Self-Sufficiency: Home Smoking and Curing

The perfect beginner-friendly introduction to smoking and curing meat at home!
- Curing: Ingredients, equipment, dry-curing, brine curing, and recipes for bacon, fish, pastrami, and more
- Air drying: Salami, chorizo, salted beef, and more, plus how to hang and protect meat as it dries
- Smoking: Cold smoking, hot smoking, fuel options, smoker types, and how to build your own smoker
- Recipes: How to use your homemade smoked ingredients, plus rubs, butters, pates, and more
Smoking and curing originated as ways to preserve food before the advent of tin cans, freezers, and vacuum packs. Nowadays, these ancient skills are enjoying a comeback as many of us look towards a more self-sufficient and rewarding way of preparing, storing, and eating our food.
Inside this book, author Joanna Farrow explains how, with some basic ingredients and equipment, you can soon be salting, curing, air-drying, and smoking a whole range of seasonal and year-round produce. With clear instructions and advice to help you get started, this book will give you the confidence and know-how you need to begin your own experiments.
What could be more delicious than home-cured bacon, subtle smoked salmon, or air-dried ham? With guides to setting up your own smoker, preparing salt and brine cures, drying, and preserving, Self-Sufficiency: Home Smoking and Curing is the perfect introduction to making the most of meat, fish, game, and poultry. A recipe selection including rubs, butters, turkey, mussels, venison, ribs, pâté, and more offers inspiration to bring out the best in your cured ingredients.
Author Joanna Farrow is an experienced food writer and food stylist. She writes for numerous food magazines and is the author of dozens of cookbooks, including Seasonal Preserves, The Herb-Lover's Recipe Book, Gluten-Free Cooking, and Cookery School: Meat.
When we experiment with any new cooking skill there is always the added excitement that comes with an element of trial and error, but the satisfaction of making your first home-cured bacon or air-dried ham cannot be underestimated—it's thrilling! This book provides the introduction you need to begin to master the compelling, addictive, and satisfying skills of home curing and smoking. Easy-to-follow techniques and recipes show you how delicious cured and smoked foods can be achieved without the need for high-tech equipment or expensive ingredients. Anyone who likes the tastiest bacon, most delicious smoked fish, or perfectly cured salami will enjoy it all the more with the knowledge that it is of good provenance—well prepared and made by you!
Once you begin to experience the joy of home smoking and sharing the results of your skills with admiring friends and family, you will not be able to stop yourself thinking about recipes, planning marinades and rubs, inventing sauces, and generally experimenting with woods, herbs, spices, and recipes. You could even consider cured foods as brilliant gifts for your foodie friends!
Get started in the ancient art of home curing, with Self-Sufficiency: Home Smoking and Curing!