Smoked lamb

The lamb shoulders have been bathing in a nitrite salt marinade for about 4-5 days now.
5-10% nitrite salt and 1% sugar added to cold water.  No need to heat up the water.

Taste the marinade. The saltiness u feel now is the same u will feel when the meat is ready to eat.
Everything depends how salty u like it to be.
The salt penetrates about 2 cms per day. 1 cm from each side sort of speak.
But the meat will only be as salty as the marinade so 1-2 extra days doesn´t matter like in this case.

Early this morning I light the smoker . Prepared it yesterday with wood to be used for the fire and smoke.
I washed the meat with cold fresh water to remove salt on the outside to avoid white salt stains when smoked. Nicer without . Then dried off with a clean towel before hanged on hooks in the smoker.
The first 3-4 hours the temperature was very low about 50-60 degrees Celcius.
Then slowly increasing the temperature up to 90-100 degrees Celcius .
Can be tricky to keep a steady heat only using wood . Alder wood and some Appel wood was used.
Also alder chips as base for the smoke. Added some Juniper chips and dried herbs from the garden also .
In the end finishing with a handful sugar thrown in the fire to create a golden brown smoke covering the meat giving it a beautiful final touch.

After about 6 hours the meat inner temperature reached 70 degrees Celcius.
Then it was time to remove it from the smoker.

Then cut a slice, test it and note success. Looked, smelled and tasted as expected .
Tastes even better when cooling down for a while. Covered in foil now to close in the moist and flavors.


We´ll see what we gonna do with it . Eat it as is or maybe tomorrows dinner with something good added . Have to think?  and get back.....


Cheers!

Christer