How smoke preserves food
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 31 июл 2022
- Thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring this video! Get Surfshark VPN at Surfshark.deals/adamragusea - Enter promo code ADAMRAGUSEA for 83% off and 3 extra months for free!
2014 literature review on the antimicrobial properties of liquid smoke: www.sciencedirect.com/science...
2021 literature review on the hazard of PAHs from smoked food: www.sciencedirect.com/science...
2010 study on listeria contamination in cold-smoked meat: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21219...
2008 literature review on the hazards of listeria infection during pregnancy: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
2008 book chapter overviewing smoke in food processing: www.google.com/books/edition/... 
Хобби
When you "accidentally" knocked over the tripod, that sure was a great opportunity to show the effect of smoke as an insect repellent. How fortunate, and great teaching, or great covering up of a genuine mistake.
mistake or not, it was a great showcase and transition into the topic of how smoke wards off bugs
@@evieinfinite that's what I was trying to say, albeit more coyly. I do the same thing when I teach sometimes: "Oh crud I messed it up, but since we're here check this awesome side thing out."
Neanderthal’s had to preserve their meats for awhile. Maybe they used smoke.
@@davidfromamerica1871 while it wouldn't surprise me if they did, I am no expert on Neanderthal and beyond the frequency of Neanderthal/Denisovan alleles in human populations I really haven't dove into the literature on what kind of culinary skills they had.
I died a little seeing all that food fall
Funny enough the smoked peaches reminded me of my grandma who lives in the countryside and was boiling some apricots for jam. She used a huge pot on some outside wood fire and had 2 big spoons, one for stirring the fruit and one for the fire to move things around.. until in her old age she switched them at one point and we ended up having smokey apricot jam... It;s honestly one of the most delicious things i've ever tasted, on some bread with chunky peanut butter that thing is to die for.
You should try apricot brandy.
smoked and grilled fruits are honestly the greatest invention (maybe) this restaurant downtown has grilled pineapple covered in caramelized brown sugar and its TO DIE for! (im so sad its closed now due to unexpected events and I honestly dont know if it will ever be back up again. its been like a year n a half since the event and it looks the same since then)
Loo88uu
Have you tried to replicate the flavor? Maybe some liquid smoke in apricot jam?
Hhvcx
You can also use maple/sugar in place of salt. Maple sugar is what we (Potawatomi native) used in Michigan and the central Great Lakes region. Mixed often with other anti-bacterial/microbial plants (I.e. Bergamot, slippery elm, and a bunch more). We also use culinary ash to cook which also helps with microbes.
I bet my ass you dont eat that, and instead you eat starbucks wendys McDonald's supermarket dounuts and carrots and lettuce from walmart.
@@prico3358 who asked you…
@@prico3358 also how do u even know…
@@prico3358 also…i think ur projecting your own behavior onto other people to make urself feel better…than like just simply respecting how other people cook and eat stuff…sorta crazy behavior
@@prico3358 i want to study you like a bug. Fascinating behavior
i'm from poland and i know this paper that you mentioned. So a bit of explanation. Direct smoke means a way that you have a setup like yours (all juices and fats are dropping on embers and they produce unwanted chemicals). Right now you have smokers (electric) that produce smoke by electric coil that change wood chips into smoke, and they are mounted inside of smoking chamber. As long as you don't allow to meat juices to be burnt and changed into smoke you will be fine :) . Another thing, to smoke meat you always use only leaf wood, don't use any pine or other needle type tree wood or you can have terpentine like meat :D. Safely you can use all fruit tree wood (apple, cherry, etc), Oak is also great, in total all leaf trees that are native to EU/UK should be safe. About fungi... nope you don't get nothing from it if it is smoke then spores are already dead, and fungi are celulose, so you don't get any harmful substances.
Correct. I'm fortunate to have oak, hickory and apple trees on my property. I collect deadfall and prunings from all of those and save it specifically for smoking and grilling.
Fungi have a lot less cellulose if at all, they’re mostly chitin but it should be fine if there’s just a few in the fire
The way he does this outside how most people would have originally done this makes you see why it’s so popular and how easy it is
Ah yes thanks for pointing that out. I would never have guessed. I thought it was popular because cavemen thought this tasted better than sous vide.
@@kurtkurtson9111 🙄
@@kurtkurtson9111 I always hate people like, people showcasing excitement from learning New information, and you have to be an twat.
@@kurtkurtson9111 They're commenting on the video through their experience, not trying to teach you.
There's also Malcolm PL that made a video on food smoking witht raditional Haudenosaunee techniques (he's himself descendant of Haudenosaunee), pretty interesting (although he use a jean instead of raw hide XD).
You know when I found this channel all those years ago I never really expected deep dives into food science and how it can relate to human evolution but I'm all for it. You make it simple enough to understand for smooth brains like me who have no idea what a Carbonyl is but still in depth and interesting to where I can actually learn something from it. Thanks for all the years of content Adam.
Don’t forget to salt your chopping board first
For those who believe in the book, written by a man, where he guesses that evolution may have happened (talk about blind faith!).
But the food science on this channel is interesting content.
I wasn't expecting more than some food recipes, i got an actual normal human being born in USA.
@@CelticSpiritsCoven We know that humans have evolved over time. It's what all organisms do. It is reasonable to hypothesise that our diet at least partially contributed to our evolutionary pressures.
We've really come a long way from "this is why i season my cutting board, not my meat"
I think we are reversing the order of operations of food taste. People that had taste buds that preferred cooked/smoked food didn't die as much. Eventually that was the standard good taste.
Hello Nathan.
@@matthewtorres8860 yo
@@matthewtorres8860hello matthew
I would love to see you look at Biltong and Droëwors (Translates closely to dry sausage).Both of these are still super common in Southern Africa. Biltong is similar to jerky and Droëwors is basically a dried sausage and typically coriander is used for flavour. What makes Droëwors interesting is that it is dried quickly in dry environment without a curing agent.
Thanks for sharing! This is fascinating!
I'm loving these "primitive cooking" videos. Not only are they interesting in a historical sense, they're pretty useful in a possible survival situation.
