Smoking

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Fish smokehouse

The smoking (in Austria and Bavaria also Selchen ) is a method for preserving and flavoring of food , mostly of fish and meat .

The previously salted or cured foods are exposed to smoke from wood fires for a longer period of time. The associated drying reduces their water content by around 10 to 40 percent; in addition, many of the chemical compounds present in smoke have an antimicrobial effect (see below). In addition, the smoking hardens the surface of the food to be smoked, which prevents the ingress of microorganisms and small animals (insects, etc.).

In addition to increasing the shelf life, smoking also serves the purpose of positively influencing properties such as color, smell and taste through aroma formation and texture through the hardening of the surface of the food to be smoked.

A special form is smoking at temperature for cooking food in a barbecue smoker (see also barbecue ).

history

Iron bacon hooks, Austria, end of the 19th century, bacon and meat hooks for smoked foods had their place in the pantry, next to the smoke vent in the kitchen or in their own smokehouse

The chimney was only opened in the 10th – 11th centuries. Developed in the 19th century, before that there were mainly one-room houses (from which, among other things, hall houses developed). The smoke moved from the stove through the whole house and escaped through openings in the roof. This meant that the whole house was heated, but also that the soot was deposited in the cooking area ("Rauchkuchl") and in the whole house (including clothing, lungs and skin of the residents) and the risk of fire increased. Food was hung near the stove or under the roof to protect it from rodents or pets and was automatically dried and smoked there. The long shelf life of such preserved goods and the large quantities of meat or fish produced during slaughter or a fish haul led to the smoking being carried out separately (with the chimney ending in the attic or expanding into a "smoke chamber").

General

Procedure

Ham in a smokehouse
Modern stainless steel smoking plant in Poland

For smoking, the smoking material ( Smok from English smoke 'Rauch') is poured into the drawer provided in the smoking chamber . Hard woods, preferably beech in the form of wood flour or chips , are used almost exclusively . Then the goods to be smoked are brought in. The smoking process of the material to be smoked is initiated by the smoldering of the smoking material.

In addition to fish and meat, some types of cheese , vegetables , eggs , fruits as well as tea , tofu and barley malt are smoked .

Chemistry of Fumigation

The pyrolysis of wood leads to the decomposition of polymeric substances such as cellulose up to 310 ° C, hemicellulose up to 260 ° C and lignin up to around 500 ° C. The pyrolysis takes place in smoke generators; it can also be initiated by steam that is superheated up to 350 ° C. In addition to gaseous substances, the smoke also consists of non-volatile particulate substances such as ash , soot , tar and resins , which give the food to be treated its characteristic taste. After the pyrolysis, charcoal remains , which in turn maintains the further pyrolysis of the smok through subsequent combustion. Among other things, the following substances are formed during incomplete combustion, smoldering :

Practically all of the compounds listed here also have an antimicrobial effect and thus contribute significantly to durability.

Types of smoking

Hot and warm smoking

A classic Altona oven from a fishery in Eckernförde

If raw meat or raw fish is cooked and preserved for a few hours at a temperature of 50 to 85 ° C, we speak of hot smoking. Food treated in this way can only be kept for a few days and is intended to be consumed soon. With hot smoking, the temperature is not reached by burning the smok (smoking material), but by an additional heat source in the smoking chamber. This must be available regardless of the smoking process. This form of smoking and preservation is used for sausages, meat sausages and cooked cured products.

Intensive dry hot smoking at temperatures of 80 ° C is called roasting . It leads to a high loss of water and a stronger taste development. Products labeled fried have a water-protein ratio at least 0.5% lower than non-fried products. In modern smoking ovens, the cooking process is carried out by gas and no longer directly over a wood fire. The smoke is then metered into such a furnace . In the past, the specially developed Altona oven was used in some areas to smoke fish , but today it is practically no longer in use.

Products that are hot-smoked are mainly cooked ham , hunting sausage , eels , mackerel , sprats and halibut .

In addition, there is a slightly milder variant, so-called warm smoking, in which the temperatures are between 25 and 50 ° C. A typical product that is hot smoked is the Frankfurter sausage .

Cold smoking

Room with food to be smoked in Galicia in the village of Donis. The smoke rises from a short stovepipe to the ceiling of the room where the exhaust is located
The same principle in German-speaking countries: Rauchkuchl or Schwarzkuchl. In such kitchens without direct smoke extraction, the food was smoked
on the side by operating the wood-burning stove.

Cold smoking takes place at 15–25 ° C with special woods (primarily hardwoods). For example, for Black Forest ham , pine chips (a softwood and therefore softwood ) are used. Cold smoked foods are those that need to be kept longer, such as sausage , ham , bacon or smoked salmon. Cold smoking is a process that takes hours or days; the smoking process is divided into several phases: smoking phases and fresh air phases. Depending on the meat, ham or sausage start, there are three to five smoking phases. Smoking takes place in a smokehouse , into which smoke is drawn from a special oven or the chimney of the house. Many older farmhouses have a smokehouse in the attic. This form of smoking is used for raw ham and raw sausage products. Name prefixes such as “Land-” or “Bauern-” are used in Austria according to the food code for products that have been cold-smoked.

Typical products that are cold-smoked are raw sausage , raw ham , Cervelatwurst and Mettwurst . Regional products such as the Kipper in Great Britain are also cold smoked.

Floor board smoking

Floorboard smoking is an original form of smoking. Here, in a large room, in Austria and Bavaria, it is often called Selche , as in the hallway the down-to-earth smoke is produced by an open hearth fire or smoldering sawdust. The room temperature on the hall is not determined by technical processes, but by air connections to the outside world and thus also by the seasonal weather. The smoking process can take four to five months and prepare for a further multi-year maturation period.

Friction smoking process

In the friction smoking process, the smoke is generated by rubbing off squared timber on a rotating friction wheel. This creates a smoke of approx. 300–400 ° C with a low tar content and low PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). Friction smoke systems can work largely emission-free.

Liquid smoke process

In recent times, traditional smoking has increasingly been replaced by the industrial use of standardized liquid smoke aromas in the process.

literature

  • Maria Haumaier, Melanie Haizmann, Katrin Wittmann and others: Teubner grilling and smoking. Teubner, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-8338-3847-7 .
  • László Tóth: The chemistry of smoking. (= Scientific working papers of the Senate Commission for the testing of food additives and ingredients / DFG, German Research Association). 1st reprint of the 1st edition 1982. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim 1983.
  • László Tóth, Reiner Wittkowski: Smoking - from the perspective of chemistry. In: Chemistry in Our Time. 19th year, No. 2, 1985, ISSN  0009-2851 , pp. 48-58.
  • Reiner Wittkowski : Phenols in Smoking Smoke - Detection and Identification. (= Scientific working papers of the Senate Commission of the DFG for testing food additives and ingredients ). VCH, Weinheim 1985, ISBN 3-527-27505-3 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Incense  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Incense  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Smoking . In: Lebensmittellexikon.de

Individual evidence

  1. Selchen . In: Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 13 , issue 3/4 (edited by Andreas Deutsch, Richard Schröder). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 2015, ISBN 978-3-7400-1270-0 , Sp. 321 ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de ).
  2. ^ History of the chimney sweep . private website.
  3. a b c Dietrich Meier: Liquid smoke - an analytical challenge . In: Research Reports . No. 2 , 2004, p. 24–27 ( literatur.vti.bund.de [PDF; 6.8 MB ]).