Thread: Chef here

Just wanted to say hello. I was scrolling through some of these threads and see many of you guys share my passion of fine food. I own a restaurant here in the New Orleans area and if any of you guys wanna talk food, share recipes, talk restaurants, or anything let me know. We started a recipe thread on one football board I am on where members can all post some of their favorite recipes. Over time it became a great reference and was filled with all kinds of recipes from different backgrounds and ethnicities. Anyway anyone wanna talk food or need anything let me know.

Originally Posted by ccase39

Just wanted to say hello. I was scrolling through some of these threads and see many of you guys share my passion of fine food. I own a restaurant here in the New Orleans area and if any of you guys wanna talk food, share recipes, talk restaurants, or anything let me know. We started a recipe thread on one football board I am on where members can all post some of their favorite recipes. Over time it became a great reference and was filled with all kinds of recipes from different backgrounds and ethnicities. Anyway anyone wanna talk food or need anything let me know.

Sure. Tonight I put a side of salmon in a dry cure. I hope to be smoking it on Thursday. It's my first attempt at smoked salmon so it's a bit of an experiment. But I recently acquired a Bradley Smoker that should allow me to cold smoke when the weather is right. I'll let you know how it goes.

Does the Bradley come with a cold smoke plate or can you just cold smoke right on the rack?

Originally Posted by ccase39

Does the Bradley come with a cold smoke plate or can you just cold smoke right on the rack?

I should be able to cold smoke on the rack. The design of the Bradley is such that the heat is actually generated by an internal oven that can be turned on or off. To cold smoke, I should be able to simply turn the smoker plate on without generating much heat and leave the oven mechanism alone. That combined with colder outdoor temperatures should keep me well below 90 degrees during the entire process. BTW, where are you cooking? I try to get down to NOLA once a year with friends. I have a friend that moved there years ago. He's a musician and plays at the Old Point Bar in Algiers once a week. I was hoping to catch him next time I went down too.

Originally Posted by OCDshaver

I should be able to cold smoke on the rack. The design of the Bradley is such that the heat is actually generated by an internal oven that can be turned on or off. To cold smoke, I should be able to simply turn the smoker plate on without generating much heat and leave the oven mechanism alone. That combined with colder outdoor temperatures should keep me well below 90 degrees during the entire process. BTW, where are you cooking? I try to get down to NOLA once a year with friends. I have a friend that moved there years ago. He's a musician and plays at the Old Point Bar in Algiers once a week. I was hoping to catch him next time I went down too.

Christopher's On Carey i am going to try one of those smokers. I have a smoking tex with cold plate and am not real impressed. Usually I just wind up making lox.

While I have not had a chance (yet!) to personally try it, I have a friend here that uses a vented tin with one lit charcoal briquette and packs it full of wood chips. Placing that in a smoker away from the fish allows him to cold smoke fish pretty reliably. Once I give it a try I'll report back with the details.

he's got my old modified offset smoker because I had to move to an apartment, which doesn't accommodate such things.

I have plans to try and build a smoker/brick pizza oven/grill monstrosity in my back yard. When it happens I will share the plans. I love to cook, I usually enjoy a lot of playing with pizza. Otherwise grilling making either basic or hard to make items is a fun time.

I have a Masterbuilt electric smoker. I'm not sure if I can cold smoke or not with it, but it's worth checking out. I smoked 4 venison roasts in Montreal steak seasoning, a pork shoulder roast with Sweet Baby Ray's and brown sugar, and a fryer chicken on Saturday with hickory. Good stuff all around.

Originally Posted by ccase39

Christopher's On Carey i am going to try one of those smokers. I have a smoking tex with cold plate and am not real impressed. Usually I just wind up making lox.

Well, it looks like you have yourself a damn fine restaurant there. You should be proud. And the food looks really nice too. As for the Bradley smoker, its probably not the worlds greatest smoker but its perfect for my situation. I live in a townhome with no back yard. Its tough to have a smoke house of any kind and especially one that relies of a fire to keep it going. The Bradley is perfect for things like bacon, salmon, or charcuterie. But it wouldn’t be my choice for BBQ. The shortcomings of is the fact that its hard to get it up to temperature and it doesn’t put out a very accurate cooking temperature. You have to trick it into getting up to the desired temperature and you need to have a thermometer that will give a more accurate reading. Easy enough to overcome but none the less a problem to be dealt with. But then again, for something that is this convenient and isn’t TOO expensive, its perfect for me.

BTW, the smoked salmon came out great today. I picked up a little tub of creme fraiche and some cornichons at the store. I slice some up before dinner tonight with some toast points. Really good stuff. Cold smoking today was more challenging than I expected. First, it wasn't as cold as I hoped it would be outside, it was raining, and the internal temp fro just the smoke was warming up the box more than I thought it would. I put a big pan of ice in with it under the fish and that seemed to hold the temperature down enough to keep it from cooking. On a colder day it might not be necessary.