I've become interested in preserved meat since my offgrid house's fridge is small, runs on propane, and has no freezer, which makes storing meat difficult. Also, experiencing delicious jamón in Spain gives a whole new appreciation for cured meat.

When Anna gave me a whole venison ham, this was a perfect opportunity to experiment with smoking meat. Rather than build a smokehouse or a smoker, I simply used my chimney. So the fire that's keeping me warm and warming bathwater is at the same time adding delicious flavor to my meat.

Meat has surely been smoked on chimney tops for ages, and this page shows how that can be refined into smoke boxes attached to the chimney, and so on. Since my house is built into a hill, it's easy to get up on the roof, so the chimney top is good enough for me.

The whole ham was a bit large to fit, and I worried I could lose it down the chimney, so I butchered it into individual steaks.

One was marinated in salt, one in soy sauce, and one "control" was left alone.

After the first smoking (4 hours), the meat was still quite rare, springy to the touch. At the top of the chimney, the smoke is at most warm, not hot. It only cooks the outside of the meat, and as the fire is dampened down, it becomes a true cold smoker. Even after this first smoke, the venison had a delightfully smokey flavor.

The second smoking (4 more hours) and third (12 more) firmed the meat up, but did not cook its interior any more. Instead, it seems to be losing moisture, and shrinking slightly. I could continue smoking the venison indefinitely.

My favorite flavor is the salted smoked venison. It makes a terrific antipasto and also a good sandwich. The soy sauce flavor adds perhaps too much complexity on top of the smokiness. The unmarinated meat is my least favorite by itself, but I liked small scraps that were smoked for 5 hours, and then cooked in a stew. They turned out to taste and feel much like sausage.

A word on wood -- I used my regular firewood, which is probably mostly maple, and I smelled the smoke and made sure I liked its quality before hanging any meat. It would surely not work as well with pine or soft woods. I'd like to try with some apple wood, and try adding some herbs to the fire too. I'm also going to try to smoke some cheese; the trick will be to keep the smoke consistently cool.

Joey Hess is Anna's brother and technical advisor (paid in venison.)  He's a household name in the Linux world and is the primary person behind Branchable, the software that runs this blog.  In his non-technical time, he likes to camp, hike, play board games, and fly kites. (And he probably does lots of other things that Anna's not aware of.)

This post is part of our Venison lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Sweet potato fed venison Butchering a deer How much meat do you get from a deer? Smoking venison on a chimney top Roast venison ham

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.