Smoked food safety, step by step

1. Meat before the smoke

Nothing that happens in the smokehouse can put right a bad raw material.

1. Trichinella test — The sample goes to the vet or an approved laboratory straight after slaughter. Wild boar and bear always need a test.
2. Wait for a negative result — No pork is salted, stuffed or smoked until the result is negative. That goes for hot smoking too.
3. Cold chain — The meat is chilled to the bone at 0–4 °C within 24 hours, and salted at 2–5 °C. Hands, knife, boards and containers are clean, and raw poultry and fish kept apart.
4. Curing salt by the scale — Roughly 13 g of 0.6 % nitrite curing salt per 1 kg of mix on a scale accurate to 1 g, with the rest plain salt; or 1.3 g of Cure #1 on a 0.1 g scale. Keep it in a labelled container, apart from kitchen salt; never pure nitrite or saltpetre.

Why: Smoke, salt, drying and a home freezer don't reliably kill Trichinella. In Europe, untested wild boar sausage and dried meat are the most common source of trichinellosis, and in North America bear meat and feral hogs. Safety starts on the day of slaughter.

• Every piece and batch gets a test number and a salting date.
• Nitrite isn't used for fish or cheese.

2. Tar and the crust

Smoke also carries harmful substances, PAHs, and most of them sit in a black, shiny crust.

1. Hardwood — Burn seasoned hardwood or fruitwood. Softwood and damp wood give more tar.
2. Smouldering, no flame — The wood smoulders, without flame. Flame and a hot fire make far more PAHs.
3. Smoke through a channel — The firebox is separate, and the smoke runs through a channel. Tar settles in the channel, not on the meat.
4. Dry meat, short smoke — Tar condenses on wet meat, so the meat goes into the smoke dry. Smoke only as long as needed, and cut off a black crust and bacon rind.

Why: PAHs form with a hot fire, flame and when fat drips onto embers. Softwood and damp wood give more tar. Longer smoke doesn't give a better product.

• Clean the smokehouse every autumn, so tar from the ceiling doesn't drip onto the meat.
• Let smoked meat be an addition to a meal, not every meal; children should eat it less often.

3. Carbon monoxide and fire · Locked

When you buy the module Safety and storing smoked food, you get a PDF to download and print and permanent access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.

4. At-risk groups and how to eat it · Locked

When you buy the module Safety and storing smoked food, you get a PDF to download and print and permanent access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.

5. Larder and pests · Locked

When you buy the module Safety and storing smoked food, you get a PDF to download and print and permanent access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.

6. Signs of spoilage and order of use · Locked

When you buy the module Safety and storing smoked food, you get a PDF to download and print and permanent access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.