Snack sticks, along with jerky, are an increasingly popular option for people looking for a fast, portable, high protein snack food. Most snack sticks are a cooked product (heated to 68-70 C). Some are smoked and / or dried as part of the manufacture. Fermented snack sticks, on the other hand, are an interesting subset of salami products.
An EU directive in October 2023 introduced changes to the permitted levels of nitrite and nitrate in cured food, which came into full effect on 9 October 2025.
The reason for the change is to reduce the chance of nitrosamine formation whilst keeping the meat safe. Nitrosamines have been linked to some forms of cancer. As home curers who do not sell their products, we don’t have to comply with this, and in the UK, even commercial suppliers don’t have to now that we’re no longer in the EU. However, I intend to – I think it would be irresponsible to ignore a law whose formulation is based on the advice of some of the best meat and other scientists in the world.
Smoking fish, particularly cold-smoking, is a great starter project; it’s not only the sense of achievement in doing it, but it has a fairly large cost saving.
I’ll cover the procedures in another post but for now let’s look at the types of fish that are often smoked.
Continue reading The Types of Smoked Fish (UK)
With more and more people air-drying meat, there seems to be a very lax attitude sneaking in regarding the production of air-dried sausage and meats.
The, “well they’ve been doing it for centuries in Italy/Spain etc without sophisticated equipment” brigade, and the, “well they have them hanging in bars in Italy/Spain, so they must be safe” camp.
What they say may be true, but we do not have the same conditions as those people, nor do we have the accumulated knowledge of generations of forebears on our side, so we need to be cautious in what we do for reasons that I hope will become clear.
Continue reading Safely Drying Meat and SausageTo overseas readers, I apologise that the links to suppliers are all UK based, however, the information is relevant regardless of that.
Many governments have rules about the production of commercial salami products even if it’s only the level of curing salts that are allowed in them. The USA and Canadian authorities also have rules governing the time drying and time allowed for fermentation – it’s to those rules I’ve looked for good practice in those areas. It makes sense for home producers to follow those rules or at least make informed decisions about choosing not to.
Continue reading The Salami Making ProcessThe US and Canadian governments have rules limiting the amount of time that a salami can be held above 15.6°C (60°f) for fermentation of cultures. They are very similar other than one uses Fahrenheit and the other centigrade. It’s the Canadian rules (centigrade) that I’ll use for this explanation.
The rules use a calculation based on what is termed degree hours. The salami must reach a pH of 5.3 within a set number of degree hours. This is the number of hours that the salami is above 15.6°C multiplied by the amount that the temperature exceeds 15.6°C:
Degree hours = hours x temperature in excess of 15.6° C (60° F)
This number of degree hours is limited depending on the temperature being used:
Continue reading Calculating Maximum Fermenting TimesOn my old blog, I had a tutorial about converting a fridge into an air-drying chamber. There were pages on temperature control and humidity and a whole lot about wiring the different controllers.
Fortunately, time moves on and bespoke controllers are now available and are relatively cheap. No more sourcing relays, making control boxes and wiring it all up.
Continue reading Converting a Fridge for Drying
It was only 8 years ago that I wrote a post forecasting that barbecue would be the next big food craze to hit the UK. Amazingly, not only was I correct but the craze seems to have now filtered down resulting in a massive interest in all things barbeque on social media. TV chefs feature US-style barbecue in their programmes and pulled pork and brisket feature on both pub and home BBQers menus. Back then, I wrote:
Wasn’t it George Bernard Shaw that said: “England and America are two countries divided by a common language”? Barbecue, abbreviated to BBQ, really goes to prove this.
What we know as Barbecue or bbq is generally referred to as grill or grillin’ in the US. Their BBQ is a method of cooking meats for a long time at low temperatures. It often includes smoking the meat for part of the cooking time. Times of 10 or 20 hours are not unusual in this type of cooking.
BBQ guys take their hobby seriously and hold competitions where the prize-money can be 1000’s of dollars. Although on the face of it the same as hot smoking, the temperatures are usually higher.
I can see this type of cooking being ‘the next big thing’ in the UK. We’ve already seen slow-cooked meats increasing in popularity with slow-cooked pork belly featuring on virtually every menu you see nowadays! Pulled pork, a classic BBQ standard, is featuring more and more in blogs and among the celebrity chef circuit. We’ve also seen a move towards better quality in burger joints and vans and an increase in general in the quality of street-food. This, accompanied by a number of TV programmes featuring US BBQ joints, such as Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, makes me think that this’ll be the next culinary craze… …Oh, and also look out for the currently trendy use of brioche buns to be upstaged by buns cooked like pretzels.
I’m sure that this will also feed through to the home market – old and new suppliers will hurry to jump on the BBQ bandwagon. There’ll be terms and equipment that we’re not (yet) used to in the UK: Offset Smokers, Water Smokers, Oven (or box) Smokers and even Ugly Drum Smokers.
I’ll write further about the options currently available in UK for both smoking, grilling and BBQ shortly.
I did write another post that explained the differences between the types of smoking and barbecue and the available equipment at that time. The post has been reposted here.
Wow, how things have moved on. There’s equipment available now that we could only dream of then – unless you could make it yourself or had very deep pockets that is.
It can still be an expensive game but it doesn’t have to be. There’s far more equipment available across a range of prices and also more advice and support is available for people building their own equipment – not least because of social media groups on Facebook and the like.
It’s great that so many more people are now cooking quality meals using barbecues. Yes, there are many who have just replaced a plate full of cheap meat products with a plate full of expensive meat products and yes, there’s still an element of the UK equivalent of ‘redneck’ in attitudes to non-meat-eaters on some online groups. But, there are also more and more people using barbecues, in whatever form, to cook balanced meals whether meat or vegetable-based.
I have to say that although I’ve had a smoker that could produce barbecued food for years, it’s only in the past couple or three years that I’ve cooked more barbeque and grilled food – since I bought a covered BBQ grill (Weber) and my nephew built me an Ugly Drum Smoker. I hope to write more of these in future posts. I’m by no means an expert but hopefully have a head start as I know a good number of people who are, including a very good friend from North Carolina who is my go-to for advice on traditional US-style barbecue.
I hope to post some traditional recipes, along with some alternative ideas over the next few months.
In 2010, I wrote:
Well, the weather finally performed as forecast and I got to test the ProQ™ Eco Smoker sent to me by Ian from ProQ™.
The smoker arrived promptly and safely packaged.
In 2012, when I wrote this, people were only just starting to realise that smoking meat didn’t need to be the preserve of the expert and that there was an alternative to barbecues that consisted of burnt sausages and dried up burgers.
This post is completely out of date. I leave it here for the sake of posterity:
In a previous post, I said I’d give further details of the options for smoking, grilling and barbecuing food. My health and other factors have delayed this, but here goes…
…Let’s start cold and get hotter!
Continue reading Smoking and Barbecue (BBQ) options
