A home made smokehouse can turn out cured meats like ham and jerky.
Smoking is a way to preserve or add flavor to meats, fish, cheeses and other foods. Building a smokehouse can be a complex or relatively simple undertaking. Cold smokehouses expose foods to smoke at a temperature of less than 100 degrees. Hot smokers use temperatures higher than 100 degrees. A smokehouse is composed of a firebox to generate the smoke and a "house" or enclosed space where the food is either hung or draped across racks to dry.There are a few different options for building your own smokehouse.
Old Refrigerator Smokehouse
According to The End Times Report, a survivalist web resource, a simple smokehouse can be built using an old refrigerator, masonry pipe and bricks for the firebox. If the refrigerator has interior plastic paneling it needs to be removed and replaced with sheet metal and the firebox should be built in a trench a few feet away from the refrigerator with the exhaust tube (which will channel the smoke to the refrigerator) angled slightly up. The End Times Report recommends maintaining a temperature of around 100 degrees for curing thin strips of jerky and about 130 degrees for larger cuts, like hams.
Walk-in Masonry Smokehouse
According to Adam Marianksi, author of "Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design," a large, walk-in smokehouse can be built using concrete blocks and a wooden roof. Marianski says this design provides excellent insulation, but may be more useful for a butcher or someone who will be curing large quantities of meat. According to Marianski, building a masonry smokehouse of this type requires a foundation built below the frost line for best results.
Cold Smoker
According to Cowgirl's Country Life, a do-it-yourself country living blog, a cold smokehouse can be built using cinder blocks for a foundation to support a wooden house for smoking and a metal barrel cut down to down to a reasonable size for a firebox. The Cowgirl's design results in a smokehouse about 6 feet tall, 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep.
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