Smokehouse

A smokehouse (North American) or smokery (British) is a building where meat or fish is cured with smoke. The finished product might be stored in the building, sometimes for a year or more.[1] Even when smoke is not used, such a building—typically a subsidiary building—is sometimes referred to as a "smokehouse". When smoke is not used, the term meathouse or meat house is common.

Reitman's Smokehouse, Camp Springs, Kentucky
Meat hanging inside a smokehouse in Switzerland

History

Traditional smokehouses served both as meat smokers and to store the meats, often for groups and communities of people. Food preservation occurred by salt curing and extended cold smoking for two weeks or longer.[1] Smokehouses were always secured to prevent animals and thieves from accessing the food.[1] The meat is hung to keep it from the reach of vermin.[2]

Prior to the widespread availability of mains electricity and freezers, meat was preserved by heavy salting. Hogs were slaughtered after the onset of cold weather, and hams and other pork products were salted and hung up or placed on a shelf to last into the following summer. Whether the meat should be smoked as well as salted is personal preference, frequently backed up with strong local or family custom.

Design and use

Traditionally, a smokehouse is a small enclosed outbuilding often with a vent, a single entrance, no windows, and frequently has a gabled or pyramid-style roof. Communal and commercial smokehouses are larger than those that served a single residence or estate. The use of slightly warmed, dry air from a very slow hardwood fire will ensure the proper drying of meats.[3]

As a preserved ham represents a big financial investment, smokehouses in the Carolinas and Virginia can frequently be identified by their framing, so closely spaced as to prevent forcible entry and theft. The lower interior walls of both meat houses and smoke houses are characterized by the extreme furring of the wood, caused by the salt.

The upper areas of smokehouses are blackened with smoke. A meat house has a solid wood floor, a smokehouse will have a brick pit in the center of the dirt floor, or sometimes a broken/cast-off cast iron pot, for the fire. Jefferson's smokehouse at Monticello is an integral part of the brick outbuildings. It has a conventional brick fireplace built into an exterior wall – its flue discharges into the smokehouse.

  • Smokehouses
  • An industrial smokehouse in Poland.
    An industrial smokehouse in Poland.
  • A smoke house at Boone Hall Plantation.
    A smoke house at Boone Hall Plantation.
  • Fjordling Smokehouse. This smokehouse can be found at Dunstable Farm, Salisbury. The outbuilding shown is typical of this Wiltshire valley.
    Fjordling Smokehouse. This smokehouse can be found at Dunstable Farm, Salisbury. The outbuilding shown is typical of this Wiltshire valley.
  • Smokehouse, North Carolina, Piedmont Region
    Smokehouse, North Carolina, Piedmont Region
  • Reconstruction of medieval smokehouse at the fishing village of Walraversijde, ca. 1465
    Reconstruction of medieval smokehouse at the fishing village of Walraversijde, ca. 1465[4]

See also

References
  1. "Old Smokehouses". Wedlinydomowe.com. Accessed May 2010.
  2. traditionshome (2020-02-06). "How to make a Smokehouse – Leaving Oz". Oztripper.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  3. "Building a Smokehouse" Accessed May 2010
  4. Tys D and Pieters M (2009) "Understanding a medieval fishing settlement along the southern Northern Sea: Walraversijde, c. 1200–1630" In: Sicking L and Abreu-Ferreira D (Eds.) Beyond the catch: fisheries of the North Atlantic, the North Sea and the Baltic, 900-1850, Brill, pages 91–122. ISBN 978-90-04-16973-9.
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