The Thousands

It has been one of those pie-in-the-sky things but I’ve always wanted to convert the disused fridge in my driveway into a cold smoker. Which I did. It all started with a day off in that stormy period between Christmas and New Year’s. Normally my days off are a non-event but this time I called an old friend. Let’s call him Raphael. I asked him to bring his power drill over, showed him the fridge, tipped it on its side and removed the engine. We couldn’t work out what to do next so we watched some YouTube clips about making smokers, got bored, said “fuck it” and headed straight to Bunnings. Which is, seriously, the best place on earth you can’t buy a drink. Spend a day there and you’ll be convinced.

After about two hours of arguing, looking at brass tap fittings, pizza makers, PVC piping, exhaust fans, irrigation fittings, garden hosing and myriad other shit we found exactly what we needed: Two flanged piping connections, aluminium ducting (which fitted around the flanges perfectly), a rivet gun, rivets and an ersatz Weber BBQ. We had to convince the guys at Bunnings to remove the BBQ from its box so we could see if the flanges fitted nicely around the holes on the top of the kettle. They did, so I said, “I’ll take it.” Along with slow burning volcanic coals, hickory wood chips and a six pack of Tsingtao cans, everything came to about 140 bucks. Good deal!

We riveted one of the flanges around the vent holes on top of the Weber.

We then proceded to drill about eight holes in the side of the fridge and the secure the other flange around that.

We assembled the BBQ (which was actually the hardest thing about the project). The ducting fitted snugly around each flange and BOOM. We had a cold smoker!

We bought a $6 piece of beef brisket and hung it with a coat hanger in the fridge, built the coals with fire lighters and lit it up. We then put some hickory chips, sugar, tea, sichuan pepper, and Glenmorangie single malt scotch in the Weber for flavour.

So the brisket didn’t quite work out.

It smoked overnight and came out smelling a little like the aftermath of an epic bushfire. Okay. Run number one: Fail.

I had some days off over the New Year’s period and, as you might imagine, they were a complete write-off. It wasn’t until the first Thursday of the new year I was able to do my second run.

I went down the shops, bought a pile of tomatoes, a bunch of plums and three long racks of pork ribs. I got the kettle going and this time used fresh chilies, dried rosemary, and jasmine tea as the smoking flavours that were then placed on a foil tray above the coals.

I got an oven rack, placed the plums and tomatoes on it and positioned them in the fridge next to the holes where the smoke would be entering. The pork ribs were hung on the top of the fridge near the exhaust.
I smoked the tomatoes and plums for an hour.

Then I pulled them out and left the ribs in the fridge smoking.

I pitted the plums, roughly chopped the tomatoes and cooked them down together with red wine vinegar, sugar, fresh chilies and a very generous lug of Jack Daniel’s. Jack does, indeed, live at my place.

Once they were soft I got the potato masher and bashed them down then proceeded to stick blend the whole lot while it was still cooking. I had a taste and I almost jizzed in my pants. Oh, so smoky. Seriously smoky. This was gold!

Right. By this time the ribs had been smoking for about one hour and 45 minutes. I pulled them out and suspended each one in the tomato and plum sauce for about ten minutes.

I then threw the ribs on a BBQ grill, basted them with the sauce and, once they were nice and charred, served them up.

The ribs were smoky and delicious and were absolutely destroyed by six of my fellow bartenders. Considering their euphoric and frankly pornographic reactions I can confidently say the proof is in the (smoked pork, tomato and plum) pudding.

Postscript: The bonus was that I was able to bottle over a litre of my own smoky tomato and plum BBQ sauce.