Well primitive technology and their horrible copycat channels was a big thing.. now it will be primitive cooking channels lol
Fax my guy
In my case, useful almost every evening around dinner time.
For the record, my otherwise-healthy ~60-year-old uncle was killed by a listeria infection that got into his heart and brain (the brain part is what killed him, though I don't recall if that was just an opportunistic infection after the listeria). It was a strange and tragic freak thing - he had a bad headache and checked into a hospital. They were reluctant to have him under observation with nothing but a headache but he went into cardiac arrest that night. Apparently listeria spreading in this manner is a very poorly understood subject, though there is some evidence that there are distinct listeria subpopulations with this proclivity.
This hasn't affected my personal eating habits as it seems like a freak occurrence and we don't know whether he got it from cured pork or from some salad greens (major cross-contamination risks since they're often not cooked), but I did want to caution against underestimating listeria.
My elderly aunt contracted listeria a few years ago and was not expected to survive. She was in intensive care for a week and somehow pulled through.
Listeria from floor drain cleaning supplies was a huuuuge concern in a grocery store kitchen i worked at
Yeah, it's a shame but it's such a random occurance that it would be hard to give up ALL the possible vectors for listeria when the odds of any one being infected are miniscule. I know that when I get food poisoning I subconsciously find that food repellent for a LONG time, but the monkey brain doesn't really seem to understand "categories of food", and so without that urge to not eat related foods...it's just not gonna happen.
60 years is a pretty good run regardless of how he passed. Never a bad idea to be cautious though.
So sorry for your loss. I also lost an uncle to a brain infection 2 years back
Deadfall is a word I’ve never heard and I’ve been teaching people for years that the sticks that have fallen from trees are the best for fire building. I learn a lot from this dude.
Same here I was even a landscaper who pruned trees for years and I've never heard it called "deadfall" I've built thousands of fires and taught others how to do it since I grew up doing it. I always told them that the dry branches and twigs off of trees were the best, and if you can find it dry bark.
i find it amazing how everything fits in, its insane the details that’s in everything you can think of, and the more i see, the more i notice how is all of this even possible
I unironically love it so much when this channel turns into a chemistry class for a video
@@paul-gs4be he UNironically loves this chanel
@@paul-gs4be You could be saying it sarcastically, saying you don't like when the channel gets too science-y or something. Saying, Wow, I sure LOVE when my cooking/food channel turns into a chemistry class. (I don't actually feel this way I love these videos, just an example).
Thats because cooking is chemistry!
@@edgaracosta9976 Advanced chemistry where people usually care more about the "what" rather than the "why" and "how".
Not Adam tho, which is one of the reasons people love watching him
I do a lot of cold smoking, this recommendation comes from experience.
I do a 8-10 hour wet brine, with salt, a little soy sauce, and sugar. Then I soak in freshwater for 15 minutes, it helps to get extra salt out so your stuff it's too salty like you were saying. I also air dry the meat for about a half hour before they go into the smoker.
any tips for directions for building a smoker?
@@jamescanjuggle I modified an old tool box for mine...
I cut out the bottoms of the drawers and put grill grates to hold the stuff. I have a propane grill burner and a restaurant steel serving tray with a lid as my smoke box.
Edit : You can use those like $40 kettle grill things too, you just won't be able to do a nice batch. Keeping the temp down is always the hardest part no matter the thing you use.
You should make a video about that, I'm very interested in that
Why the air dry? Isnt the smoker like the driest possible environment?
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 you don’t want to saturate the air with excess moisture
I used to get those huge rolls of hamburger and line them up on multiple levels of my smoker at a high smoking temperature. Cooked em about 2 hours like that and they came out delicious and would last a month or more in the fridge. I’m not sure if the lasted longer because I’d eat them by then.
They were dried out a little but still tender to eat and nice with smoke.
You can do cheese blocks, as well.
@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 smart. That’s gotta be an extra layer of preservation for cheese.
I was trying to make BBQ beef ribs yesterday but I accidentally made BBQ shoe leather. Now I’m hoping the technique at 13:15 can save them.
200-250. 1hr per pound. Very easy.
Man, I really shouldn't be watching this while having to fast before an operation 😐
Lol 🤣
good luck on your surgery!
Hopefully the surgery isn't anything too serious, good luck out there
Good luck, and now you have a treat to look forward to when you get out of recovery.
Good luck on the operation
I'm from Hawaii, where I grew up eating smoked meat from wild boars. The meat was smoked in a small wooden shack at the hunting ranch, and the density of smoke was a lot higher than what Adam uses here, although the low heat was similar. The meat would be cut thinner than Adam does, about the thickness of a thick bacon slice. Maybe it's easier to do with pork than beef due to higher fat content. Adam's meat looks more like salt cured meat than smoked meat.
Maybe. But some stores are known to add water and coloring to meat to improve the look and increase the price, so the fact that your experiences involve wild game would cut that out.
Yea i was about to comment that there wasn’t enough smoke
That would probably be due to him salt curing it before smoking it to be safe. The difference is that your example is like the example he gave of people smoking meat without salt curing it. Honestly I hadn't even heard of salt curing before smoking before this video myself. Always interpreting as an either or, you either salt cure it or smoke it depending on what you have on hand.
You really insulted Adam’s meat there
@@amirrezaamini3239 lol, yeah with meat like that I feel bad for his wife
I am in awe! I came for copper and found gold. I did not expect to learn so much involved with smoking meat. It was all explained perfectly and in great order, it just flowed so well. Thank you for this great video. This video has created a genuine interest for me to begin smoking meat. Beautiful.
Very educational. As a lover of cooking food this was more explanatory in a technical, scientific and practical way that others could not express without such a video. Thank you Sir.
With the peaches, you could also use sugar instead of salt. While insects love sugar, bacteria hate it, which is why you see "candied fruits" from early colonial times!
Bacteria hate *high* sugar levels... to a point. They will eventually start to colonize a food with high sugar levels if there is sufficient moisture as well.
Bacteria most certanly dont hate sugar. They hate the lack of water.
@@duebelknuebel Yes. Sugar water solution is used to grow fungus and bacteria in laboratories. Of course bacteria needs some protein as well.
