Workhorse 1957 Fire Management Series #6: Cold Smoking Sausage

foreign [Music] Welcome Friends to Max Q Barbecue my name is Craig and today's fire management series is on cold smoking sausage now cold smoking sausage means that we're going to keep our pick temperatures below body temperature or ambient temperature so we're going to keep it down probably in the 60s to less degree range because all we want to do is get some smoke applied to our meat today our ambient temperature is 38 degrees outside we got a blizzard coming in tomorrow so I wanted to go ahead and get this done today and so this is going to be a late night cook now cold smoking means that we're just going to be mostly generating smoke in our fire chamber just so that our sausage which will be hanging on these bars will get just a good coating and bath of smoke we'll shut down the air vents so that it doesn't burn too fast doesn't get any heat but to provide a bid for our fire today we're going to be using a royal look quickly charcoal briquettes hardwood charcoal briquettes and we're going to start them with our with our fire chimney you know I like to do my fires with a chimney because I don't have to use any chemicals or any kind of petroleum products to get it going so I'm going to go ahead and I've got some scrap packing paper I'll sell my Amazon packages I'm gonna light that paper and that'll get those charcoal briquettes going in about 10 minutes we'll have them going now to generate our smoke today we're also going to use something called a smoke tube this is a smoke tube it's a expandable or contractable but we're going to open it up to its full length and you can load wood pellets into this tube and you can light one end of it just like a cigarette or a cigar and let that burn and it slowly Burns across creating your smoke and so today we're going to be using our Pit Boss pecan blend pellets and we're going to be using our smoke tube to provide the pecan smell and the pecan flavor we also have a few pecan splits that will lay on top of our charcoal briquettes to give us the pecan flavor as well so give us a few minutes and we'll get this fire going and we'll come back when we have it all set up okay we've emptied our charcoal into the pit we're spreading them out just a little bit to get them nice and flat I'm going to lay a split of some pecan on top next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take our smoked stick and I'm going to a wider Church and at the end of our smoke stick body this is our pecan wood and get a good fire light on on it and this will smoke just like the cigar or cigarette producing smoke I'll leave this right next to our charcoal fact I have to do this on light again of course the charcoal will probably at Night Longer lines of it but I'll get your slip stick burning got our smoke stick going we're going to close our lid close down our air damper the minimum amount of there just a little bit just about an eighth of an inch opening there just enough air to to let it generate some smoke and we don't want our gauges to rise we just want our gauges to stay cold and now we're going to go inside and get our sausage while the smoke starts to permeate the chamber we'll open it up take a look plenty of smoke there's clean sweet smelling pecan wood smelling smoke so that's going to be our smoke welcome back friends we've got our charcoal briquettes going in the in the Firebox we also have our smoke stick with our pecan pellets and one stick of pecan in there if you want to take a quick peek Halifax fire set up to make smoke there it is smoke now we've got our pit set up for sausage we have these bars hanging in here we've got our sausage set up in in loops and Hanks so we're going to go ahead and start sliding our sausage on see why I tied the strings on it so I can hang the sausage as you can see we've got all our sausage hanging in our pit now on our half inch square rods that were cut to fit between the brackets that hold the Shelf got all the shelves out and we got our smoke tube going we got our charcoal burning just a little light smoldering fire and that's what we're going to do for the next eight hours let this Sausage dry out and absorb the smoke welcome back friends it is now 5 or 4 45 quarter to five so it's been about two hours since we started I wanted to check in on our sausage here so let's take a look got a lot of nice smoke coming through there and they're just hanging and absorbing that smoke temperature in the pit has been holding around 90 degrees which is perfect it's less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit that is and we've got a good beautiful smelling for COD smoking so we're going to just close that back up we got about seven more hours to go on the smoke so we'll check back in another hour see her too and see how it's doing okay welcome back friends it's 4 45 on our fire management for cold smoking we're going to check in on our fire temperature in the pit has been holding around 95 degrees it's just started to cool off a little bit so I want to check our fuel we'll probably have to reload our pellets and maybe put another split of some pecan on there so let's take a look at our fire here and we can see our our split there and we can see our pellet tube is just about empty so we're going to go ahead and try to fill that up put another split in it so let me get a shovel and we'll fill up the pellet tube and you're filling up our smoke tube [Music] okay I filled up the smoke tube with some fresh pellets now I'm going to put a little more charcoal in here foreign [Music] on here we've got one split of some pecan we've got our smoke tube next to that split of pecan separated from the charcoal and then we have the charcoal here to help maintain our heat a little a little bit a little bit of charcoal here at the end so as it burns it'll just burn across and continue to produce just a small amount of heat that we want and a lot of smoke for our smoke and that is a very sweet smell and smoke so we'll close it back down it's getting too much here see our Smoke Stack is about three quarters closed so we'll check in another hour or two welcome back friends it's 5 45 P.M so let's