BRADLEY HOT OR COLD FISH SMOKER
 

We've bought a "Bradley" hot and cold smoker.

We soaked some nice fresh Pollack fillets in a brine curing solution of 1 Kg of Salt ( this must be sea salt or cooking Salt NOT table salt, which has added iodine to make it pour more easily), with 4 ozs of Soft Brown Sugar, dissolved in 1 gallon of fresh water for an hour.

Then we laid out the fillets to dry in the air overnight in a cool 'fridge.

We cold smoked the fillets the next morning for about 4 hours.

That's the really easy part.  You just load the hopper with "biscuits" of compressed sawdust, which are available from the supplier and are quite inexpensive.

You can choose from a wide variety of wood flavours, including oak, apple, cherry, mesquite, hickory, elder, special blend, and many more.

The sawdust is cleanly and automatically burned on a miniature electric hotplate within the smoker cabinet.

A new sawdust biscuit is automatically loaded from the hopper every 20 minutes.

At the same time, the previous biscuit is extinguished in a small pot of water in the base of the cabinet.  This assures clean smoke with no residue of resins or tar to taint the exquisite flavour.

It burns 3 biscuits an hour, which adds up to about £1 per hour.

If you are hot smoking, as you will for many meats, and fish such as Mackerel fillets, then you can turn on an adjustable infra red element heating element within the smoker cabinet, which can attain temperatures up to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

That evening Patsy cooked our freshly cold smoked fillet by gently poaching it in milk, with a couple of fresh bay leaves and some black pepper in a shallow pan for about 15 minutes.  We ate it topped with a poached egg and slices of new  crusty bread and butter.  It was absolutely delicious.

Patsy makes another really superb dish, which consists of smoked Pollack flaked in crème fresh  and piled on top of a warm omelette, served with a crisp green salad.  I love it.

We've since enjoyed racks of spare ribs hot smoked and barbecued and Patsy's piece de resistance, smoked crispy duck - yum yum!

I reckon we are going to get a great deal of enjoyment out of our "Bradley Smoker".  It is so easy to use and comes complete with an instructional video.  I'm a complete "Muppet" when it comes to cooking, (thank goodness Patsy is an excellent Cook), although I must say I found it simplicity to use successfully.

I bought my Bradley Smoker from Malcolm Barnett at Devon Angling Centre, Chillington, Nr. Kingsbridge.  You can see the "Bradley Smoker" on his web site at www.anglingcentre.net

If you would like to know much more, you can visit the maker's web site at   www.bradleysmoker.com where you can download recipes and all sorts of goodies.