Miniature Smokehouse

I've been wanting one of these forever it seems. An unexpected special at the hardware store on tongue and groove pine boards gave me the perfect opportunity. I had saved the internal shelving from an old fridge for exactly this purpose.

I know smokers are somewhat fashionable these days but I didn't want the kind where you throw a couple of wood chips on the fire as you're cooking. I wanted something I could cold smoke fish, cheese or pretty much anything I fancy could use a little smoky flavour.

I'd seen a television show where two brothers where building a smoker and their so-called expert friend said "No, no, no, you cannot build a smoker from softwood. Better to use something like maple." Well maple is nice if you're rich or you can get it for free but I'm neither rich nor have I access to free maple boards. So to mitigate the whole softwood resin vaporization (not sure it's really a problem) I decided to carbonize the inside of the smoking chamber...  problem solved!

In these two pictures you can see that A) I built the smoker around the shelving I had and B) I used cedar shingles for the roof. Cedar shingles are quite cheap at 20$ a bundle and are great for small projects like this one. The whole top and the shelves can be removed if ever I want to smoke something big enough that it wont fit through the door.

Here it is in it's natural element. Next time I'll show you the cold smoke generator and how it works.

I had published this picture of baby Honey Locust trees in the spring of 2014. Here's what one of them looks like now!

I'm in the picture for scale. The tree is now around seven feet tall and the trunk is around two inches in diameter at the stump. So the conclusion of the Honey Locust experiment: In good soil these things grow like mad!