The dangers of cold smoking can be greatly reduced to a safe level with proper precautions, using USDA and FDA guidelines. Cold smoking meats and fish is a wonderful method of adding a rich, smokey flavor without cooking. Perfect for sous vide, cold smoking solves the problem of how to add smoke naturally without cooking to your beef roasts and steaks, chicken, fish, even vegetables. For the griller, now you can enjoy that smokey outdoor flavor that’s just not possible with high heat grilling without partially cooking your steaks, chops, or poultry first.

We’ll show you the equipment and materials we use, all our techniques and hacks too, but first you’ll have to endure a lecture on food safety because it’s really important in cold smoking. You can become very sick, and in extreme cases people have died from food poisoning. While cold smoking using FDA and USDA guidelines is relatively safe (as low temperature barbecuing is relatively safe as well), we never exceed the recommended danger zone times, and we never cold smoke meats or fish for longer for two hours.

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Most of us understand the food danger zone of 40° – 140°, where pathogens can most easily multiply. Below 40° and above 140° internal meat temperature, those pathogens are either killed, inactive, or have stopped multiplying. Unfortunately, our cold smoking is always in this danger zone, as we cold smoke around room temperatrue, so we must limit that exposure time.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to delve into the various pathogens that can make you sick; there are dozens of articles addressing them on line, and we strongly recommend you read them, especially those on U.S. Government or university websites. What we will give you is a drilldown of the simple guidelines, based on extensive governmental and university research.

First, we have to define cooking temperature, because even though our cold smoking apparatus adds little heat, we must include that with the outside ambient air temperature (OAT) to arrive at an actual cooking temperature. Actual cooking temperature = ambient outside air temperature + heat generated from cold smoking apparatus.

Two Hour Rule:  When the cooking temperature is below 80°, cold smoking must be limited to two hours.

One Hour Rule:  When the cooking temperature is above 80°, our cooking time must be limited to one hour.

My Rule:  If the ambient cooking temperature is above 80°, don’t cold smoke! It’s just too risky. Besides, one hour of smoke exposure to meat when not cooking is not usually long enough to add much flavor.

Here are the step-by-step procedures we use for flavoring and food safety. We strongly suggest you follow them, just as you must follow the one and two hour rules above.

Brine All Meats and Fish First

Brining serves two purposes, both positive additions to your cook. First, through osmosis, the brine acts to displace the water content in the meat with your choice of liquids and flavors, contained in your brine. The brine acts to dissolve tough muscle tissue, making your meat more tender. The salt reduces water loss during cooking, resulting in meat that is more tender, juicier, and flavorful. The combination of the salt and acids in the brine can kill certain pathogens too, so there’s a significant food safety advantage as well.

Depending on the time we allow for the brine, and the meat, we use a 5% to 10% (salt percentage) in brines. A 10% brine is one third cup (6 level tablespoons) of kosher/sea salt per quart of water; a 5% brine is half that much, or 1/6th of a cup (3 level tablespoons). We use sugar, molasses, honey, or syrup in the same quantity as the salt, and add garlic and onion powder to taste.

You can soak the meat in brine, or inject it. We nearly always inject if the meat is thick enough, because it eliminates the time needed to soak through the surface of the meat to the core.

If you don’t have an injector, you need to get one. It doesn’t have to be an expensive item, but it does need to have a metal needle so it can be thoroughly cleaned in a dishwasher, or sanitized with a small torch. This Stainless Steel Meat Injector Kit is perfect.

Always Start Cold Smoking With Meat Under 40°

This is easy to do if you keep your meat refrigerated until you’re ready to place the meat in the cold smoking vessel. Don’t bring it to room temperature first. This gives us a slight delay for the time it takes it to reach the start of the danger zone, 40°. To prepare your meat for the smoker, spread a thin layer of plain yellow mustard on each side, regardless of the kind of meat. You won’t taste it (keep in thin), but wet meat absorbs smoke better than dry meat. You don’t need to season the meat; you’ll do that at the cooking phase.

Place A Large Bowl of Ice in the Smoker

While there are plenty of DIY cold smoking projects that will work, many of them do not produce enough smoke to adequately flavor the meat during our limited period of time we have. Smoke does not penetrate cold meat nearly as well as meat that’s warmed with a conventional grill or barbeque. The proteins and muscle fibers are tight, making it harder for the smoke to become attached to the surface and below.

Accordingly, we want a massive amount of smoke for our two hour period. We use and strongly recommend the A-Maze-N pellet smoker, detailed below in this article. Because the A-Maze-N smoker holds a large number of wood pellets, it does put out some heat. In our tests, we found the smoker can add up to 10° to the ambient outside temperature, depending on how warm it is outside.

We found that using a 4 quart stainless steel mixing bowl like this one filled with ice can keep the extra heat generated by the A-Maze-N Smoker down to 0°-2° for the first hour, and under 5° for the second hour. If you’re cold smoking in Minnesota in November this might not matter much, but here in California’s Central Valley we can only cold smoke early mornings or late evening a good part of the year, because of our warm temperatures. Using an ice pan can make the difference between being able to smoke, or not, and does add a margin of safety, keeping your temperature up to 10° lower than without the ice bowl. Be sure the line the bowl with foil first to prevent the smoke from coating the pan. If some does get on the pan, and it will eventually, simply shoot or brush it with a bleach solution, and put it in the dishwasher.

