The racks

We need to hold the food, I got luck, some racks from Morrisons were a perfect fit and some potato bakers from one of the cheapy stores add the means to hang things.

But hanging things means you have to use the second drawer as well as the first. On my filing cabinet a strut would get in the way. Hence the angle ginder comes inot play again, and liberal use of "I can't believe it's not nails" is a rough filler to prevent too much smoke escaping.

So how do you smoke?

Generally the wood you smoke with is hardwood sawdust/shavings, Oak or Beech for example. Getting hold of this may be problematic. If you can find a source, then it is effectively a waste to be disposed of, so it should not cost a lot. I have a couple of generous suppliers. You may want to contact sawmills, but be careful that it is untreated wood, and not contaminated with soft woods.

We need to create a smouldering smokey fire, so you do not want totally dried out sawdust. I think it is accurate to say, that you want sawdust that will need the encouragement of a separate heat source to keep on going.

What I am using is two large colinders, the top one takes the saw dust and is stacked on one with hot charcoal.About 1kg of charcoal is used for 10 hours smoking, and about 6 pints of sawdust may be consumed. Though this might be reduced with dampened sawdust.

Smoked Salmon Portions from Frozen

This has worked well for me, soak the salmon in brine for 2 hours. The brine is 1lb cooking salt to a gallon of water. Then lay on the rack and smoke for 10 hours.  This time includes downtime, when you find you need to attend to the sawdust. Generally this is about every hour or so. But damper sawdust and more charcoal may improve this.

For cold smoking you don't want the tempurature much above 85f and a thermometer is essential. If you are too hot, place the charcoal colinder under the cabinet.