There are three things that bacteria absolutely hate in large amounts. Salt, sugar, and acid. Add enough of any one of those and you got a food item that stays good for long. Pickling in a 1-2-3 brine is an excellent example of this, though it combines both the acid (vinegar) and the sugar.
There's a reason why honey keeps forever!
I"m on a low-fat diet (had my gall bladder removed), so when I make scrambled eggs I add a few drops of liquid smoke to make it taste as if it had been cooked in bacon grease.
I add liquid smoke to my eggs too - I don't eat meat and it has the same effect you described. I make mine over medium, and add some mushroom powder, black pepper, chili powder, liquid smoke, and sometimes MSG to the whites before they set.
why did they remove your gall bladder
thats brilliant
I forgot I had my gallbladder removed a few years ago.. never had any dietary issues around fat or anything for that matter after it was removed. Did you run into any complications without it? Kind of want to pay attention to my eating and how I feel with bloating and stuff.
I just started following a week ago and can't stop watching. All the food bits with the science bits make this channel awesome.
Thanks for the good work !
This really was like listening to a lecture on chemistry, survivalism, culinary, history and who know how many more.
I find the different food preservation methods and how they developed so interesting.
Especially, since learning about this explains a lot about why certain cultures developed different foods, which is another topic thats highly interesting to me. Probably because I'm married to a South African woman, and there a lot of culinary differences between our cultures.
cultural evolution and their reasons, aka the field of anthropology, is super interesting. I'm a sucker for things like adam's videos on why pork is taboo in some religions or other channels who do video's on why a religion believes certain things.
@@MIKAEL212345 Yeah, me too! 😁
is she african or white (not sure what the correct terms for that in the south african context are, sorry if those are wrong and feel free to tell me) but i guess either way, especially if shes african, there would be a lot of interesting differences. ive always kinda wanted to date or marry a girl from a pretty different culture from my own, not in a weird fetishizing way, but just bc i feel like that would be a really great opportunity to learn abt another culture. ive had a lot of friends from a lot of cultures and learned a lot from then, so i can only imagine how much more youd learn meeting their family and cooking for eachother most nights a week and living together and whatnot
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q hate to break it to u but that's the definition of fetishizing
@@Geassmaster55 no its not
Interesting. I ate some smoked salmon early this year (store-purchased, yet), and got... a listeria infection. You DON'T want it. It was a very nasty case, infected my inner ears and caused me terrible vertigo. Merely moving my head left or right caused me to feel that I was spinning around wildly. I had to do special exercises to re-train my inner ears to balance again. For a week, I had to walk with a cane. It took over two weeks to return to restore normal balance.
Delicious
-Most likely because some smoked food products use smoke flavor and not actual smoking processes... how unfortunate for you.-
Misread the initial comment, didn't realize the specific mention of Listeria
@@TrueNinjafrog did you even watch the video? Adam very clearly said that listeria survives the smoking process, “real smoking”. You can’t blame fake smoking
-@@ViciouslyBuoyant -that's why I made the comment... Because it isn't what was covered in the video; smoke *flavoring*, as in the substance you put on food to mimic the genuine taste of smoking food.-
Misread the initial comment, didn't realize the specific mention of Listeria
@@TrueNinjafrog in the video he is covering how smoke is an anti-microbial, and emphasizes this by showing how liquid smoke specifically isn’t fake smoke, and even the liquid smoke does a good job as an antimicrobial. Neither real or liquid smoking processes however kill listeria and that requires cooking. Op here had a less common case where he got a bad case. Regardless of liquid or “real” smoking the listeria would still be there.
I have been looking for a video like this for about 6 years, all the details as to WHAT and WHY, and most importantly, HOW... Thank you, so much.. My and my sons really enjoyed watching and learning this information you have compiled in one location....
My word, the amount of research you had to do to make this video must have been months of hard work. You don't leave out any loose ends!
I winced to see Adam recommending what seemed to be random deadfall wood. A LOT of the wood out there is just not good for cooking over, and I was glad to see Adam point this out later in the video. In general, fruit woods are safe and delicious for cooking. When I clear brush and prune my fruit trees, I am careful to keep the apple, pear, and peach wood separate from the other stuff, for this purpose. Grapevines are also good -- as long as you can tell the difference between grape vines and poison ivy!
Campfire go brrrr.
I was going to say. I do nearly all my campfire griller over cedar or as you said fruit trees.
Fellas will eat ass but not cook a hotdog over a pinewood fire
Yeah, Poison Ivy smoke is nasty stuff! It still contains the same oil, but now aerosolized. You breathe it in and your lungs and esophagus start blistering. It's quite often fatal in that form.
the difference between poison ivy and grape vines is easy to see.
Grape vines will have grapes coming out of them
Another way ancient peoples would have dealt with PAHs is they would have skewered the meat like a fan and put it on a long stick that they could plant in the ground. That way when the smoke gets blown by the wind, they can simply relocate the meat into the path of the smoke while also avoiding the direct heat.
still a pretty common practice.
Part of me wishes I grew up during those times. I doubt I would have lived as long as I have in today's world, but still would have been something truer to life.
@@JoMcD21 hey, the knowledge is still valuable if you want to be more of a self sustaining person and need it for the day to day. But it does come with needing to do it to live another month and have food security, not everyone in ancient times had even this as common knowledge and conveniently like you can today, so taking all the valuable knowledge of the past into your mind and applying it where it matters is mostly experimenting yourself to observe the benefits, unless you know how to beforehand and perfectly execute it. Like, we know how to put seeds in the ground and water on them and use compost to help them grow, but unless you do it yourself and observe what you do right and what you do wrong and how it affects the process, you'll never truly know if you're good at it or not, even with the simplest of things like keeping a needy plant alive outside in the ground. Of course there's perfect season planting, weeding, tilling, location to the sun, stakes to help it grow straight, and the right kind of soil, intended scale, sure stuff like mint grows like weeds, but alot of "farm" plants are better for growing toughly like large leaf viney squash, you just need to water them and keep them in the sun for the most part and they'll thrive well, and some even last through winter and grow back stronger next season. And then there's preserves... Basically the plant version of smoking for longer lasting, even though you can smoke plants in a similar way... But yeah, you just have to know what and why you're doing something. People still do stuff like this to this day for lesser or greater reasons, and it's about knowing what any of your efforts accomplish and repeating them for sustainability. Now life is guaranteed from mostly exchange, work for y'know, stuff. I honestly don't know what I'm talking about in the literal experience sense as I am probably just as experienced in any of this as you, but you'll never know if you can do something unless you try to do it and carry it out to the end. Like, commitment in exchange for results. It takes a gamble to see if you can can actually master any of it, but it helps to have the knowledge of more experienced people guide you I find. It's just a matter of finding someone with the patience to show you, or being capable and willing to learning it on your own or with friends. It isn't always easy work to do the tedious and testing, but it gets easier with time till it's a part of you.
