V. EUROPEAN STYLE SMOKING

During the first days, as an example of a more heavily cured smoke product, a batch was smoked in a simple “European” way, in other words, only brining and smoking were involved, without any form of boiling or marinating.

1. METHOD:

Six year old clams were used, butchered in the same way as above.

1.1. Brining:

As there was no brinometer available and the salt was very high in moisture content during the first days, a saturated brine was prepared instead of the more traditional 80° brine.

The meat was plunged in the brine for 20 minutes and then left dripping while the smoking kiln was being prepared. This brining time was known to be excessive, but with the purpose of showing a safe salted product in a first trial. During later trials, the brining could be reduced to establish an ideal brining time.

1.2. Smoking:

pre drying was done under the same conditions as described for the “Japanese” style. but required much more time (2h and 10 min. in this experiment)

Smoking was done for the first 4h and 30 mins in the way described earlier. Then the temperature was raised by allowing a small fire and more air intake for another 1h and 30 mins.

2. RESULTS:

The product turned out rather light in colour, so longer smoking time might be considered.

Due to the heavy brining, salt crystals had formed on the surface. The product was stored in an air-conditioned room for the following two weeks and no deterioration except further drying could be observed.

As the taste panel was served the Japanese style product during the same session, the merits of this product could not compete overall in taste and appearance with the other type. Some people however preferred this product over the more sweet “Japanese” style.

It should however not be forgotten that this kind of product, even lighter brined can form a practical solution for processing clam in remote areas without refrigeration infrastructure. The product can then, at the consumer end, be desalted by soaking in water for some time (overnight is suggested) prior to utilization.

Yields can be read from table 4. The moisture content was calculated based on Saunders. The resulting calculated moisture content of the guts, this result is hard to believe, when comparing to the apparent moisture of the observed product. It is possible that the samples studied by Saunders were considerably dehydrated by long frozen storage.