I picked up a Bradley electric smoke at a really good price on Kijiji. I've really enjoyed using it all summer, but I've been trying to do cold smoking so I don't end up cooking my food at all. I built a cold smoking attachment. Basically a flexible aluminum hose connected to a box that connects to the smoke generator. It's basically a copy of this thing:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/like/310827591825?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=116

The weather has recently been getting colder in the evenings so I stuck in two big slabs of ice in the path of the smoke inlet to the cabinet so I could chill the smoke and maintain fridge temperature conditions in the cabinet. I reckon that this will get easier as winter arrives and I'll end up using the electric heater to warm the cabinet to keep it above freezer with some PID control rather than cool the interior with slabs of ice until things get far too cold for me to keep things from freezing over.

Anyways the point of the exercise is to smoke meat without having to cure or brine meat with the high salt/sugar content typical of cold smoking preparations. At incubation temperatures, these treatments are necessary to suppress bacteria growth, but at temps just above freezing, I reckon that curing or brining is not necessary.

I've given it a shot with the Thanksgiving turkey and it turned out really well. I maintained 4C conditions for the 4hrs I was willing to monitor the bird for (I don't have temperature logging gear yet). Because there was no cooking done, I could roast the bird conventionally which gave me all of the things I like in a well roasted bird.

I really like the accents that can be added with smoking, but I keep bumping into funny issues like fish getting overcooked with hot smoking. Even if the fish doesn't get too hot, it's sous vide processed for too long with hot smoking. With incubator temp cold smoking, I have to treat the fish with stuff that has strong flavor impacts. What I seek is well permeated smoke flavor completely decoupled from cooking, yet safe from a microbial consideration.

Does anyone else cold smoke at very low temps? Searching for info is a bit confounded by the plethora of 20C cold smoking preparations. I'd love to hear how you pulled it off and what kind of pitfalls you've found.