@JoMcD21 You’d be surprised, life expectancy for a hunter gatherer in the Middle East was something like ~67. Shorter than we’ve managed since the sanitary revolution, but much longer than city people for most of history. London got down to the mid-20’s in the late 19th century.
Or build a wall out of mud or stone to cover the fire pit on all sides except one, so the wind can't blow the smoke in any direction at the lower levels.
They could make a wall over the fire pit using cut logs and sticks as well to redirect the smoke.
There are many techniques to build a fire and how to use the shape of the area to your advantage.
And digging a hole to put the fire pit in can provide smoke without a lot of heat, as they can make the fire 2-3 feet under the ground.
I love you you explained everything, from basic stuff that a lot of people don’t know to very scientific stuff
I really appreciate your enlightening on a health topics. So much people are so far from medicine they woudn't even think about possible listeriosis. And it's a huge problem.
Another important note about firemaking is keeping the fire off the ground (when applicable). In most forests, the ground is almost entire composed of fresh and semidecomposed organic material called duff. This duff can burn and smoulder under ashes of a cold fire and can spread to roots causing forest fires. In the video Adam keeps his fire on some bricks which was a smart move.
so when there aren’t bricks and suitable stones around, what’s the best course of action? can i clear the duff off the ground and build a fire well within the clearing?
@@MynameisBrianZX I think the best course of action is really what you said, try to clear off all the dead leaves and stuff until you see the soil
@@daniellima4391 Yes, a fire on bare soil would probably be a fair amount safer than burning up forest litter AKA duff.
While you're at it, you can take that a step further to achieve cold smoking on a small scale. You dig a hole to build the fire in more safely, then construct a tunnel with some sort of pipe (steel pipe if you're modern, bamboo or similar natural materials if you can't get steel) that will act as a sort of nearly-horizontal chimney. Start the fire in the hole, cover it with whatever so most or all of the smoke goes out through the tunnel/chimney. Then of course you place the food to be smoked over wherever the tunnel/chimney is letting the smoke out.
It's basically the same as how the presenter described in the video about modern commercial cold-smoking, except you can do it in your backyard with very little cost.
@@MynameisBrianZX you just dig down to “mineral earth”. You will know you are deep enough when you stop seeing organic matter
@@Grunttamer yeah, digging is the best solution. Clean up area, dig a bit, find some stones around and you have natural stove.
Clean, white wood ash is a pretty nice flavor source and preservative in its own right. It brings up a food's pH, which should inhibit fungal growth, it attacks the lipids in cell membranes, and it lends a pleasant mineral taste with a hint of bitterness. There probably wouldn't be enough of it on smoked meat to have any significant impact on nutrition, but it can also activate B vitamins in vegetable sources and make starches more digestible, so a little bit in a stew couldn't hurt. I personally wouldn't wash it off.
Wood ash is usually very alkaline from excess calcium, how would it bring the pH down?
@@nickyc5902 Mistyped. Meant up. Alkaline is what I intended to convey.
i don't know how i feel about adding lye to my diet
Some people used to preserve meat in hickory ashes.
Lyes!
I can't believe how detailed and well researched this is mate! I'm a vegetarian and therefore don't eat smoked meats but still found this video wonderfully educational and interesting!! Thanks!
Don't get lost in the wilderness. A vegan diet will not save you out there.
Are you hungry?
Try some other smoked fruits then! Apparently apples work well, too
@@LouSlade Ooh that's a fantastic idea!
@@suprem1ty Someone else in the comments suggested using sugar, specifically maple sugar, instead of salt. Maple sugared, smoked peaches or apples can only end deliciously, I'd imagine.
When I smoke in my yard, I have this really cool vine I love using. It has neat 3 leaf clusters and makes satisfying popping and thick black smoke which I'm sure is perfectly fine. The meat always turns out great! Squirrel, opossum, racoon, and the occasional armadillo are excellent choices. My personal favorite is polecat. It's zingy! 🤤
I love how despite tipping over the rack, he uses it as an opportunity to teach us more on what he observed making the mistakes.
Mistakes are also learning opportunities.
@@astranix0198 Absolutely, as we just saw.
Well, I'm not at all an expert at smoking food but we used to do some every year with the local (Galicia - North West Spain) kind of "chorizo" we do around here. The thing is though, the meat was never previously never cured in salt, not exactly. It was marinated in a mix with garlic (not too much but plenty anyway) white wine (this is the land of "Albariño"), paprika (mainly NOT hot paprika, though some can be added, that depends on taste, but bear in mind its spiciness usually turns stronger with time) and bay leaves among other things. It would be left for a couple of days or so, mixing all the meat pieces every now and then to get an even marination. Then they would do the chorizo, filling natural pig guts (intestines) or artificial ones, and tying the gut every now and then (10-15 cms - 4-6 inches, take into account they will shrink).
They would be put to be smoked in a barn. The choice of wood is really important. It would always be some kind of oak, dry enough, and bay leaves and branches, which wouldn't be dry at all, therefore releasing all its frangancies.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about, although it's something I've never done, is that in my region they make this smoked cheese. It's called "San Simón da Costa" and it's as tasty as it gets. The process is a bit more complicated but, all in all, it's a stlightly cured cheese (1-2 months) which they then put in a chamber and smoke it with birch, bark not included.
If you ever have the chance, try it out. You may like it or not, but it will certainly be a different thing.
