SMOKING AND SMOKEHOUSES.
For best quality of bacon, the proper meat is of first importance. Withes or strings of basket wood, bear"s gra.s.s, or coa.r.s.e, stout twine, one in the hock end of each ham and shoulder, and two in the thick side of each middling, are fastened in the meat by which to suspend it for smoking.
Before it is hung up the entire flesh surface of the hams and shoulders, and sometimes the middlings also, is sprinkled thickly with fine black pepper, using a large tin pepper box to apply it. Sometimes a mixture of about equal parts of black and red pepper helps very much to impart a good flavor to the meat. It was thought formerly that black pepper, applied to meat before smoking it, would keep the bacon bug (Dermestes) "skippers"
from being troublesome. But it is now known that the skipper skips just as lively where the pepper is. The meat is hung upon sticks or on hooks overhead very close together, without actually touching, and is ready for smoking.
THE SMOKEHOUSE.
The meat house is of course one with an earth, brick, or cement floor, where the fire for the smoke is made in a depression in the center of the room, so as to be as far as possible from the walls. A few live coals are laid down, and a small fire is made of some dry stuff. As it gets well to burning, the fire is smothered with green hickory or oak wood, and a basket of green chips from the oak or hickory woodpile is kept on hand and used as required to keep the fire smothered so as to produce a great smoke and but little blaze. If the chips are too dry they are kept wet with water. Care is taken not to allow the fire to get too large and hot, so as to endanger the meat hung nearest to it. Should the fire grow too strong, as it sometimes will, a little water is thrown on, a bucketful of which is kept always on hand. The fire requires constant care and nursing to keep up a good smoke and no blaze. Oak and hickory chips or wood impart the best color to meat. Some woods, as pine, ailanthus, mulberry and persimmon, are very objectionable, imparting a disagreeable flavor to the bacon. Corn cobs make a good smoke for meat, but they must be wet before laying them on the fire. Hardwood sawdust is sometimes advantageously used in making a fire for smoking meats. No blaze is formed, and if it burns too freely can be readily checked by sprinkling a little water upon it.
This is a popular method in parts of Europe, and in that country damp wheat straw is also sometimes used to some extent.
COMBINED SMOKEHOUSE AND OVEN.
The oven, shown in Fig. 18, occupies the front and that part of the interior which is represented in our ill.u.s.tration by the dotted lines. The smokehouse occupies the rear, and extends over the oven. The advantages of this kind of building are the perfect dryness secured, which is of great importance in preserving the meat, and the economy in building the two together, as the smoke that escapes from the oven may be turned into the smokehouse. This latter feature, however, will not commend itself to many who prefer the use of certain kinds of fuel in smoking which are not adapted to burning in a bake oven.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18. COMBINATION SMOKEHOUSE AND OVEN.]
Cloudy and damp days are the best for smoking meat. It seems to receive the smoke more freely in such weather, and there is also less danger of fire. The smoke need not be kept up constantly, unless one is in a hurry to sell the meat. Half a day at a time on several days a week, for two or three weeks, will give the bacon that bright gingerbread color which is generally preferred. It should not be made too dark with smoke. It is a good plan, after the meat is smoked nearly enough, to smoke it occasionally for half a day at a time all through the spring until late in May. It is thought that smoke does good in keeping the Dermestes out of the house. The work of smoking may be finished up in a week, if one prefers, by keeping up the smoke all day and at night until bedtime. Some smoke more, others less, according to fancy as to color. No doubt, the more it is smoked, the better the bacon will keep through the summer. But it need not, and, in fact, should not, be made black with smoke.
It is necessary, before the smoking is quite completed, to remove the meat that is in the center just over the fire to one side, and to put the pieces from the sides in the center. The meat directly over the smoke colors faster than that on the sides, although the house is kept full of smoke constantly. Some farmers do not care to risk the safety of their meat by having an open fire under it, and so set up an old stove, either in the room or on the outside, in which latter case a pipe lets the smoke into the house. A smoldering fire is then kept up with corn cobs or chips.
But there is almost as much danger this way as the other. The stovepipe may become so hot as to set fire to the walls of the house where it enters, or a blaze may be carried within if there is too much fire in the stove. There is some risk either way, but with a properly built smokehouse, there is no great danger from the plan described.
THE MEAT IS NOW CURED
and, if these directions have been observed, the farmer has a supply of bacon as good as the world can show. Some may prefer a "shorter cut" from the slaughter pen to the baking pan, and with their pyroligenous acid may scout the old-fashioned smoke as heathenish, and get their bacon ready for eating in two hours after the salt has struck in. But they never can show such bacon by their method as we can by ours. There is but one way to have this first-cla.s.s bacon and ham, and that way is the one herein portrayed.