take a quick peek at the fire see how it's doing our temperature inside the pit is about 75 degrees dropping a little bit so I wanted to kind of check on our on our fire here take a look we've got good amount of coal there so I don't think we need more fuel it around a little bit may put just another split a hickory there but looks like we got good charcoal it's starting to light of course open it up now a little air is getting in it so it's going to take off a little bit but all in all looking good producing nice smoke so our sausage should be getting plenty of smoke should be drying out and curing we'll check back on in another hour welcome back friends it's 7 35 at night it's really cold out I'm gonna give you a reading on the thermometer here in just a second but I wanted to check the fire first good smoke going on charcoal here up lifted up so it doesn't burn welcome back friends it's 33 degrees Fahrenheit outside it's about zero degrees Centigrade temperature inside the pits about 67 degrees got good smoke flow but wanted to come here and just check on the fire a little bit so let's check it out let's see how it's doing here we got plenty of coals there that are smoldering I'm gonna stir them up here a little bit a little piece of pecan over on that side has totally burned down I guess another one over here it looks like our our smoke tube with the pecan pellets has about another two or three inches of pellets to burn so that should last about a half an hour or so so uh Fire's looking good smoldering away Welcome Friends and good evening it is now 9 20 P.M and the pit has been going for about six hours so far and I want to check in on our fire here let's see here looks like it's slowing down a little bit so we're gonna Stoke it up a little bit see if we can get it going move it around stir up some of these charcoal pull forward kind of going also going to fill up our fill up our smoke tube here so I'm gonna pause the video so I can fill up the smoke tube and then I'll heat it up and let you know okay I've completed the ash cleanup all of the Ash has been raked away into this metal can here so it's getting it out of the fire I've got the coals built back up into a bed and I've got the pecan splits on top now I'm going to take the torch and go ahead and ignite the smoke stick with our pecan pellets in it [Music] there you have it you have the fire going again let that burn a little bit close down the ear and let it smoke for another couple hours before we shut it off that's how you manage a cold fire just a little bit of fire not a lot to heat the hook heat up the pit but just enough to generate the smoke to help cure the sausage and prep it it's about 33 degrees outside right now the pit temperature is around 60 degrees this will probably increase it back up to in the 70s see you in the next turn around welcome back friends it's 9 30 P.M sausage been on about six hours we're gonna flip the sausages over and rotate them on the Hanks so that the tips up here they've been getting all the Heat and smoke we'll switch and get those at the bottom it's just simple process to rotate them around [Music] foreign [Music] got them all flipped over I'm going to continue to cold smoke them tonight and let them soak up more of that good old hickory smoke okay friends I looked at the video and I saw that I didn't do a very good job of giving you a view of the fire or the metal can or the ash work that I was doing of course now it's about 10 30. so we had another hour that's passed see we got a lot of smoke coming out of the machine here and it's pretty cold but I want to give you a little bit better View fire well there you have it I'm gonna go ahead and put another split on the other side of those coals so we'll keep feeding that coal bed enjoy welcome back friends as you can see it is almost midnight came out to check on the the pit I think it's doing pretty good the temperature inside the pit right now is close to 70 degrees and it's 32 degrees outside we're going to do a quick check of the fire and I'm going to hold the camera so that you actually can see what's going on see I have my ash can there my little Spade there and I have a little poker fire poker here you see our smoke stick is still smoking and coals are burning down pretty good here go ahead and put this uh split there over the fire close it up air vents are shut down pretty pretty tight there alrighty we're gonna say good night to it and let it continue to smoke come over here and show you the thermometer as you can see it's 73 uh temperature ambient temperatures up to about 35. and I'll give you a quick peek inside this boy sausage is looking good it's a good smoke there dried out nice looking good curing up in the morning we'll take it out and vacuum bag it and freeze it so I hope you enjoyed our fire Management on cold smoking as you can see we've kept the temperature inside the pit below 100 degrees Fahrenheit and put a lot of smoke on our on our meat at this point it's probably about nine hours of smoke so it should be uh well cured and any continuation at this point will be to continue to dry out the sausage and cure it up well have a good night and we'll see you in the morning well good morning friends it's 6 30 a.m the following day it's still probably around 32 to 34 degrees hit temperature has fallen our fire has burned out but our sausage is ready so let's get this sausage off and bring it in [Music] well good morning friends it is now 6 30 a.m uh the next morning and our fire has burned out overnight just wanted to give you a little shot of what's left of the fire all of our charcoal appears to have burned up completely and all we have left is the pecan splits that we put in there the pellets that we placed in the smoke stick have completely been consumed nothing but ash left everything's nice and cool so that's how we cold smoke our sausage and just for those of you want to see our sausage there's our sausage on our cherry hope you enjoyed our video [Music]

Channel: MaxQ Barbecue

Views: 10,310

Keywords: Workhorse Pits, 1957, Offset Smoker, Cold Smoking, Fresh Sausage

Id: SRxeWeL2rVo

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023