Maybe it was the garlic and alcohol that helped?
@@fnjesusfreak well, there would also be some salt added to the mix, but I would bet on the spices. Garlic helps and wine too, although white wine (at least the kind used here) is around 11-13º so it's not that big of a germ-killer.
BTW, ham in Spain is cured with salt, but a cousin of my father's used to make some ham cured with some mix of spices as well. I would say "it's a different" animal but it was actually pig all along. Now, it's a completely different taste.
Don’t know about this particular sausage, but lots of sausages are lacto-fermented, and that’s how you preserve them, perhaps in addition to smoking.
@@aragusea Hi, honored to be replied by you.
If by lacto-fermented you mean there was some milk or something derived from milk added to the mix, the answer to that non asked question is no. No milk was used in the making of those sausages. If you mean there was some kind of lacto-fermentation process in the making, that's beyond my knowledge.
My mother used to prepare them but she is not around anymore so I can't ask her for all the details.
The thing is, here in Galicia, at least in the rural parts, every home would have at least one pig every year (if they could afford it, that is) which they would feed and finally sacrifice in late fall, early winter. Typically around November 11th.
That would be also happen at home and it would also be some kind of celebration if you will, as sacrificing a pig at home implies a few people are involved in the whole process.
Anyway, once the pig is sacrificed and all (and "and all" includes some processes I'm not talking about) it would be cut into pieces as any butcher would do.
Different cuts would receive different treatments, but they would mainly two: they would be either things to eat in a short period of time or for the longer term, in which case they would be thrown into a special kind of table called "artesa", similar to what some bakers used to have to prepare the dough, filled with salt and those different cuts. There are some exceptions, as for example ham would also required some time hanging out to dry in cold dry air, but anyway.
So, as for these sausages, it's the kind of thing that each neighbour would have a different recipe for you, but they would mainly use those cuts and pieces that wouldn't be used anywhere else, although depending on the one doing it, they could include some better cuts as well.
They would chop those pieces down, more or less about half a centimeter wide but this is not a rule. It's chopped with a knife, no machine involved as you would think in Italian sausages or whatever.
And then what I talked about before: all the meat would go into a big pot, they would add salt, wine, spices and bay leaves. The spices included paprika indeed, but there may be some others depending on who's making the sausages.
Again, they would be left to marinate for one day or two (I can't remember the exact time). In fact, some other cuts could be included in this marinade, such as the loin, as this would make it tastier, but just to get marinated, it would not be used in the making of the sausages.
Once it's been marinated long enough, they would actually make the sausages with natural or artificial gut and put to smoke.
How long would it take to get them smoked is also "to taste", but the process would certainly call for a few days, half a week or even more.
Once they were smoked, they would be cleaned from any dirt the smoke could have deposited on them and stored.
In the old times, that would mean leaving them hanging from a wire in the attic, usually a cold and dry place. Anyway, they could develope some surface mold along the year, but as long as it wasn't "too much", that would be cleaned and the sausages would be eaten anyway.
Nowadays they would go directly to the freezer.
The traditional way to cook them would be heating them in a ceramic bowl with some wine until they seem cooked, but my mother found out you could put one frozen sausage in the microwave for exactly one minute (after poking some holes so it didn't burst out) and they would be perfect without all the hassle.
Sorry for the long comment, but if you have read all this, you may be interested into finding more about "zorza" and "raxo", which are closely related to these sausages. In fact "zorza" is mainly chopped loan with some similar marinade, cooked in the pan and served with fries. "Raxo" is mainly the same, but sliced instead of chopped.
Thank you!
@@fadetounforgiven lacto referring to the lactobacillus bacteria that comes from salting meat, usually in a brine so if your mixture was salty/acidic it would have the lactobacillus and anything else present from the salty acidic environment(salt, spices, and wine is making me assume its a salty acidic environment) so that would aid in the flavour and preservation process.
I really love your channel. I think you call it "deep dive". You're deep diving into nearly every facet of our food, both informs me and entertains me, at the same time.
Can you do a video explaining Wet packing of meat, opposed to other forms of packing. Eg. Vac pack, just wrapped, type of wrapping.
I really enjoyed this video a lot!! Both the videography and science tidbits were perfect.
Ancient blades of obsidian could be sharpened to surgical scalpel sharpness....
I just finished a module in culinary school wherein we talked about preservation techniques and the chef could not give me a satisfactory answer as to why smoking helps preserve food. Literally later that same day you posted this video. Thank you so much! Love your work.
Just wanted to highlight some of his points:
While smoking may have been discovered as part of "primitive cooking", it was a vital part of food preservation until very recently. For example, it was particularly important in America, for those first arriving on the continent, those living in forest areas, and those moving west.
Salt curing meat before smoking was not always common. Usually, salt cured meat would be eaten as...salt cured meat. It's wet, heavy, bulky, and requires proper storage conditions, and takes a while to prepare as you need to leech all the salt out. Some salt-cured meat would also spoil rather fast, as it was meant for relatively quick consumption, say within a week. However, in situations such as American travellers moving west, these are people who need to pack light. They don't have much salt on them, they don't have barrels to keep the meat in to cure, their meat is hunted and consumed or processed fresh, and the smoking stations are made with what's around them. As such, often times this meat would not be salted before smoking, or only lightly salted on the surface before smoking. They would want to smoke as soon as possible to prevent excessive microbial growth.
Also as you point out, in addition to being consumed as is, the jerky would often be cooked into meals, which was often necessary because a properly cured meat would be rock hard and would have to be boiled to make it easier to eat. This would also help kill any lingering microbes.
And to help trap the smoke, similar to what you did either a damp cloth or some leather would be wrapped around the tripod. Some of the fears with melting the fat are addressed because often the strips would be cut lean, with the fat having multiple other uses; this would also help them keep longer once smoked.
For more accurate information on this topic, I highly recommend watching Townsend's video on smoking meats.
this....is actually super interesting! thank you for sharing. I'd imagine that they would use leather to keep the smoking going since it's much harder to catch fire
eyyy was wondering abotu the give away you won. can you help me out since i am not sure if this is legit or not. why would adam ragusea not use his real yt accaunt?
