Building A Smokehouse

Fish, pork, wild game – the list goes on and on of what can be cured with smoke. Building your own smokehouse doesn't have to be elaborate to do the job.

Animal Science Professor Cameron Faustman at the University of Connecticut has built smokehouses and says there's no need to be an accomplished carpenter. The roof is a little cock-eyed? That's okay! You want a leaky smokehouse so it vents properly.

"The smokehouses I've built I've just basically vented the top by drilling a couple of 2" round holes near the top and also making it so the roof sits a fraction of an inch off the top of the walls so that the air can move on through," he explains.

Use untreated and unpainted wood, even on the outside of the smokehouse. The high heat might draw the chemicals into your food. Faustman says he uses tongue-and-groove untreated pine.

The downside to a wooden smokehouse is that it's flammable, so you have to be careful with your heat source and how you control that.

"You basically put it on a pad that's non-flammable," he says. "So usually that's a gravel pad. In my case what I did was I built a real simple little foundation almost on some concrete piers and you know I went way overboard with this. You don't need to do this, you can just put it on a gravel pad."

Inside the smokehouse, install bars to hang hams or turkeys. You can also lay the meat on metal racks. The heat and smoke are produced by using different types of wood chips and sawdust which you should buy rather than cutting down trees. Although it's a very tiny amount, oil from the chainsaw could leak into the wood chips and sawdust.