Smoke chips - wood particles of regular rectangular shape, obtained in the process of chopping wood raw materials with a chopping machine and representing smoking material used in smoldering smoke generators , including camping smokehouses.
Content
- 1 Wood species
- 2 Production Scheme
- 3 notes
- 4 References
Wood species
It is generally accepted that the best smoke material is wood chips from hardwood: oak, beech, hornbeam, maple and other elm . According to popular belief, conifers should not be used for smoking due to the excessive content of tarry substances, the same applies to birch. However, in Savoy , in southeastern France, sausages are smoked in fir smoke; in Charente, mussels are smoked only in the smoke of pine needles. And in Russia once smoked on spruce cones (on the White Sea ), and on pine sawdust (on the Volga) [1] .
Production Scheme
For the production of wood chips for smoking, the main technological equipment is chippers, the design of which is divided into two types - disk and drum. Wood chips after chipping machines through a wood chip through a distribution cyclone gets into sorting, where separation is carried out on conditional and substandard chips. The wood chips, in turn, are divided into fractions (for example, 1-3 mm, 3-6 mm, 4-8 mm) using sieves with the corresponding hole diameter. This procedure is carried out to maintain the smooth and proper operation of a specific smoldering smoke generator configured for a specific fractional composition of the smoke material. In addition, the uniformity of smoke formation in camping smokehouses and household smoking chambers primarily depends on the fractional composition of the wood chips for smoking (when using very fine wood chips, burning occurs less evenly than when using large chips). After separation of the wood chips for smoking into fractions, it is subjected to a drying process, since the natural moisture content of the wood may be excessively high for admission to the smoking process. Wood chips, the moisture content of which is more than 75%, will not be able to burn stably, the humidity of the smoke will increase, excessive soot will stick to the smoking product. At the same time, the smoked wood chips should not be very dry, in order to avoid the burning of a strong flame (excessively high temperatures can lead to a complete loss of fat from the cooked product).
Notes
- ↑ Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary , Librarian. RU