@@iljastutz4181 they are fake accounts to try to swindle ppl contacting them
@@iljastutz4181 It's not legit, just spam
@@iljastutz4181 Narnio's right, always be suspicious of anything that sounds too good to be true, whether it's here or in your email or at your front door.
I've never seen a video full of information on just one process.... like dude i just want to know how to smoke food but this gives me more of that, this is so cool.
Dude you are so good at telling information without empty content, super great, this is subscribe❤
As a new mom, I found the listeria discussion really interesting. I'd been told to avoid certain foods because of listeria risk during pregnancy, but I didn't understand why those foods in particular.
Well now you know.
And if those cured meats scream to you (should you end up in said situation again)
Well, seems frying them up should still probably be fine
Hope your health stays good going forward
I hope you, your baby and those surrounding you are doing fine and continue to do so for long time to come
A tipi, which is a cone with an opening at the top is essentially a simple smoker if you think about it. Anything stored near the apex of the tent is in the chimney and is smoked as a byproduct of keeping your home warm. During the Neolithic traditional houses in many regions were circular with conical roofs. In Britain it was discovered in living archaeology projects that the reed roof of a house without a smoke hole lasted much longer than a roof with a smoke hole, preserved by the smoke. Food was very likely stored either in ceramic containers on the floor or suspended from the rafters out of the way, and safe from the debris of activies conducted in side the house.
Oh your tipi comment reminds me: my grandmother had a ceiling in her kitchen that served as a smoking cellar essentially. She cooked over open wood fire inside a small kitchen. Things were left up to dry out. Most of the time not meat. Just corn, peanuts, stuff like that.
Not just tipis, it works very well in long houses like the Haudenosaunee used:
ruclips.net/video/kSyjr9X_faM/видео.html
@@krankarvolund7771 I just picked the tipi because the way the smoke flows is easy to visualize. Just about any early form of shelter that included a fire would probably produce similar results. The long houses are interesting a lot of reasons.
@@theeddorian Yeah, basically all humans understood that smoke is good, and as you need a fire to cook and have heat, you can always use the smoke as well ^^
@@krankarvolund7771 Well, the old moonshiners didn't think smoke was good. Their advise was to avoid green or rotten wood. The smoke could give away the still's location to the ATF.;)
Your channel is my life! Your deep dives really compliment my life as a small scale farmer and educator.
I learned a lot more than I planned on when I clicked on this. Fantastic information, thank you very much for the effort in making this video.
Where I grew up in Northern Sweden we still have a smoking house in the village, probably built in the late 1800s. The house is a small wooden cabin with a fire pit in the middle and beams under the roof where you can put branches for hanging the meat. There is a vent and of course a door, but no windows. We also have a thermometer (installed later) to make sure the temperature does not become too low or too high. When smoking meat we use alder wood with some juniper branches towards the end for taste.
Väduren Eemeli Vaahteramäen Eemeli they did same thing and eemeli eat some of sausages and get phunished. But in my town my grand father had a same room smoker
Sauna smoker (rökbastu)?
@@johanmetreus1268 Yes
Dude, this experiment really takes you one step ahead of other food youtubers. But don't feel too preasured, I'm here for your nice voice and down to earth mentality.
man, the fact that you actually went out and got hot smoked food just to explain the two different types of smoking is why i watch
Interesting. I love using Liquid Smoke for flavor when I make my own sauces, but I never actually looked into how it was made. I also hadn't heard anybody break down cold smoking and hot smoking. I'd heard the processes before but I'm sure this is the first time I've actually heard them explained.
This is the first video I've watched on this channel. I'll have to check out a few more.👍
I feel like you missed the biggest problem with diy smoking in the modern world, that is reduced yield. If I get a 4 lb cut of meat and smoke strips of it, I'm left with about an ounce or less of actual jerky. I imagine a hunter who has an entire deer may have better results, especially if they have a lot of acreage. But when I do it, the 20 hours of smoke blowing around my neighborhood alerts all my neighbors and we end up eating them as they cook and all I have left is a few strips and and a few blocks of cheese.
Sounds like a neighbor issue. You eat? You contribute
I think I know how to solve your problem do you have an electric fence? If not get one when you are about to smoke simply turn on the electric fence that should keep most hungry neighbors away if that should fail take your food and run
Ooh fellow neighbor eater! Clever technique to lure them right into your trap!
@@rottenoyster3582 LOL
Smoke em if you got em.
Neighbors, that is
You know, case hardening's not always a bad thing. Well, it's probably always bad in food, but for metal it's a whole other story. You can make a file out of mild steel, cover it in a carbon paste, seal it in an airtight envelope, and heat the whole package until the steel is glowing red hot. The steel will absorb carbon, causing the outer surface to turn into a strong yet brittle high carbon steel. That's case hardening to a blacksmith or machinist. Thank you, Clickspring!
And interestingly, case hardening can be either good OR bad in wood. If you try to cut case-haedened wood, you can catastrophically release stress which can crack or warp the wood, which can actually bind onto your blades, etc. Both a quality and safety issues.
@@necrojoe So, just to summarize, food, no, metal, yes, wood, maybe. Good to know.
well, as being both a woodworker and a bladesmith who understands what both of you are saying, I just wanna say youre total nerds to even connect those thing in here 😅 In a good way though! btw how I hate those case hardened stuff, cant salvage the damn thing for blademaking.. how I miss those US made Nicholson's back in the day..
Note: metal doesn't case harden, it work hardens
Case hardening is outer layers drying out,
Work hardening is faults reaching grain boundaries (removing the ability of metal to flex)
The latter can be good or bad, paperclip snapping vs the edge of a tool being less likely to deform
(note on the latter is why a lot of steel tools will snap rather than bend, among other things)
@@sabotabby3372 work hardening and case hardening in metal are two different things.
How have I not found this channel sooner? You've earned a subscriber. Nice presentation, easy to understand.
this is my favourite food channel, Adam makes food I actually want to eat and I learn somethings.
One of my dad's workfriends built a smoker and brought in smoked salted cashews to share with colleagues - as you say, the fat is good for taking on the flavour and the slight roasting was amazingly good.
