Cold smoking is the best way to add an intense, smoky flavor to your sausages without cooking them completely. You can store cold-smoked sausages for several days or even weeks until you’re ready to cook and serve them. The sausages will still have the rich smoky flavors that make barbeque lovers drool.
Cold-smoking sausages demand only a few more steps. Sausage becomes more prone to bacterial contamination during cold smoking, so inexperienced cooks need to be extra careful about it. It’s a good idea to have an initial hands-on experience of cold smoking with low-risk foods like tofu or egg. This way you will have an idea about cold smoking and fewer chances to go wrong with sausages. For those who have already donned an apron to cold smoke some sausages, here is a quick step-by-step guide to make it easier!
Get Fresh Meat
This is a crucial factor to ensure you get the most desired result. Fresh meat can absorb maximum smoky flavor during cold smoking. Also, chances of bacterial contamination are less when you are using fresh, raw meat. So whether you are buying it from a store or making it at home, try to ensure the meat is fresh.
Curing is Important
Food, warmth, and moisture make the ideal conditions for bacteria to grow. While cold smoking, all these factors are fulfilled to promote bacterial contamination, which eventually leads to food poisoning. Salt curing can draw moisture from the sausages to prevent microbial growth during cold smoking. Besides imparting flavor to the food and enhancing its color, salt has the potential to kill deadly bacteria.
Generally, curing power #1 is considered most suitable for cold-smoking sausages. That being said, you can use the cure that is suggested in whatever recipe you are following. It’s a good idea to cure the sausages a day before cold smoking, and then refrigerate them for 6 to 12 hours. If you want to add seasoning, take out the refrigerated sausages, season them, and throw them back in the refrigerator for a few hours. This helps in better absorption and seasoning of the meat. This is a general method for cold-smoking sausages, but if you are following a recipe, we would suggest you stick to the instructions.
Check out our entire catalog of articles on brining and curing your meat here:
What’s the Difference Between Pickling, Brining, Marinating, and Curing?
Curing and Smoking Meats for Home Food Preservation
Directions On Brining And Curing Your Meat For Food Smoking
Choose the Flavor of the Smoke
Here comes one of the exciting parts of food smoking: choosing your preferred flavors. Flavored smoke can further enhance the intense flavor of the sausages, making them more delectable. Flavors like hickory, apple, alder, and cherry are considered best for cold-smoking sausages, but it all depends on personal preference. Also, ensure that the food gets clean smoke to prevent it from smelling foul.
Bisquettes are perfect for this purpose. Bradley has introduced a range of flavored bisquettes that burn for a precise time and extinguish before turning to ashes. That’s why Bradley Bisquettes generate clean, pure flavored smoke for a hassle-free food smoking experience.
Prepare the Food Smoker
Now that you are all set with cured sausages and have picked your favorite flavor for the smoke, it’s time to fire up the food smoker.
Our electric food smoker normally functions as a hot smoker and can be converted to a cold smoker with an adapter kit. Simply move the Bisquette burner outside the smokebox to fit in the Bradley cold smoking adapter kit between the smoke tower and generator. Then, your Bradley smoker is ready for true cold smoking, even during summer days.
To smoke sausages, the ideal temperature inside the food smoker should not exceed 110 degrees F or 45 degrees C. To avoid over-smoking the sausages, maintain the temperature at 80 degrees F or 25 degrees C initially and let the sausages smoke.
Follow the Right Technique
During cold smoking, you have to see to it that the sausage absorbs the smoke uniformly on all sides. The best way to ensure this is to hang the sausages inside the food smoker using smoker hooks.
Remove Once Done
Cold smoking doesn’t take any longer than 2 to 3 hours. This is because cold smoking does not cook the sausages completely, it only renders a rich smoky flavor to the food. We do recommend, though, that you stick to the recipe you’re following to get delicious, safely prepared sausages.
Hopefully, these top tips help you understand the basics of cold-smoking sausages. By reading more on our blog, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge you need to have a fantastic food smoking experience.
For more great ideas on how to get the most of your Bradley Smoker, check out the awesome articles on our Bradley Smoker Food Smoking Blog for more tips & tricks.
