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If you read the recognised works on smoking, you will hear times of days and even occasionally weeks being mentioned. This can be very offputting, removing the idea of smoking to the realms of the occasional effort or more probably to the completely impractical. The fact though is that smoking smaller portions, in an intense smoker like the filing cabinet project, combined with the fact that we are smoking to develop the best flavour and not for the best preservation, means that we can drastically reduce smoking times.
Small Smokers
For an example of what we mean by a small smoker consider the filing cabinet cold smoker project.
Quick cold/hot smoking times
As we have said when smoking small portion in a small smoker, and aiming for quality of flavour and not preservation, smoking times can be dramatically reduced.
We will of course expect to freeze the result, and we will not be expecting the defrosted product to keep for weeks, but we will get a great smoked flavour nonetheless. As a rough guide when cooking a portion rather than a whole fish/bird, you can reduce smoking time to a third of what the books say. So, for example, smoking turkey breasts can be done well with 11 hours cold smoking and two hours hot smoking - the work of a day and therefore a lot more possible.
Avoiding wastage with cold/hot smoking
A lot will of course depend on your smoker, but again think of the fact that you have a freezer, if you under estimate the cold smoking time, then you have a under smoked result, which is not the same as an over smoked and possibly inedible result. Under smoked produce will keep perfectly well in the freezer, and of course if you have the time, you can continue smoking it anyway.
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