Good you ask. Yes, there is a hole about the size of a quarter at the bottom side of the bin. There's a second one you can see briefly a bit higher up, but that's not needed. It's just there because I tried using an external smoke generator before I found those cheap and useful metal "mazes" on Amazon.
I use a smoke generator called a SMoke DAddy that I got off the internet. I have it on the outside of a bakery proofing cabinet that I converted into a cold smoker. I blow the smoke in with an aquarium pump. Works really well. I smoke cheese, butter, and chocolate, because it’s truly cold smoke. If you’ve never eaten potatoes fried with smoked butter, you are truly missing a wonder of 5he world. Thank you for your video. I like the simplicity,of your setup. And your common sense approach. Cheers!
I've tried a homemade cold smoke generator similar to the one you mentioned (big paint can with a T Pipe on top with one side getting air from a old aquarium air pump). Worked reasonably well, but then I tried those little cheap smoke generators which are very popular in Europe. The simplicity convinced me and the result is the same. There's not enough heat in that little pellet maze to raise the temperature in the smoker significantly unless it's a really small bin or something. I have much more problems with temperature in summer because we get 90s or more and that's just a little too hot for cold smoking. This time of year not a problem though. I have to try smoked butter. Thanks for the tip! Do you spread it out on something or just smoke the entire stick?
Just a tip - When mixing your measured out Salt/Sugar mix, hold the spoon at the spoon end and use the handle to mix, using a circular motion - it works much better and much faster and gets a better result !
@@skipthejunk Scoop out the 'clumprd-up' brown sugar with the 'spoon' end, break it up a little, then change to the 'handle mixing method !!! Not that difficult ,,,,,,,, is it ??? Now, off you go and report back !!!
Yes, a grill will work. Close the vents to almost nothing and try to place the smoke generator on one side and the fish on the other so that the smoke doesn't come up from below the fish as that gets too intense. If it's getting really smoky in there you can just open the vents a little more and "thin it down".
I like your method the best of all the videos I've watched. Simple with great looking results. Many people seem to add just too much salt for too long. Followed by complaints in the comment section of " it turned out too salty ". Thanks for posting
I've had that experience too. It appears to me that most recipes shown are geared towards a very large fillet of salmon. Most store bought fillets are much smaller these days since it's often farmed fish. I just got a very small Coho salmon fillet at Costco the other day and that was under a pound and not even an inch thick. So I rinsed the dry brine off after only 4 hours of brining. Turned out just right. Had I let it go over night it would definitely have been too salty.
Yes, you absolutely can! Actually I have a video coming soon where I make a easy version of a German type of cured cold smoked ham called "Lachsschinken".
I used to make my smokers the same as the garbage can but I used an old whisky barrel with some concrete in bottom to save burning the base when smoking you get the whiskey comes out of the wood for exelent product
Love the idea! I wouldn't know where to get an old whiskey barrel, but I could definitely get my hands on a old wine barrel. There's a few distilleries around here too where I could try.
@ an old barrel that contained wine or any other fermented alcohol will work fine trust me usually the barrels are made of oak which also imparts the oak flavour I don’t know where your frame but some times gardening stores sell them for planters. Or ask them where they get them I do know they are rare now. But I made my own out of a large heat er for food if you like I will send you some pics and tips I will cheers scotty
I live in a wine-growing region. There's a lot of wineries here, so getting my hands on a wine barrel should be pretty easy. I'll look into whiskey or any other distillate first. There's a distillery a few miles from my house so I'll just swing by there and ask. Thanks for the info - I may just take you up on your offer of more information once I found a suitable barrel.
That's going to be a tough one. Even if you have a balcony your neighbors will probably not appreciate the smoke. Since smoking a fish doesn't take all that long, maybe building a small smoker using a smaller bin than mine might work when you take it along to an afternoon in the park.
I used to do mine for 24 hours. I found the fish is too salty and the texture is wrong. I like my fish to be softer than the bread it is eaten with. Thats the sign of a perfect smoked salmon, for me anyway.
Yes, 24 hours is definitely too long unless you have a whole king salmon side to work with and even then the tail end might be too salty. I had a small Coho salmon fillet a couple weeks back (about 1.5 lbs) that I brined for not even 5 hours and it was borderline too salty for me. The time needed for the salting process really depends on the thickness of the fillet. If you want yours for immediate consumption and less salty, just rinse it off after a few hours, let it dry off a little and then smoke it. A higher salt content is really only needed for preservation.
@@skipthejunk The bigger fillets are definitely better as I find the thicker fat layer gives a better result. I also find that the very fine table salt is also more severe. I use coarse sea salt which I pulse in the blender so i get a variation of medium and fine crystal sizes so you get the best of both worlds. Decent salt tastes a lot better but it is definitely worth noting for people if table salt is all you have.
