick and you can eat it without further cooking.

If you are looking to preserve the food for longer periods of time then smoking can still be used, but it would need to be used in combination with other preservation techniques, such as salting.

Don't be distressed that preserving meat this way doesn't last for really long periods of time. When living off the land, you will eat up any large game you kill very quickly anyway. For example a very small group of people can consume a deer in just a few days. Preserve it for a week and none of it will go to waste.