TO MAKE A SMOKEHOUSE FIREPROOF
as far as the stove ashes are concerned, is not necessarily an expensive job; all that is required is to lay up a row of brick across one end, also two or three feet back upon each side, connecting the sides with a row across the building, making it at least two feet high. As those who have a smokehouse use it nearly every year, that part can also be made safe from fire by the little arch built at the point shown in the ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 19. The whole is laid up in mortar, and to add strength to the structure an iron rod or bar may be placed across the center of the bin and firmly imbedded in the mortar, two or three rows of brick from the top. Of course, the rear of the arch is also bricked up. In most cases, less than 250 brick will be all that is required.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19. FIREPROOFING A SMOKEHOUSE.]
A WELL ARRANGED SMOKEHOUSE.
A simple but satisfactory smokehouse is shown in the ill.u.s.tration, Fig.
20, and can be constructed on the farm at small cost. It is so arranged as to give direct action of smoke upon the meat within, and yet free from the annoyance that comes from entering a smoke-filled room to replenish the fire. The house is square, and of a size dependent upon the material one may have yearly to cure by smoke. For ordinary use, a house ten feet square will be ample. There are an entrance door on one side and a small window near the top that can be opened from the outside to quickly free the inside from the smoke when desired. At the bottom of one side is a small door, from which extends a small track to the center of the room.
Upon this slides a square piece of plank, moved by an iron rod with a hook on one end. On the plank is placed an old iron kettle, Fig. 21, with four or five inches of earth in the bottom, and upon this is the fire to be built. The kettle can be slid to the center of the room with an iron rod and can be drawn to the small door at any time to replenish the fire without entering the smoky room or allowing the smoke to come out. The house has an earthen floor and a tight foundation of stone or brick. The walls should be of matched boarding and the roof shingled. The building is made more attractive in appearance if the latter is made slightly "dishing."
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20. FARM SMOKEHOUSE.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 21. FIRE, KETTLE AND TRACK.]
SMOKING MEATS IN A SMALL WAY.
A fairly good subst.i.tute for a smokehouse, where it is desired to improvise something for temporary use in smoking hams or other meat, may be found in a large cask or barrel, arranged as shown in the engraving, Fig. 22. To make this effective, a small pit should be dug, and a flat stone or a brick placed across it, upon which the edge of the cask will rest. Half of the pit is beneath the barrel and half of it outside. The head and bottom may be removed, or a hole can be cut in the bottom a little larger than the portion of the pit beneath the cask. The head or cover is removed, while the hams are hung upon cross sticks. These rest upon two cross bars, made to pa.s.s through holes bored in the sides of the cask, near the top. The head is then laid upon the cask and covered with sacks to confine the smoke. Some coals are put into the pit outside of the cask, and the fire is fed with damp corn cobs, hardwood chips, or fine brush. The pit is covered with a flat stone, by which the fire may be regulated, and it is removed when necessary to add more fuel.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22. A BARREL SMOKEHOUSE.]
ANOTHER BARREL SMOKEHOUSE.
For those who have only the hams and other meats from one or two hogs to smoke, a practicable smokehouse, like that shown in Fig. 23, will serve the purpose fairly well. A large barrel or good-sized cask should be used, with both heads removed. A hole about a foot deep is dug to receive it, and then a trench of about the same depth and six or eight feet long, leading to the fireplace. In this trench can be laid old stovepipe and the ground filled in around it. The meat to be smoked is suspended in the barrel and the lid put on, but putting pieces under it, so there will be enough draft to draw the smoke through. By having the fire some distance from the meat, one gets the desired amount of smoke and avoids having the meat overheated.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23. BARREL SMOKEHOUSE WITH FRENCH DRAFT.]
CHAPTER XII.
KEEPING BACONS AND HAMS.
The ideal meat house or smokehouse is a tall frame structure, twelve by fifteen or fifteen by eighteen feet, underpinned solidly with brick set a foot or more into the ground, or with a double set of sills, the bottom set being buried in the soil. This mode of underpinning is designed to prevent thieves from digging under the wall and into the house. Stout, inch-thick boards are used for the weatherboarding, and sometimes the studs are placed near enough together to prevent a person from getting through between them. The house is built tall to give more room for meat and to have it farther from the fire while it is being smoked. The weatherboarding and the roof should be tight to prevent too free escape of the smoke. No window, and but one door, is necessary. The floor should be of clay, packed firm, or else laid in cement or brick. Indeed, it would be better to have the entire walls built of brick, but this would add considerably to the cost of construction.
