Thanks @hairbear! I shall have a look at that one…
I get my sawdust from a local furniture maker, it’s free.
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I was wondering about that but was also concerned about the degree of contamination that might be present (oil from tools etc) but it sounds like your experience is satisfactory? Do you dry out your sawdust before using it?
hairbear, was this the recipe for the roast ham?
I must have missed that discussion as the kids and I really miss our Aussie style Christmas ham!
No, I wanted to do a honey roast ham joint. @Fleur pointed me to the following
I was considering using just the first part of the recipie, to prepare the salted ham joint. Then we could cook that as we usually do rather than creating ‘ham’ as in the recipie
Edit: The original post by Fleur was
You ‘liked’ the comment, as did I 
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Over the past six years or so I have not had any problem with any form of contamination. I do not physically dry the 'dust, but I will be using the sawdust from the previous years collection. I will usually collect 50lts of Hêtre & 10lts of Olivier. Perhaps sometimes I need a little more …or less.
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After a few experimental tries, the last one not being bad, I’m ready to start making bacon in earnest 
The only thing now is the cut of pork to use for English back bacon. Annoyingly, I saw exactly the right cut of pork in a Carrefour Contact in the summer. This included the loin plus the side bit (technical term 
) and it had a particular name that I’ve forgotten. I’m hoping that someone, perhaps @vero may be able to tell me what it’s called.
Is that a euphemism? 
If you’ve ever played the game ‘pass the pigs’ then you would know that it absolutely is 
A favourite with tory ministers I believe (appologies to tory)
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This photo is from the 50s but I can still smell the herring being smoked in the smokehouses in the 60s towards the end of the herring boom. I was brought up close to the docks area and I can still smell the smoked kippers as I played nearby.
There’s nothing better than freshly smoked kippers is there ?
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I’d wondered if anyone here smoked food.
A few years back I bought a smoking system rather like those in the OP, smoking cheese (extra mature cheddar is fantastic) German salami (given a good drying afterwards to make a hard keeping sausage) and Spanish Chorizo. The cheeses seem to need some time afterwards for the flavour to permeate and mellow, and if coated in herbs or paprika they can add a further dimension to the flavour. I’ve smoked chicken and beef, but the smoking tends to be too strong and often overpowers the meat flavours - more experimentation required. I’ve seen and eaten some French cheeses that I think will work well but can’t remember their names right now.
Wood dust is bought from ‘hot smoked’ (Wood Dust | Hot Smoked) although I’ve found a few suppliers on Amazon too.
Oh stop it! It is becoming an episode of “Allo Allo”
I struggle not to make innuendos all the time…
We’ve only smoked fish so far but being able to have really good smoked fish with spinach and hollandaise sauce as a brunch is just sooooo lovely (especially with boucheron (?sp) toast). We need to do more experimenting though - and having been told it wasn’t good doing it in damp weather, we wondered if we’d have to wait until spring to try again? Normandy is rather known for its damp weather 
I wanted to try other things but daren’t specify them after the above comments
That’s very interesting link you posted @Ancient_Mariner . I bought a pack from Ancestry to try out the whole process and think I would probably prefer another mix. I wonder if there’s an equivalent site to that one in France where I could try out different woods (oops… should I have said species?) to see which suited our tastes…
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Having just done a bit more searching, I found this site (which had escaped me before) https://www.fumoir.net/50-sciure-de-fumage
Does anyone know if they are any good? Their products are a heckof a lot cheaper than anything I found on Ancestry so far…
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Damp weather has been almost compulsory at times here, and I’ve never noticed it make a difference to flavours of cheeses and salami, but perhaps that affected the meat.
@AngelaR I’ve smoked with apple, beech, alder, oak and maple. TBH it’s hard to tell much differences between them in my application. Maybe you would find different woods interesting (ooh err missus 
).
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There are some traditional kipper smokehouses still going. We used to buy kippers from Fortunes in Whitby. The smokehouse is next door to the shop, and the smell was terrific. Just looked them up and they’re still going. It will be thier 150th year in business next year.
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That’s a super find - I may stock up when we’re next across.
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That’s good news. I think there is at least one smokehouse still going in Lowestoft.
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