First food smoking course of the year at the Wild Boar

Smoky Jo’s courses for this year are already underway!

We met a wonderful group of people at the Wild Boar at the beginning of February – it was a good day, the weather was OK and the Wild Boar staff were on top form – a big thank you to them. Especially to Matt who was there when we arrived before 9 am (he’d probably been doing breakfasts since 7 am) and was still there when we finished our smoked banquet around 10 pm.

If you would like to learn to smoke food with us – we’ve been smoking food for years and teaching home smoking and commercial smoking since 2006 – please check our website for our course dates and content. Playing with food and playing with fire – what’s not to enjoy?!

Earlier this month Smoky Jo received a surprise telephone call from a grateful student.  We met members of the Butchers Q Guild a couple of years ago at a trade fair in the north east, and ran a smoking course for their members last year at The Wild Boar. Gordon Atkinson was one of the

Matt, chef at the Wild Boar trying to avoid the camera…

butchers on the course and rang me to say he had just won two golds for smoked meats and the top award for Best British Bacon Product – and he wanted to thank us!”  This is from their press release: Elite Meat is run by Gordon Atkinson, who said “We are over the moon to clinch a Smithfield gold awards hat-trick and especially Best English Bacon product.  I attended a Smoky Jo’s course on meat smoking with the Q Guild last year, so to have two smoked products in the top places is fabulous!”

We were really thrilled for Gordon, and touched that he took the trouble to call us. He said our course had been fantastic and he couldn’t thank us enough. We have taught hundreds of people to smoke foods over the years and some have gone on to open artisan smokehouses but this is the first top national award for someone who we have taught to smoke – as far as we know!  We are looking forward to getting over to Harrogate to sample some of his smoked streaky bacon – and congratulate Gordon in person – as soon as we can!

A final note that I can’t believe I didn’t blog about last year… Jo was  one of the chef’s at Ludlow Food Festival in 2016 and we had a great couple of days out touring and tasting… and tasting… oh yes, and shopping!

Smoky Jo being introduced on the Wot’s Cooking Stage at Ludlow Food Festival

Gordon Atkinson of Elite meat receiving his award for his Smoked Bacon

When we first came across the eco-smoker we thought £25 was a lot of money for a cardboard box – but it really is a very good piece of kit! Ours has  travelled the country with us, smoked no end of olives, nuts, cheeses and salmon and even spent the night in a large puddle – but that’s another story…

It took me about 5 minutes to put together, then I was able to light the cold smoke generator and off we went! NB – Always remove the nightlight from the CSG before putting it in the cardboard box!

Smoky Jo has just been asked to do a demo on 20th March at Rheged for the Marmalade festival… we’ll see what we have time to do!

There is a fantastic new room at The Wild Boar which we dined in on the last course – wonderfully welcoming!

Banquet in the new Room at The Wild Boar

Bobby the Boiler – A home made smoker created after attending one of our courses

Here’s an email from a recent Smoky Jo-er… Bobby the Boiler is his DIY Smoker

Dear Jo and Georgina,

I suspect that you get many emails from people saying what a great time they had. Well please allow me to be the latest.

The day was excellent. Informative and enjoyable in equal measure. I have not stopped talking about it and must confess to becoming a smoking bore!!

You will see a picture of Bobby the boiler. Recently finished his life as a central heating boiler and with a few well placed self tapping screws and some hardboard he has now found a new lease of life as a cold smoking cabinet.
This is his first outing. We have successfully smoked some salmon and haddock fillets along with flour and a couple of generous blocks of cheese. The haddock has made some wonderful fishcakes and the salmon found its way into a risotto. The flour will soon become the first mince pies of the season and the cheese just enjoyed for its own sake.

Once again thank you for a great day and the start of a whole new way of enjoying food.

Have a great Christmas and I wish you both all of the very best in 2016

Vince

We’ve had a cracking start to the smoking season – our first weekend course saw EVERYONE catch at least one trout; we continue to work happily with the Wild Boar in spite of the fact that our friend Andy Lemm has been promoted within the English Lakes group to manage the Lancaster hotel.  Head chef Marc remains as a rock of calm at the heart of his busy kitchen and the banquets and the end of our smoking days remain outrageously wonderful!  This is what Arthur and Pearl said about last week’s event:

I have just loaded the car with the equipment for the first food smoking course of 2015 at The Wild Boar near Windermere!

So looking forward to the banquet that is served up at the end of the day…

If you think you would like to learn to smoke food with the experts please see what dates we have available.

Running courses for groups of strangers can be daunting, but we find that when everyone shares a passion for food things tend to go wonderfully well and we have had a run of such lovely courses (eight years!) I thought it was time I mentioned it.

Jo showed how you can quickly hot smoke salmon, slowly cold smoke cheese and then create pates, dips, snacks and meals…. as a result of the demonstrations we booked a few courses and sold a few smokers and met lots of lovely foodies… one of whom has already started smoking and emailed us yesterday – I’ve copied it below the pictures!

Hi Jo & Georgina.

Something like 16 years ago a (now departed) friend bought me a ‘Shakespeare’ portable smoker as a Christmas present. My partner – another Jo – was (and is still) a flyfisherwoman as well as being a cracking cook and we had great ideas of eating freshly smoked trout/sea trout/salmon. Except the one thing missing from the smoker was any kind of instructions.

Of course back in the day there was no internet to interrogate for information so, not wishing to appear ungrateful for the present by enquiring about its provenance etc, it was quietly slipped into the loft where it remained until a few weeks ago. And then I discovered your book via Google. “Aha” I thought “this is the book for us!” Simplicity itself to follow and written in such a way as to positively encourage experimentation rather to intimidate.

So, meths and oak dust bought, brine prepared, we had a go; trepidatiously placing a couple  of rainbow fillets in the smoker, sliding on the lid and lighting the burner. As you predicted we were very surprised at the almost complete absence of smoke from the container. On the other hand the smell of smoking fish was unmistakeable! Thirty minutes later (just a tad longer than expected) and the fish was done. The verdict? In a word, excellent. We tried it straight from the smoker which was nice  enough but after a night in the fridge (again as predicted) the smokiness was more pronounced – delicious with some horseradish sauce, thinly sliced cucumber and brown bread and butter.

We obviously have a long and interesting road ahead and we’re looking forward to experimenting: thanks for the inspiration!

Andy Logan