Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/779

 �Smoke Your Own Fish

��Here is a simple method of constructing an inexpensive smoke- house suitable for smoking fish or meats

��By A. M. Jungmann

��TRY smoking your own fish if you have the space to put up a small smoke- house. It will be an interesting experiment as well as the means of obtain- ing wholesome and palatable food at a very small price.

There are many fishes of excellent food quality which ordinarily are discarded be- cause their texture or flavor is not approved or because they are too bony. Such fish as bowfins, buffalo-fish, carp, mooneyes or sturgeons, of the fresh water fish, while not popular fresh, are excellent smoked. Bony fish acquire a firmness through smoking that makes the removal of the bones quite easy.

Fishermen frequently sell the less popular fish at from I to 3 cents a pound at the docks. A customer who might ordinarily buy only 2 or 3 pounds of the more ex- pensive fish could buy, if he had a place to smoke them, enough cheap fish to last for one or two weeks. Also pond owners who desire to rid their ponds of ordinary fish in order to make room for game fish will find a smokehouse invaluable.

The United States Bureau of Fisheries constructed and operated a small experi- mental smokehouse on the Mississippi River. This house has proved most satis- factory in every way and its construction is so simple that anyone can build one along the same lines.

The house measures 6)4, ft. in height at the front, 6 ft. at the back, the roof having a single pitch, and 3 by 3^ ft. inside measurements. If you build your house of plain boards it is necessary to prevent the escape of smoke by covering the cracks with batten strips. If you can get yellow pine shiplap you can make your house smoke-tight without using battens. The 2 by 4-in. corner pieces may be on the out-

��side, the inside walls being perfectly smooth. Two doors are built in the upper half of the front of the house. They are hung on the corner pieces. The outer edge of the right door should be fitted with a batten that overlaps the other door. This holds it shut and prevents the escape of smoke. The doors may be fastened by two wooden thumb buttons, one above and one below the battened door, near where the two doors join and just beyond the batten.

���The inner walls have strips on which to place the trays holding the fish to be smoked

Ventilation is provided by an opening in the roof over which a ventilator is placed. The ventilator is a box having a 3 by 4 in. opening front and back. This permits the

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