[Sca-cooks] smoking sausages in your fireplace

[Denise Wolff]

>From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>

>Andrea,
>I'd be interested in more details about how you managed to smoke your 
>sausages in your fireplace. I know that this was done in period, but most 
>fireplaces these days are built as ornaments and "atmosphere". Not 
>something so utilitarian as cooking or food smoking.
>Did you have to modify or add anything to your fireplace to do this? How 
>did you keep the rest of the house from smelling like a smokehouse? What 
>kinds of wood did you use? Or are you referring to an outside fireplace 
>rather than one inside your living room?
>Stefan


Well. It should be said that I'm a bit crazy.. (see previous notes from me). 
I often cook in my inside fireplace for experiments. My previous house had a 
fireplace I used, but this new house has a better one.

I have a medium to large size  stone fireplace (Adirondack/Dutch cottage 
style - I live in a heavily Dutch colonial area in the Hudson Valley of New 
York). The fireplace dominates the livingroom. It has a clearance of about 3 
and 1/2 feet high with a depth about 3 feet and width about four feet. It 
has a stone floor with a red ceramic tile floor front ( to drag out coal 
ash). It draws well, so there was little smoke in the house.

I have the pleasure of a deeply wooded area next door and a previous tenant 
who left a mountain of good old apple wood to burn. I built the fire on one 
side of the fireplace and placed the sausages on  a rack at the other end. I 
enclosed the sausages on three sides wirh metal trays to keep in the smoke, 
while allowing the smoke out the back (and up the chimney instead of into 
the house). I built the fire in small amounts and worked for coals to 
smolder. I added wood as the coals died out keeping the fire to smolder 
level... no bright flame. I kept this up for 10 hours.

I will say that when I was done, all I could smell on me was smoke, but the 
sausages turned out quite wonderful. I can't wait to share them next week.

I have an old picture of me cooking in front of the previous fireplace, and 
I took some yesterday of my experiment (I don't have digital though, it will 
be a while before I get thenm posted)

http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/sca-authenticcooks/vwp?.dir=/Andrea+Attempts+Medieval+Mindset+Cooking&.src=gr&.dnm=Cooking+in+my+fireplace.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/sca-authenticcooks/lst%3f%26.dir=/Andrea%2bAttempts%2bMedieval%2bMindset%2bCooking%26.src=gr%26.view=t


It was alot of fun, and I learned I could do it. It felt really cool to do 
it the way our ancestors did it.

Andrea MacIntyre



"One can never know too much; the more one learns, the more one sees the 
need to learn more and that study as well as broadening the mind of the 
craftsman provides an easy way of perfecting yourself in the practice of 
your art."
Auguste Escoffier

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