I'm sure that was delicious. You can also smoke salt by itself to use later as a seasoning on whatever you like. It's lovely!
Mmm I’m thinking we should try chestnuts next
Really surprised you didn't touch on the formaldehyde that is produced by burning wood / tobacco.
It's almost impossible to deny the flavor when a food is oversmoked.
If you've smelled formaldehyde, you know the taste.
Sometimes after not having a cigarette in a while, I'll be like damn...can really taste the formaldehyde.
Once i took like 100 lbs of meat off the smoker and straight into the walk in cooler. The formaldehyde condensed and made it PUTRID smelling inside. Reminded me greatly of anatomy class. The owners of the building freaked out and told me I had to pressure wash it. I just cracked the door for a while.
Natural tobacco is bad enough, but if you get used to rolling your own that doesn't have all the additives, and then have a "normal" store bought cigarette, you will REALLY taste all the extra garbage they put in them.
Wow, I wanted to just learn the bare bone how to but this has all sorts of helpful, more extensive science behind it. Very helpful, bravo :)
idk I've been really missing this in-depth, passionate, scientific content as of late
12:22 Granted this is a very
modern (and Taboo for all the wrong reasons) method, but could you go over Food Irradiation sometime?
If I remember correctly it kills basically everything so the only concern is toxins (which shouldn’t be there unless it was already infested with Botulinum etc). Also X-Rays or Electron Beams can be used which negates the need for a chunk of something radioactive to provide gamma rays.
I think stuff like that, “controlled atmosphere storage”, and aseptic processing or canning (may not even need the heat with irradiation!) are the ultimate food preservation method. Keep it dark and in a cold place and in theory it should have a near infinite shelf life, right? All with little to no flavor alteration due to salt/acid/temperature etc!
(edit: Typos)
UV irradiation is already used in the pharmaceutical industry for virus deactivation when dealing with mammalian cultures - it's never a 100% purge guarantee. Any wet food will come with the possibility of bacterial contamination, dehydration is still the way to go for 'indefinite' food storage ala "astronaut food."
I second this. Would be an interesting topic & I hope he considers it
Is that achievable for an average home chef tho? serious question
I'm going to be the smarty-pants and say that any preservation method using heat or light is radiation curing.
🤷♂️
@@sencha__ In theory it would be possible to make a safe X-Ray one but you would need plenty of knowledge to do so for sure. X-Rays have more penetrating power than microwaves though so even the small source you would need for this you probably would want a decent security wall safe as your shielding box (couple of inches of steel should do it for a small one). Then of course it should ideally operate like a microwave ie have lockouts to prevent the X-Ray emitter being energised with the enclosure open etc. But honestly it is not that insanely dangerous when compared to you know the rest of a kitchen most of the equipment in there will put you in the hospital in short order if misused. Mess with the door closure sensor on a microwave and stick your hand near the emitter you will get the nastiest sunburn you have ever had in short order for example it can easily cause severe radiation burns like that, so can the infrared from most thermal cookers to be fair. If you want enough energy to kill nasty microbes it can and will kill your own cells too if you expose yourself directly to it so that is pretty much the entire kitchen.
You made the point at the end, but I was squirming when you gathered random yard wood. Stick with hardwoods that have been dried. No softwood or fungus funk.
first video of yours I've ever seen. Instant subscribe. Love your extremely informative explanations!
I just stumbled upon your video and channel for the first time and I absolutely love your style man! All the info and balanced too. Your style of information flows so good, it’s refreshing! Thank you 😊
Even though I don't agree with Adams ideas/conclusions sometimes, the exciting topics and breakdowns of complex ideas are great. The way he includes specialists of whatever topic is brilliant as well. Keep em coming, board seasoner.
Board seasoner lmao
@@pikmin369 you will NEVER be My Melody
Adam says a lot of stupid and sometimes demented things once in a while, like supporting children on hormone blockers. 🤢👿
I work at a Bbq Joint here in New Orleans and I feel I learn more watching your videos than I do at work. Thanks for taking the time to make us all a little bit smarter man
Great video format man. Narration and videography really draws the viewer in
My brother was watching RUclips on the TV and soon enough my whole family was watching this video. Really well made.
I genuinely don't understand how you so consistently and rapidly make such excellent videos. Thanks!
If anything, I watch for Adam's seamless ad integration.
I learn literally so much about cooking in your channel. It is insane. Knowing the principles behind cooking and food preparation techniques gives you so much freedom and understanding when making your own food! Also, I know it's probably not terribly safe, but that stew looked indeed delicious
I remember my father smoking moose meat when I was a toddler...it looked very different than your final product, long strips of a red so dark as to almost be black; so tough that it was almost inedible without soaking but very comforting to suck on. Your video brought back flashes of memory decades old.
I’m young, but I remember my dad smoking elk strips when I was a kid, they were very similar to your description, delicious but hard as leather!
These videos are phenomenal, I am a professional chef and I am so excited to learn the science behind why I have been doing things in my industry for as long as I have, and the way the information is portrayed and filmed gets better by thr episode! Keep this up Adam!!
I think the most good your scientific food discoveries have done for my cooking is your discovery that seasoning the meat before stewing it doesn't change the flavor. It's saved me so much time because I hot-smoke my stew meats for an hour to an hour and a half before throwing them into the stew, and now I don't spend all that time seasoning and salting everything beforehand.
I hadn't thought of stewing beef jerky... Thank you for the idea!
I love the way you explain things I find your channel very informative. Thank you.
Another banger, loved that you used the mistake of knocking over the tent as a brand new shot, rather than just cutting it out. In fact, you made such a good point out of it that I'm starting to think it wasn't a mistake at all
Almost a 2mil Adam! Crazy to see how large your channel has grown. You deserve 100% of the success. Cheers!
Fascinating video, I grew up in a fishing village where every home had a smoke house in the backyard(basically a shed) for salmon
This is an absolutely astonishing insight into smoking
It's a bit weird to think about how cold cold smoking actually is. Recently, temperatures here have been over 30 degrees which I guess would make the ambient air temperature itself too hot for cold smoking.