Yes, if you can afford a wild king salmon, that's the one to go. I'm using a salt called True Salt - it's a kosher grain sea salt. I do have regular table salt in my garage in a 25lbs bag - mostly for the case when power should go out for an extended period and I need to salt-preserve some things from the fridge. It's also good for pasta water etc. I'm not using expensive salt for cooking water.
Yes - that was my motivation too. Used to get smoked salmon at Costco, but they went up and up. So now I wait for a sale on regular fresh salmon or steelhead trout and make it myself for half the cost.
I've suffered from bitter/creosote taste before when smoking. They were good quality pellets. Any tips to avoid this, I noticed you seem to put your salmon on pretty much right after lighting the pellets and there was a lot of white smoke??
The only thing that I can think of is moisture/condensation in the smoker. When smoke and moisture in the air condense on the fish/meat it leaves you with a horrible bitter/acrid and very "cold campfire" smoky flavor. The other thing I could think of is just too much smoke for too long. These little cold smoke generators produce a lot more smoke with pellets than they do with sawdust. If that's what you got, I'd make sure there's no condensation and then smoke it fairly short - an hour maybe. Cover it with paper towels and wrap it in a bag and let rest for a day in the fridge. On the next day do a tiny sample to see if it's smoky enough and then smoke again for an hour if not.
PS: I'm using a cheap electric hotplate in my DIY smoker on cold days. I put that in the bottom, set it to a low setting and it will heat the bin to 50s, which is where you want to be to avoid condensation. If you have a propane fired smoker, the propane will introduce a lot of moisture, so for cold smoking using a hot plate instead of the propane flame to heat it just a little will avoid condensation. Actually, the liquid smoke is how most bacon in supermarkets is made today. They use exactly that condensed smoke flavor just filtered and cleaned so it's not that acrid anymore. In some bacon you can taste it when you sample it before cooking. I've had some cheap bacon once where it actually gave me mild digestive symptoms. On packages it doesn't say liquid smoke, it says "smoke flavoring". That's why I make my own bacon - guess we need a video for that too 😀
i have read some recipes recommend adding sodium nitrite (pink salt) to the cure if you intend to smoke for a long time to avoid the risk of certain bacterial growth in the low-oxygen environment of the smoker. how do you feel about that?
Personally I've never heard of that. A smoker is not a low oxygen environment and the fish is salted and partially dehydrated at that point. Not even commercially sold smoked salmon contains nitrite, they're all just salted and smoked. Botulism bacteria can't grow in a smoker because there's too much oxygen and too much smoke, which also inhibits bacterial growth. You not only have the salt and the low moisture as a bacteria inhibitor, but also the smoke. Now if you'd pack that fish in a can afterwards, that would be a whole different ballgame. I just either eat it within a week or two or I vacuum pack it and throw it in the freezer. Smoked salmon thaws really nice because of it's low moisture. So in a nutshell: if you get the salting/brine process right, you pretty much don't have to worry about food safety afterwards. Whatever might happen would be very obvious by the fish growing a fur or turning slimy with the accompanying smells. I've never had that happen since I smoked my first fish and that was about 45 years ago.
For cold smoking meats like pork loin for Canadian Bacon, definitely use "pink salt". Note that this is NOT Himalayan Pink salt, but K nitrate, a different chemical all together. Fish absorbs enough NaCl to stay preserved through an 8 hour cold smoke. Important: Smoke in temps under 70 degrees!
Yes, of course. Bacon is a cured product and always was. You could do with just salt, but it would not really be preserved, which was the original intent for curing bacon. It would be more like a salty smoked piece of meat and not taste like bacon at all. Potassium Nitrate just adds a certain type of flavor aside from the preservation of course. Talking of which: I have a cold smoked pork loin ham video in the making. Takes a few more days since the loin just went into the fridge for curing last night - so I'll be smoking it in about 10 days. To my knowledge Canadian Bacon is cured in a liquid brine and then hot smoked. It looks cooked to me. Have to look that up. Maybe I should make a video about it - would be a nice project!
@@markthrockmorton8059 thank you. I had read that cold smoking for extended periods should definitely be done at colder temps if possible. i recall cold smoking on a summer day -- it was 90 degrees F outside and >100 degrees F in the smoker with the slight heat added by the smoke (even though it was cold smoke). i think this is probably better done in the winter. i was also looking at the acme fish (big smoked salmon brand in my area) website and saw that the ingredients include celery powder which I understand is sodium nitrite. uncertain if this is because of the cold smoking or the vacuum packaging (which is definitely low oxygen).
