Smoking and Salt Curing Cookbook FOR PREPPERS: 100+ Best Recipes to Preserve Meat and Seafood for Survival

By Teresita Vargas

Prepping means that you are fully prepared for whatever disaster the world throws at you, be it a natural disaster, war, pandemic, or anything else you can think of. It means you are actively prepared in terms of food, water, first aid, and so on. Natural disasters can strike at any time, as can man-made disasters. Being prepared puts you ahead

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teresita Vargas
• Release date: Aug 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088246375

Book preview

Introduction

Prepping means that you are fully prepared for whatever disaster the world throws at you, be it a natural disaster, war, pandemic, or anything else you can think of. It means you are actively prepared in terms of food, water, first aid, and so on. Natural disasters can strike at any time, as can man-made disasters. Being prepared puts you ahead of others when a survival situation arises.

First off, you won’t be stuck in crowded stores looking for tools, provisions, medical supplies, etc. It’s easy to forget what you need when panic sets in, and you may not be able to get what you want anyway—being prepared means not having to worry about any of this.

Food is one of the most important considerations for any prepper; you can’t survive for long without it. Luckily you can prep your food supplies ahead of time by preserving your food, and two of the easiest ways are smoking and salt curing.

This guide will walk you through the basics of both methods, including the best smokers to buy, the best wood to use for smoking, basic tips, and plenty of recipes on smoking and curing, not just meat and fish but also cheese, fruit, vegetables, and much more.

PART 1

THE BASICS

Chapter 1

A Brief Guide to

Curing and Smoking

Have you ever wondered how to make food last longer? Do you want to learn how to preserve food? Salt curing and smoking are two of the easiest and best ways to preserve food, especially meat and fish.

Salting is an age-old food preservation technique; the salt draws moisture from the food and creates an environment that fungi and bacteria hate, stopping them from getting into our food and ruining it.

Smoking is another popular technique that dries the fish or meat, giving it a wonderful flavor and preserving it. Let’s dive into both techniques without further ado.

Salt Curing

Salting to preserve fish and meat is an ancient technique, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or foolproof. It has to be done right, so choose one of the recipes you’ll find later in this book. If you use too little salt, the food will go off too quickly, or bacteria and other dangerous organisms may begin to form in it. Use too much salt, and your food won’t taste too good; however, that’s better than not using enough. There are two main techniques for salting – a dry cure or a salt brine, or you can use a combination of both. People often add nitrite, nitrate, or other curing agents to the mixture, although these aren’t always considered healthy forms of salt.

Dry Cure

Dry curing is one of the easiest methods of curing meat, particularly pork. Once the meat is trimmed, work out how much salt you need by weighing the meat – typically ¾ oz per pound. You then divide the total amount of salt into three; the first amount is applied over the meat, ensuring it is packed tightly around any cut bones. The meat is then hung inside a cloth bag somewhere cold, such as a cold shed or garage in the late fall, or you can store it on a rack in your refrigerator with a drip pan beneath it. However you store it, it must be kept at a steady 34 to 40°F for a full month.

Four days after you apply the first coat of salt, apply the second; wait two weeks from the date of the first salting and apply the third and final coat. The meat should be aged for two days per pound, and if you want more flavor or want to store it for longer, you can smoke it once it is fully cured.

Smoking

Smoking meat and fish is typically done in two ways – hot and cold. Both use the same apparatus; the heat is the only difference.

Hot Smoking

Hot smoking involves using a closed box to hold the heat and smoke from whatever materials you use. This way, the food is smoked and has a beautiful smoky flavor. You can keep hot-smoked fish at room temperature for up to one week or choose cold smoking if you want a longer-lasting storage method. Meat will only last a few days at room temperature. You should ensure your smoker maintains a steady 160°F heat or above for half an hour to ensure all pathogens and parasites in the food are killed off safely.

Cold Smoking

This kind of smoking is done over a longer period at much cooler temperatures. The idea behind cold smoking is to enable longer storage times; to store food for longer, it needs to be dried rather than cooked. The smoker should be kept below 100°F to ensure the food is not cooked.

Choosing the Right Smoker

While there are hundreds of different models of smokers, they come in four basic types. Your first decision is to choose the right one for your needs.

Electric Smoker

Electric smokers are easier to use than most because you only need to plug them in, add the food, set the timer, and leave it. Really, an electric smoker is akin to a crock pot but for smoking food. However, they tend to be the more expensive option and don’t give the food the nice deep smoky flavor you get with other types.

Gas Smoker

Gas smokers are the next easiest option. They offer a safe way of controlling the temperature while still being able to add flavored chips for more flavor. However, like the electric smoker, these don’t permeate the food with a deep smoky flavor, and you need to use propane gas, which isn’t ideal for survival.

Charcoal Smoker

Charcoal smokers require some skill, but it is one of the favorite methods, typically used by professionals, because charcoal is a long, slow-burning material, and wood can be added to give more flavor. You need to know exactly what you are doing, but practice makes perfect, and it won’t take long to learn.

Wood Smoker

This is the most difficult method, but it is worth learning because it gives your food a wonderful pure smoky flavor. They are tricky to use because each type of wood will burn at different speeds and heat, and it also depends on how long the wood has been seasoned. Also, wood smokers need constant attention to maintain a constant temperature. It must be hot enough to cook the food but not so hot that you have food that is raw in the middle but burnt on the outside. To keep the temperature steady and maintain the right heat, you need to use a combination of blocks and chips, and you also need to keep an eye on the airflow in case changes in the wind cause the temperature to fluctuate.

Chapter 2

Choosing Your Wood

The wood you use is important, depending on the flavor you want. Some woods also suit certain foods better, so you must match your food and wood properly.

Best Woods for Meat

The best woods to smoke meats are:

Hickory: because this one provides a strong smoky flavor, it’s best suited to highly-flavored meats. It works well with beef, lamb, and venison.

Cherry: the flavor is milder and sweeter, so it is best used for meat that doesn’t need to be heavily seasoned – heavy seasoning will mask the smoky flavor. It’s best used on red meat, poultry, and pork, so long as you are only highlighting the meat’s natural flavor.

Alder and Apple: these are similar to the cherry in that their flavor is mild and sweet. It goes well with pork and poultry.

Mesquite: with hickory, this is probably the most-known wood for smoking. It’s perfect for meats with a heavy flavor, like pork or beef, and works especially well with steak and ribs. It imparts a really strong smoky flavor and should be used primarily when doing a quick grill rather than a longer smoke.

Maple: this provides a sweet, smoky flavor, heavier than cherry and apple, and imparts a great favor. It works well with pork and poultry.

The most important thing is to avoid toxic trees. These include Yew, Black Locust, Buckeye, Rhododendron, Horse Chestnut, and Mountain Laurel. You should also avoid woods with a resinous and bitter smoke, such as Spruce, Pine, Fir, Redwood, Cypress, Cedar, and any other tree that produces needles.

Best Woods for Fish

Most people only tend to think of meat when they consider smoked foods, but smoked fish are great too.

Some of the woods mentioned above for heavier rich meats like game, pork, and beef, also work well on fish, but others are too strong and tend to mask the milder flavor of many white fish.

Apple: one of the more popular woods for fish, apple imparts a smoky, sweet flavor that perfectly complements fish, especially white fish. However, left smoking for too long, apple wood can be too strong for really mild fish, such as scallops.

Cherry: like the apple, cherry wood is sweet and fruity,