First Posted: 3/15/2015
LIMA — The nearly lost art of smoking meat was on display Sunday to show off a concept that has been the way to preserve meat for nearly all the time humans have been on the Earth.
In fact, it’s only been in the past century that refrigeration took over to preserve meats and other foods.
“Smokehouses were used up until the time they had modern refrigeration. Even early 1900s a lot of communities still had smokehouses,” said Tom Sciranka, a volunteer at the Allen County Farm Park and a meat smoker. “The concept of smoking meat goes back thousands of years.”
Meat is typically soaked in a brine solution made up of sugar, salt and water. It’s then hung in a smokehouse. Each process takes time, usually as a rule of thumb three days per one pound of meat, for each process, Sciranka said.
Attending the demonstration Sunday was Marge LaFollette, which the smokehouse is named after her late husband, Rodney LaFollette, a longtime volunteer at the park.
“Rodney liked old-time things and always volunteered at the park. He worked the apple festival and the maple syrup festival. He was very active in Boy Scouts,” she said.
LaFollette attended the demonstration to honor her husband and see the process.
“I think it’s great,” she said. “This is a process everyone needs to learn what we did when we didn’t have refrigeration.”
Running a smokehouse was a community effort due to the time it took and the labor. Communities gathered together to butcher and then prepare the meat for the brine solution and then the smokehouse. The smokehouse had to be monitored around the clock, often for weeks, with someone adding wood to keep the fire going, Sciranka said.
“A smokehouse, somebody would have to tend this every day, all night, so they would take turns,” he said.
The fire only is used to create smoke, not to cook or heat the meat. A smokehouse typically is 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.
“You want the smoke circulating around the meat. You don’t want a whole lot of heat,” Sciranka said. “My experience is a hot smoke makes the meat tougher. You just don’t want the heat. The brine will take care of most of it. You just want the smoke to penetrate so bacteria doesn’t get in.”
After meat is smoked, it’s moistened and rolled in ashes to encase it in a protective coating, he said.
Meat properly smoked can last for many years, he said.
Even if bugs find a way into part of the meat, that part can be cut out and the rest of the meat remains good, he said.
“If you find pin holes or bug holes in your meat, cut off the bad part,” he said.
Some people who smoke meat have a preference as to the type of hardwood to use. Sciranka said he has used various hardwoods and cannot tell the different in the taste. The main thing to do is stay away from pine, which has sap that can make the meat taste bad.