Be very careful using galvanized products, especially around any heat source. Unless, of course, you enjoy zinc poisoning. Zinc toxicity can occur when an individual is exposed to and breathes the heated yellowish fumes produced from welding or heating galvanized steel. For hot-dipped galvanized steel the recommended maximum temperature is 392 F (200 C), before the metal presents a toxicity risk. Better to use metal that is not galvanized.
While that is correct by direct long term exposure to temperatures above 200C, the highest temperature ever used to smoke anything is about half that. In this use as a cold smoker, the temperature of the bin remains below 30C at all times. That little glowing smoke generator does not heat the metal of the bin to anything near 200C because it's elevated from the bottom. But of course, there's stainless steel products on the market that wouldn't have a problem with high heat. So if you're uncomfortable with a galvanized there's other options.
@@robertmaye8780 Actually no. It was a fairly small piece so I pulled it after about 5 hours. Thanks for bringing this up, I should amend the description.
That's an alternative to smoking and also quite tasty. I should make a gravlax video... Just to put this out there: you can build a cold smoker out of a large cardboard box. All you need is a few wood dowels, a grate and something fire proof in the bottom - like a old pan turned upside down to protect the cardboard from the little cold smoke generator. There was a Good Eats episode (Alton Brown) about this many years ago. Your library might have the DVD. It's in the "takeout edition" of Good Eats, the disc titled "Ocean Edibles".
Looks like a galvanized trash can, anyone watching if you get this too hot it will release very toxic zinc fumes from the galvanized treatment on this trash can this is a bad idea.
That's way below any temperature causing zinc fumes. Cold smoking is done below body temperature, so you might as well say touching a galvanized item causes zinc fumes. The farmed salmon I get since like all farmed animals they're full of antibiotics, fungicides, pesticides and supplements added to feed. Problem is though: you can't avoid any of that in the US food supply anymore, so you might as well enjoy it. BTW: you can place those cold smoke generators on a wood surface and it's very unlikely to burn. I've used them in large carboard boxes just sitting on a couple layers of tinfoil and the cardboard box was just fine. They're all built to have a half inch distance from the surface - it's not anywhere near the hundreds of degrees needed for zinc fumes to form.
this is a hard no. cooking with a galvanized trash can can creates toxic fumes and byproducts. cold smoking or not, it is not worth the risk. you should rethink this process
LOL. Yeah, glavanized steel starts fuming below 100 degrees. I would agree if the guy would light a fire under the bin or place it on a high powered gas burner. At temperatures below 86 degrees, which is what you use to cold smoke, it's perfectly fine. Even the 220 degrees used to hot smoke aren't a problem if you use an internal heat source. I've been using similar setups all my life - from oil drums to used plastic bins. I actually take a zinc supplement for low zinc levels - so I guess using galvanized steel - which is FDA approved for direct food contact - doesn't really add much to my zinc deficiency. That zinc panic in threads like this reminds me of the "they're using dangerous lye" panics in pretzel videos - while everyone in this country has bleach on his washer which mixed with something acidic will immediately release highly toxic chlorine gas - yet Americans consider that perfectly safe. Personally I'd be a lot more careful about using non-stick coated cookware which gasses off highly toxic PFAS fumes when overheated, which people do regularly. Heard of "teflon flu"" Google it - sounds fun and happens much easier than overheating galvanized steel. But hey, you can go buy yourself a $400 professional stainless steel smoker and have the exact same result. I find it ironic that people worry about zinc fumes in a low temperature environment but not all the carcinogenic compounds in smoked and cured meats...
Are there some extra holes in the bottom of the metal bin? I think it would need some air from somewhere.
Good you ask. Yes, there is a hole about the size of a quarter at the bottom side of the bin. There's a second one you can see briefly a bit higher up, but that's not needed. It's just there because I tried using an external smoke generator before I found those cheap and useful metal "mazes" on Amazon.
I use a smoke generator called a SMoke DAddy that I got off the internet. I have it on the outside of a bakery proofing cabinet that I converted into a cold smoker. I blow the smoke in with an aquarium pump. Works really well. I smoke cheese, butter, and chocolate, because it’s truly cold smoke. If you’ve never eaten potatoes fried with smoked butter, you are truly missing a wonder of 5he world. Thank you for your video. I like the simplicity,of your setup. And your common sense approach. Cheers!
I've tried a homemade cold smoke generator similar to the one you mentioned (big paint can with a T Pipe on top with one side getting air from a old aquarium air pump). Worked reasonably well, but then I tried those little cheap smoke generators which are very popular in Europe. The simplicity convinced me and the result is the same. There's not enough heat in that little pellet maze to raise the temperature in the smoker significantly unless it's a really small bin or something. I have much more problems with temperature in summer because we get 90s or more and that's just a little too hot for cold smoking. This time of year not a problem though.