THE ROOM SHOULD BE LARGE ENOUGH
to admit of a platform on one or both sides, upon which to pack the pork when salted. There should be a salt barrel, a large wooden tray made of plank, in which to salt the meat, and a short, handy ladder for reaching the upper tier of joists. A large basket for holding chips, a tub for water when smoking meat, a large chopping block and a meat axe, for the convenience of the cook, are necessary articles for the meat house.
Nothing else should be allowed to c.u.mber the room to afford a harbor for rats or to present additional material for a blaze, in case a spark from the fire should snap out to a distance. The house should be kept neatly swept, and rats should not be allowed to make burrows under anything in the room. The floor of the meat house should always be of some hard material like cement or brick, or else clay pummeled very hard, so that there would be no hiding place for the pupae of the Dermestes (parent of the "skipper").
The skipper undergoes one or two moltings while in the meat, and at last drops from the bacon to the floor, where, if the earth is loose, it burrows into the ground and, remaining all winter, comes out a perfect beetle in spring. A hard, impervious floor will prevent it from doing this, and compel it to seek a nesting place elsewhere. The reason why country bacon is sometimes so badly infested with the skipper is that the house and floor afford or become an excellent incubator, as it were, for the Dermestes, and the bacon bugs become so numerous that all the meat gets infested with them. In case the floor of the smokehouse is soft and yielding, it becomes necessary each winter, before the meat is packed to salt, to remove about two inches of the soil and put in fresh earth or clay in its place. Thus, many of the insects would be carried out, where they would be destroyed. The walls and roof of the room on the interior should also be swept annually to dislodge any pupae that might be hibernating in the cracks and crevices. With these precautions, there should not be many of the pests left within the building, though it is a hard matter when a house once gets badly infested to dislodge them entirely. There are so many hiding places about a plain shingle roof that it is next to impossible not to have some of these insects permanently lodged in the meat house. But with a good, hard floor, frequent sweeping and the use of plenty of black pepper on the meat, the number of the Dermestes should be reduced to the minimum.
BACON KEEPS NOWHERE SO WELL
as in the house where it is smoked, and if the bugs do not get too numerous it is decidedly better to allow it to remain hanging there. Bacon needs air and a cool, dry, dark room for keeping well in summer. The least degree of dampness is detrimental, causing the bacon to mold. It has been noticed, however, that moldy bacon is seldom infested with the skipper.
Hence some people, to keep away the skippers, hang their bacon in a cellar where there is dampness, preferring to have it moldy rather than "skippery." Some housekeepers preserve hams in close boxes or barrels, in a cool, dark room, and succeed well. Others pack in sh.e.l.led oats or bran, or wrap in old newspapers and lay away on shelves or in boxes. Inclosing in cloth sacks and painting the cloth is also practiced. All these plans are more or less successful, but oblige the housekeeper to be constantly on the watch to prevent mice and ants from getting to the bacon. But if anyone should prefer
TO EXCLUDE THE BUGS ENTIRELY
from his meat the following contrivance is offered as a cheap and entirely satisfactory arrangement: After the meat is thoroughly smoked, hang all of it close together, or at least all the hams, in the center of the house, and inclose it on all sides with a light frame over which is stretched thin cotton cloth, taking care that there shall be no openings in the cloth or frame through which the bugs might crawl. There let it hang all summer. This contrivance will prevent the bug from getting at the meat to deposit its eggs, and the thin, open fabric of the cloth will at the same time admit plenty of air. The bottom or one side of the frame should be fixed upon hinges, for convenience in getting at the bacon as wanted. As the bacon bug comes out in March, or April farther south, in February it is necessary to get the meat smoked and inclosed under the canvas before the bug leaves its winter quarters. Hams may be thus kept in perfect condition as long as may be desirable, and will remain sweet and nice many months.
BOX FOR STORING BACON.
If the smokehouse is very dark and close, so that the flies or bugs will not be tempted to or can get in, all that is necessary is to have the meat hung on the pegs; but, if not, even when the meat is bagged, there is still some risk of worms. To provide a box that will be bugproof, ratproof, and at the same time cool, as seen in the ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 24, make a frame one inch thick and two or three inches wide, with a close plank bottom; cover the whole box with wire cloth, such, as is used for screens. Let the wire cloth be on the outside, so that the meat will not touch it. The top may be of plank and fit perfectly tight, so that no insect can creep under. Of course, the box may be of any size desired. It will be well to have the strips nailed quite closely together, say, about one and a half inches apart. When the meat is put in, lay sticks between, so that the pieces will not touch. If the box is made carefully, it is bugproof and ratproof, affording ventilation at the same time, and so preventing molding. Meat should be kept in a dry and cool place.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 24. SECURE BOX FOR STORING BACON.]