Place the ice bowl directly over the smoke source so it acts as a partial baffle for the heat.

Select Your Smoking Vessel

This is the easy part! Most people just use an existing barbecue or grill. I use my Weber Performer Grill (link to review on sister site) with a 22″ kettle, but you can use almost any charcoal or gas grill. Charcoal grills are better, though. Although of course you’re not using charcoal or lighting the grill, they do provide the top and bottom draft adjustments you’ll need to keep the pellets lit. Gas grills don’t have those same vents, and it can be harder to keep the pellets lit.

Your Cold Smoking Apparatus

There are a lot of choices here. You can even make one yourself. Using an empty large juice can with the top removed and a hole about 1″ wide punched in the center of the bottom, you fill the can with sawdust made from the hardwood of your choice (hickory, oak, cherry, apple, pecan, etc.) insert a soldering iron through the hole in the bottom, plug it in, and wait for some smoke.

The problem is the smoke is not intense as you’re burning sawdust without a flame, plus, in my experience, a less than heavy duty soldering iron will burn out quickly due to the time it’s operating.

Some DIYers have connected a dryer hose to a smoke stack on a pit smoker, and by adding a small computer fan to the hose connection, and attaching the other end to any box or cabinet, they direct the smoke from a larger charcoal fired pit or barbecue to the cabinet, thus providing cooled smoke for cold smoking. This can be a very good system, but you’ll need to be fairly handy and will have to build a smoking cabinet of some sort. We tried that too, using my Pitts and Spitts custom pit as a source, and a cardboard box as a cabinet. It worked OK, but the cardboard box trip isn’t something you can use for very long, and it’s a PITA to set up every time you want to smoke a steak or some veggies for dinner that night.

The A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker is a very cool and economical solution. It’s a 5 x 8 tray, made from stainless steel, with maze-like dividers. You put in as many pellets as you think you’ll need. I typically use two rows. The spaces at the end of each row allow the burning pellets to turn corners, providing what is actually one long interrupted line of pellets, wound around corners.

What I like about it, and I will admit now I’m a rabid fan of this device, is that it’s SO EASY to use. It’s very good quality with no moving parts. You can use any flavor or brand of pellets you like, however Amazen pellets are top quality as they are 100% the wood you choose, not a blend, and they do stay lit well.

I use gel alcohol to light it. Gel alcohol, generally known as canned heat, or Sterno, is cheap, and readily available online, at Walmart, or Asian markets. I use a paint mixing stick to pack the pellets close together to eliminate any air pockets, and to scoop out some gel to plop on each end of the pellet trail.

I light both ends of the pellet trail. You use twice the pellets that way, but it produces a CLOUD of great smelling smoke and your meat WILL be well flavored in two hours.

Be sure to take the temperature inside the cooking vessel BEFORE you start, so you’ll know how much latitude you have before you reach 80°. If you don’t have a grill thermometer (any thermometer on your grill will not register at these low temperatures), we recommend the Maverick Et-732 Remote Bbq Smoker Thermometer. This is a dual function digital thermometer, where one probe measures your internal food temperature, and the other measures the grill temperature. Don’t guess. Measure. I’ve used this device for nearly five years now, several times a week, and I’ve never had any problems with it, unlike several others that have cost about the same but didn’t last a year.

Use An Ice Bath Immediately After Smoking if You’re Not Cooking Immediately

When you’ve smoked your meat for two hours, your USDA/FDA recommended maximim exposure time to the danger zone is up. Do not assume any latitude. You need to either cook at a high temperature immediately, or cool the meat rapidly to less than 40°, and putting it in a refrigerator or even a freezer will not cool it fast enough.

Using your 4 quart pan, adding ice if needed to bring it about 2/3rds of the way to the top of the bowl, add cold water to the top. Place the meat in a plastic Ziplock type bag, pushing all the air you can out of the bag so it won’t float, and shove the bag down near the bottom of the bowl so it’s covered with ice.

For most meats, unless it’s a roast or very thick piece, 45 minutes of being submerged in the ice will be adequate to cool the core down to 37°, which is the average refrigerator temperature. Using your digital thermometer probe, check the icewater solution frequently to be sure it’s no warmer than 37°. If it is, add ice immediately.

Refrigerate Before Cooking

Once the meat has been cooled in the ice bath, refrigerate or freeze immediately. Remember, your meat is not cooked, it’s simply been infused with smoke, and you will definitely be able to smell it! I like to let it rest in the refrigerator a day or two to let the smoke absorb further, but its not necessary.

Done safely and by using the recommended steps and equipment, cold smoking yields a silky smooth, generally subtle, smoke flavor. It’s different than smoke from a smoker or barbeque in that it’s more of an added flavor or taste sensation than the dominant taste. Have some fun with different brines and different wood flavors, but above all be safe!