Cold Smoking On A ProQ

Cold smoking is possible on your standard ProQ Smoker.
It must be noted that you will need to choose a cool day to cold smoke. This helps keep the smoker temperatures down which is important as you need to keep below 30 degC (90 degF). We advise that you monitor the temperature using a digital thermometer.

Get a few charcoal briquettes started in the bottom of your unit (not in the charcoal basket, as we're going to throw some dust on for smoke and it would just fall through the grate).



Pour on a cupful of dust and your smoking. Use the water pan as a buffer, this will also help in keeping the temps low.



An hour in... you can put more dust on at this stage, if you want to smoke for longer.

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the info, please can you tell me what " dust " is ?..

I am not sure, perhaps I am having a Blond momant

Best regards

Karinamaria

Hi Ian,

I meant a blond moment !!

Dust is just smaller bits of wood Karina, that can be as fine as talcum powder, or the size of sugar granules.
I am trying out another method, using wood chips and as soon as I've mastered it I'll put a post up.

Oak sawdust i find best for cold smoking as the temp is always below 70 in my contraption.
I made some oak chips with a chainsaw & some finer chips with a circular -saw once.
Both burned to quick & too hot even after soaking for an hour.

fenman

I wouldnt recommend making chips with a chainsaw as you will always have oil on the wood.


For long burning times, these things are very popular over here :



Fill it up with wood and light one end, the wood will ignite slowly and smoke for 8 - 12 hours.

DM

Don Marco wrote:I wouldnt recommend making chips with a chainsaw as you will always have oil on the wood.
DM

I agree, chainsaw chips are not great.

Marco, does that contraption work... have you tried one?

Here are some pics of the "contraption" at work:









The amount of smoke that it develops in the ProQ is sufficient. In this run I made a trial with cheese:



The problem I had was that due to only one vent the glow went off once it came to the far end away from the vent:



I made several trial runs, but no matter how I postioned the sawdust cage it went off when the glow came to the further end. The big advantage of this thing is, that it smokes for 8-10 hours with a small amount of sawdust.

Meanwhile Marco helped me to modify the Frontier and to add two additional vents (I do have two left hands) and I guess that it will work fine now. I am just preparing some meat to start smoking this weekend.

I will share the results.

rgds
Per

Look forward to seeing if the vents make a difference.
I have some fine mesh that I'll do some experimenting on as well, I'm not too fond of "cold" smoking, as it takes too long (but I do love smoked cheese, but it keeps dripping on the food below when "hot" smoking just joking).

That's too cool...I've done several cold smokes with my WSM's using 4 charcoal briqs and a chunk of smokewood...works great!. Since the smokers are very similar I'm sure this method will work well for the Pro Q's...





Outside temps were around 50 degrees...smoker temp was 60 or so...

Looks like a great idea JD... I'll have to give that a go soon, as I'm fresh out of smoked cheese.

I have yet to try cold smoking anything...will have to give it a whirl! (Though not anytime soon...we're in the dead of summer here with 100*F + temps each day.)

Winter is a great time for cold smoking as I have the same weather as Jim right now. All I need to do is blow some smoke in the cooker vent..

Roxy wrote:Winter is a great time for cold smoking as I have the same weather as Jim right now. All I need to do is blow some smoke in the cooker vent..

I agree...I'm thinking this fall and winter would be a great time to learn cold smoking. How do you know when an item is done? Cheese? Salmon?

Thanks!

A lot depends on how smoky you want the cheese. Trial and error will tell ya when it comes to cheese. As for Salmon, I have not tried cold smoked salmon as of yet.