cold then hot smoke salmon?

ARoehr11 · April 2019

I have seen a lot of warnings against cold smoking meats because of the risk of bacteria contamination. I have also heard that cold smoking gets more smoke flavor into the meat. When I cold smoked bacon, I wasn't too worried about it because we fried the bacon up before eating it. Today I am basically trying the same method with salmon. I loaded up the APS and started the cold smoke, figured I would do that for a couple hours then fire up the heat and hot smoke it slow until up to temp. Has anyone tried this method before?

Theophan · April 2019

@ARoehr11 wrote, "When I cold smoked bacon, I wasn't too worried about it because we fried the bacon up before eating it."

That seems to make sense, and most people agree, but it's a dangerous mistake! Some bacteria while they are growing generate a heat-stable toxin. When you cook the food, then, the bacteria are dead, but the poison is still there!!! PROFESSIONALLY cold-smoked fish and other meats sometimes have caused deadly food poisoning outbreaks. Cold-smoking is much more risky for food poisoning than hot smoking.

I worked in an ER, once, that was near a bunch of Chinese restaurants, and I learned that the most common cause of food poisoning in that ER was fried rice. There are bacteria that form spores that also are heat-stable. So you boil the rice to make regular cooked white rice, so any bacteria are dead and the rice is "sterile" in that there are no active, living bacteria in it. BUT the spores they made while they were growing are still there! The cooked rice sits around, cools down, so now the spores germinate, the bacteria grow, and make the heat-stable poison. Now you fry the rice, the bacteria are dead, but the toxin is still there! Now you're exploding at both ends in the ER and wishing you were dead.

The entire process of preparing, cooking, chilling, storing, reheating, etc., needs to be safe, keeping the food out of the temperature "danger zone" where bacteria can very quickly multiply. Cooking it at the end only protects you from some causes of food poisoning, but NOT all!

mahenryak · April 2019

I have not tried what you are suggesting. I have a little bit of experience with true cold smoking, though. And also the kippered style. When I used to commercial fish, in the summer we would move over to a cabin for a couple of months and I built a make-shift cold smoker out of real tin. We used salvaged tin from one of the canneries and a burn barrel outside to feed the smoke. We first stripped the salmon, placed in a brine overnight, and then placed on racks. We then provided smoke for at least a few days. This created a jerky like texture. Humidity played a real factor. We did lose a batch or two due to too much moisture. More recently, and I am being kind to myself as it's really been like seven years ago, I've adapted a kippered style. I use a dry brine (rub, if you will) consisting of salt, brown sugar, white sugar, and lemon pepper. I strip the salmon, pat them in the brine, place a fan on them over night and then smoke for about eight hours in one of those Big Chief Smokers (180F ?). The key difference is that the cold smoke product is much drier and will last three or four months, or more. The kippered style, not so much, due to the moisture, I think.

So, there's a very long paragraph and I really didn't answer your question. Maybe there's something to be gleaned, however, when I describe the difference between the two methods.

HendersonTRKing · April 2019

FWIW, I cold smoke a lot of salmon to make nova lox. Whether I’m right or wrong, my firmly held belief is that by 36 hours of curing (using pink salt — Prague powder), I’m practicing sufficient food safety to not worry about evil microbes and whatnot contaminating my food, friends and family.

Just put up 6 lbs this weekend! It’s presently resting before slicing in a week or so.

cold then hot smoke salmon?

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