Not "too hot," just deep into the danger zone for bacterial growth. If Im not mistaken, around 35 degrees is prime bacterial growth temp. So you could do it probably above 40 degrees as long as you salted it and had A LOT of smoke happening, like a legit smoker. It would probs be fine
Growing up in Nome, Alaska we don't have trees, but we do have a ton of driftwood. Old Birch and Spruce trees that fell into the Yukon and got sun-bleached (and brined by the ocean) on its way down the river to the shore near Nome. This stuff would make some of the hottest outdoor fires you'll feel. We wouldn't use just it for smoking salmon though. There are cottonwoods and bush-type Alders nearby that add excellent flavors. We did have to let those dry like typical firewood.
Don't use evergreens/coniferous trees for smoking food. Hopefully the resin was mostly cleaned off the spruce by virtue of it being driftwood.
Thanks for giving a shout out to liquid smoke. Its a really underappreciated ingredient.
I love the in-depth details you went through, thank you!
Mexican carne seca.
With chili and lime. With a beer is vastly underrated
carne seca is the next lvl equivalent to jerky; its so much superior in so many ways. The taste, the texture, the chew, all of it is better.
Its almost like someone took that jerky chew stuff and flattened it into sticks and then stuck delishous fat globules within it to make some pieces rly pop in flavour
Thats actually i think what makes it so much better than the way we normally smoke meats in USA; cuz the fat stays locked in the meat and gets smoked too, and they leave on more of the fat too.
Ill pass on the beer myself, three yrs sober since April; but the chili and lime ofc complement the meat very well. And ill totes drink a horchata with it myself, but in a dirty glass so i still seem tough drinkin my rice milk :P
Ancient people were a lot smarter than we think. I am sure they figured out very quickly what kind of wood to use and how to cover the food while it was being smoked. I have always used hickory to smoke meat, it tastes good and smokes very well. You need a tall wooden box with a door and the base made out of stone and clay. The trick is to put some embers on a small batch of wood so it does not catch fire but smolders for a long time. Also dont let the fire get too much oxygen so it smolders slowly
I´ve salted and smoked a lot but I found this educational. I never really knew why, I just knew it worked. Thanks !
Your communication skills are next level. Inspiring!
I love this youtube channel. I love how it uses and explains the science behind food with nice footage in the background. The recipes are also great even though I don't think I've even made any of them
I was always curious about this! Wondered if the smoke did anything or if it was just the drying from the fire.
Absolutely facinating, thanks for this.
This videos is fascinating. Drying and smoking meat can be so simple and yet so delicious and effective for preservation without refrigeration
In my country (Croatia) we preparing smoaked meat, mostly pork this way : 1.leaving meat, beacon, hams, etc in salt 1-2 weeks (depending of part sizes), in plastic box with 8-10% of salt, removing colected water every day or two. Recomended ambient temp. is no more than 12 C (idealy around 0C) 2.after 1-2 weeks in salt, removing meat, washing residual salt and let dry around one day in cold good ventilated place 3. put meat in smokehouse and make slow burning fire, good wood is perhaps beech, hornbeam, plum, poplar, etc. In any case dont use wood with resin like pine or eucalyptus. First smoke seasion need to be 8-12 hours long, after that you need to have min. 24 hours pause and repeat the proces 2-3 times depending of meat size. When smoking is finished you need to leave meat next 2-3 months in cold, good ventilated place to became completly dry. After that you can storage that meat in cold good ventilated place for months. Many time I was eat 2-3 years old smoaked ham without any consequence. In this video you can seen whole proces : ruclips.net/video/BZulVxm2jAA/видео.html
I want to visit Croatia :) my Great Grandmother is from there.
Ahhh does the pause between smokings let the moisture get pulled from the middle by the drier outside and even out for next smoking session?
whats wrong with pine? I've cooked steaks over pine before and it was delicious
My god man, the science in this is as fantastic. If I were still teaching I'd figure out a way to use it in class. I appreciate all the effort you put into this.
This is quickly becoming my favorite channel
“And baby, you got a stew goin!”
That arrested development reference made me happy.
"Aromatics in smoke bounds better to fats and proteins" I remember reading on Corriher's Cookwise that most compounds that are associated with flavour are aromatic rings and are, in their majority (I don't know if that's a property of the aromatic ring form or the elements though), fat soluble, which is why we usually add the flavor, like vanilla essence, along with butter or oil in baking, to better spread it in the dough
That should be the property of the aromatic rings as they are unpolar and thus do not dissolve in polar liquids like water.
@@iododendron3416 High school was over a decade ago so forgive my lacking in basic chemistry, but does the element that composes the ring has anything to do with the polarity, or is that a property solely from the molecule's form?
For example, I know soap works because one side is polar and the other not, but I think I remember it being a regular molecule, no fancy forms
The aromatic ring is almost always composed solely of carbon, some aromatic compounds have a carbon atom substituted by nitrogen or oxygen for example. Those do not really increase its polarity, though.
However, and I did not have that in mind when writing my response, certain substituents do increase the polarity of the molecule. For instance, Adam mebtions phenols in the video. Phenol, the most basic of the phenols, is an aromatic ring of six carbon atoms where one hydrogen has been replaced by a hydroxide group (-OH) and phenol is soluble in water. It is also known as carbolic acid and used as an antiseptic in aqueous solution (though not as often as 100+ years ago as far as I understand).
Which aromatics exactly are in smoke is beyond my knowledge, though. I would assume most of them are rather unpolar.6
@@iododendron3416 thank you for the enlightment
@@NoOne-fe3gc hey, you're welcome :).
We can learn a lot from the ancients just from their cooking and food preservation methods. With only the coldest months to keep food preserved longer, it must have been really daunting during the hottest months when crops were scarce, the game wasn't fully fattened up yet, and food spoils at an alarming rate without refrigeration. Curing takes a lot of time too, so I suspect they must have also built small huts to keep the smoke in and to expedite the curing process. We take food safety for granted today, but it was life or death to get it right for the ancients! Thanks for your wonderful video, friend! Insight into the past allows us to better see today!
This video was excellent! You wove the science into this so well.
You’ve won my subscription by simply dropping an Arrested Development reference. Nice.
Great video.