DIY smokehouse from an old refrigerator

Smoked meats, in addition to their excellent taste, retain all the beneficial substances of the original product and have a long shelf life. Traditionally, there are two types of smoking – hot and cold. In this article we will tell you how to breathe new life into an out-of-date refrigerator by turning it into a home smokehouse. To do this you will need a minimum of tools and a few hours of free time.

Preparing to make a smokehouse from the refrigerator

The refrigerator is an excellent basis for making a smokehouse with your own hands. The most preferred are the old models produced in the USSR. They are distinguished by a more durable metal body and a minimal number of plastic elements.

The key to a positive result is careful preparation. Regardless of the type of smokehouse, the first thing to start with is to dismantle and remove all plastic elements and rubber seals from the refrigerator. This simple operation will protect your culinary masterpieces from unpleasant odors and harmful substances that these materials can release at high temperatures.

After dismantling the rubber seals, it is necessary to decide how to fix the door in the closed position. Some models of older refrigerators have a standard door locking mechanism. If you are the happy owner of this modification, feel free to move on to the next point; if not, you need to attach an additional device to the body to ensure a tight fit of the door to the body.

Then you have to decide how you will stir the products when smoking. Traditionally, they are either hung or laid out on grids. Most smokehouse owners prefer to hang food, believing that this way the space is used more efficiently. We also recommend going with this option: just attach a standard refrigerator grille to the ceiling and place several wire hooks on it.

The preparatory stage has been successfully completed; before starting the next one, you must decide exactly what type of smoked products you want to receive.

Traditionally there are:

• hot smoking devices;
• cold smoking devices;
• universal (depending on the configuration, they can work in one or another mode).

Advantages and disadvantages of a homemade smokehouse from the refrigerator

Using an old refrigerator for smoking is an excellent option for a stationary smokehouse that does not require a lot of money and time to make. Provides the ability to simultaneously cook a significant amount of smoked meats. With proper use, such a device can serve you for many years.

Attention! The disadvantages of this type of installation include its dimensions and, as a result, lack of mobility.

If you and your loved ones love smoked products and the space on your site allows you to place a device of such an impressive size, then a refrigerator smokehouse is your option.

If you consume smoked meats quite rarely, you want to be able to take the smokehouse with you on hikes, or the space on your site is limited, you may be better off scrapping the refrigerator and buying a small portable smokehouse.

How to make a cold smokehouse out of an old refrigerator

Products prepared by cold smoking retain all vitamins and nutrients in their composition. They are cooked at a low temperature under the influence of cold white smoke. This smoking method is recommended by nutritionists.

The design of a cold smoked smokehouse is somewhat more complicated. The main difference is that the body of the smokehouse and the hearth in which the wood chips smolder must be separated. The hearth is connected to the smokehouse by a chimney so that smoke enters the smoking chamber at a temperature not exceeding 30 degrees.

Important! The smoke in a cold smoked smokehouse acts as a preservative and kills all harmful microbes, however, given its low temperature, the smoking process should last at least a day.

To completely transform the refrigerator into a cold smoking chamber, it is necessary to make a hole in the bottom of the housing for the chimney. To ensure the flow of smoke into the working chamber, it is necessary to take care of the draft: to do this, the hearth is placed a little lower in the vertical plane, and the chimney is placed at an angle.

Whenever possible, the terrain is used for this purpose.If you have a completely flat area, then you need to dig a recess for the hearth, an inclined trench for the chimney, and place the smokehouse itself on an artificial hill.

The difficulty lies in choosing the correct length of the chimney. The length is selected in such a way that the smoke in the chimney cools and enters the smokehouse body at a temperature of 27-30 degrees. Experience shows that the length of the underground chimney should be about three meters. A more accurate figure is selected experimentally, since it depends on many parameters of the chimney - slope, cross-sectional area, wall material, etc.

Creating a cold smoked smokehouse, in addition to the smoking chamber, requires a separate arrangement of the hearth and chimney and is quite labor-intensive.

Making a hot smoked smokehouse from a refrigerator: step-by-step instructions

When hot smoking, products are exposed to smoke at a temperature of one hundred degrees or more, and the smoking process itself takes very little time, about an hour or two. It is believed that during this processing, products lose some of their vitamins, and under certain circumstances, carcinogens are formed.

Making a hot smoked smokehouse is somewhat simpler. Simply place an electric stove on the bottom of the prepared smoking cabinet, placing a tray with wood chips on it for smoking. And select a heating mode for the spiral in which the wood chips in the tray smolder, but in no case catch fire.

Attention! Always keep wood chips moist to increase the amount of smoke while minimizing the risk of fire.

As practice shows, gourmets manage to set up hot smoked smokehouses both outdoors and right in the apartment.

Street way

When setting up a smokehouse on the street, in addition to the method described above with an electric stove, you can place the fireplace directly under the refrigerator body in the ground, and pour sawdust directly onto the bottom of the smoking chamber.

At the same time, to increase the resource, it is advisable to lay an additional sheet of metal about 3 mm thick between the bottom of the refrigerator and the fireplace.

Home method

We do not recommend doing this, but some people set up a smokehouse right in the apartment. To do this, a smokehouse with an electric stove as a smoke generator is equipped with a chimney, connecting it to the exhaust system of the home. It is also worth additionally sealing the junction of the door to the chamber; it is optimal to use heat-resistant rubber seals for ovens for this.

Now you know how to make a convenient smokehouse out of an old refrigerator without having any special skills.