One of the oldest forms of food preservation, emerged after the development of cooking on fire. Heat and smoke infuse fish, ham, poultry, and meat with flavor and prevent the growth of microbes. It is an effective way to preserve food, but care must be taken to avoid contamination and disease. Providing a constant temperature of around 150 to 275 degrees F, with the wood chips on the heat source and the food on the top rack with steam continuously flowing over the food. It will increase its palatability by adding flavor and imparting a rich brown color.

In Europe, the most commonly used wood for smoking is Adler, oak, and sometimes bech. In North America, the woods used are alder, oak, hickory, walnut, mesquite, maple, and some fruit trees, such as apple, cherry, and plum. Alternative materials have been used with the addition of seasoning ingredients.

Some ham and bacon purveyors smoke over flaming ears of corn. Barley malt for spirits is dried and smoked using burnt humate. Hot smoked fish in New Zealand is made from the wood of the tea tree. And in Iceland, cold-smoked lamb, whale, mutton and fish are made from dried sheep dung.

On the western farms, a smokehouse was used to preserve meat, this building was set apart from the others due to the danger of fire and the smoke that emanated from it.

Smoking can be done in four ways: cold smoke, hot smoke, hot smoke, and liquid smoke.

Cold smoking 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, foods are usually preserved by fermenting, salting, or curing before smoking and must be cooked before eating, foods remain raw, take hours to weeks

Hot smoked 77 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, food remains raw, must be cooked before eating.

Hot smoking 10 to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, food is cooked by the heat of the gases from the fire and the smoke adds flavor Hot smoking is a fantastic way to add flavor to your food, it is much faster than regular smoking cold and creates delicious results. It’s worth keeping in mind that hot smoking is not an effective method of food preservation and your products should be consumed within a couple of days even if kept refrigerated.

Liquid smoke by-product of smoke compounds in water. A brownish-yellow liquid obtained by capturing and condensing vapors from burning wet wood chips (usually hickory). Liquid smoke is used to add a smoky quality to foods in an attempt to capture the flavor of the wood grill.