Part of our garlic crop had a bad year and was wilted and brown a month early. These garlic were all on the small side so I decided it was best to do something with them and process them as a batch. Having just completed a lot of work on the table I had a big bag of oak sawdust so decided to go and attempt some smoking. I have long admired the art of cold smoking so decided that a gentle smoke of the garlic before preserving may be fun. Being a sunny day helped!
I cobbled together a smoker from things we had around the house already. A storm kettle made the fire box and chimney to distance the food from the heat. For the smoking chamber I hijacked a terracotta pot, lining up the hole in its base with the chimney and covering the top with a convenient lump of firewood.
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| One ad-hoc smoker. |
To support the garlic in the pot I simply used some wire mesh. I peeled the bulbs down to cloves so that the smoke could have the minimum layers of papery skin to get through.
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| The garlic balanced on some chicken wire to let the smoke get at it. This pot is only small - some of those cloves are tiny! |
To generate the smoke I used a couple of lumps of lit charcoal buried in a mix of damp and dry oak shavings. Occasionally I added some sprigs of rosemary for extra aromatic scents. This fire needed to tick over very slowly and did require tending every 30 minutes or so.
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| Charcoal, sawdust and rosemary. Pungent. |
I left the whole lot to smoke away slowly for around 5-6 hours. This wasn't a very long smoke as I didn't want to commit days to building up the cold smoke - manually checking the fire every half hour would have been very time consuming!
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| Smoke wafts out from under the lid. |
Once done the garlic cloves smelt wonderful and were turning a golden colour. I peeled the cloves and minced them, preserving them in the freezer. Generally the gloves were still firm, indicating that I didn't get it too hot. With garlic (or so my reading informs me) if you hot smoke it they go to mush and become suitable for using as a dip but won't have the strength for use as proper garlic any more. The end result has certainly seemed tasty in several meals!
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| The finished product. |
To preserve it I stuck the minced garlic in oil and froze it. It is a bit awkward to get out the jar but it's better than botulism!