I have to try smoked butter. Thanks for the tip! Do you spread it out on something or just smoke the entire stick?
This is the best video I have seen on UA-cam for smoking period. Thanks! Jack
Nice! Thank you!
Inspired. Thanks
Just a tip - When mixing your measured out Salt/Sugar mix, hold the spoon at the spoon end and use the handle to mix, using a circular motion - it works much better and much faster and gets a better result !
LOL.Thanks for the tip! Does that work when the brown sugar has clumped up because it's been sitting in the pantry for a while?
@@skipthejunk Scoop out the 'clumprd-up' brown sugar with the 'spoon' end, break it up a little, then change to the 'handle mixing method !!! Not that difficult ,,,,,,,, is it ??? Now, off you go and report back !!!
Love it! Going to try this. I have a weber kettle grill so hopefully I can pull it off on that.
Yes, a grill will work. Close the vents to almost nothing and try to place the smoke generator on one side and the fish on the other so that the smoke doesn't come up from below the fish as that gets too intense. If it's getting really smoky in there you can just open the vents a little more and "thin it down".
I like the smoking apparatus, as well as the idea of making a healthier snack.
this guy is a master. i can't wait to see more videos from this channel
I like your method the best of all the videos I've watched. Simple with great looking results. Many people seem to add just too much salt for too long. Followed by complaints in the comment section of " it turned out too salty ". Thanks for posting
I've had that experience too. It appears to me that most recipes shown are geared towards a very large fillet of salmon. Most store bought fillets are much smaller these days since it's often farmed fish. I just got a very small Coho salmon fillet at Costco the other day and that was under a pound and not even an inch thick. So I rinsed the dry brine off after only 4 hours of brining. Turned out just right. Had I let it go over night it would definitely have been too salty.
thanks very interesting. I am going to have a try. I guess I can also use the smoke chamber for smoking ham
Yes, you absolutely can! Actually I have a video coming soon where I make a easy version of a German type of cured cold smoked ham called "Lachsschinken".
Good stuff man
I used to make my smokers the same as the garbage can but I used an old whisky barrel with some concrete in bottom to save burning the base when smoking you get the whiskey comes out of the wood for exelent product
Love the idea! I wouldn't know where to get an old whiskey barrel, but I could definitely get my hands on a old wine barrel. There's a few distilleries around here too where I could try.
@ an old barrel that contained wine or any other fermented alcohol will work fine trust me usually the barrels are made of oak which also imparts the oak flavour I don’t know where your frame but some times gardening stores sell them for planters. Or ask them where they get them I do know they are rare now. But I made my own out of a large heat er for food if you like I will send you some pics and tips I will cheers scotty
I live in a wine-growing region. There's a lot of wineries here, so getting my hands on a wine barrel should be pretty easy. I'll look into whiskey or any other distillate first. There's a distillery a few miles from my house so I'll just swing by there and ask. Thanks for the info - I may just take you up on your offer of more information once I found a suitable barrel.
Looks really good. I just do gravlax, but I need to find a way of cold smoking in my apartment without setting off the fire alarms.
That's going to be a tough one. Even if you have a balcony your neighbors will probably not appreciate the smoke. Since smoking a fish doesn't take all that long, maybe building a small smoker using a smaller bin than mine might work when you take it along to an afternoon in the park.
I used to do mine for 24 hours. I found the fish is too salty and the texture is wrong. I like my fish to be softer than the bread it is eaten with. Thats the sign of a perfect smoked salmon, for me anyway.
Yes, 24 hours is definitely too long unless you have a whole king salmon side to work with and even then the tail end might be too salty. I had a small Coho salmon fillet a couple weeks back (about 1.5 lbs) that I brined for not even 5 hours and it was borderline too salty for me. The time needed for the salting process really depends on the thickness of the fillet. If you want yours for immediate consumption and less salty, just rinse it off after a few hours, let it dry off a little and then smoke it. A higher salt content is really only needed for preservation.
@@skipthejunk The bigger fillets are definitely better as I find the thicker fat layer gives a better result. I also find that the very fine table salt is also more severe. I use coarse sea salt which I pulse in the blender so i get a variation of medium and fine crystal sizes so you get the best of both worlds. Decent salt tastes a lot better but it is definitely worth noting for people if table salt is all you have.
Yes, if you can afford a wild king salmon, that's the one to go. I'm using a salt called True Salt - it's a kosher grain sea salt. I do have regular table salt in my garage in a 25lbs bag - mostly for the case when power should go out for an extended period and I need to salt-preserve some things from the fridge. It's also good for pasta water etc. I'm not using expensive salt for cooking water.
I'm absolutely going to try this. Store bought is waaay too expensive. I'll find a galvanized garden bin somewhere! :))
Yes - that was my motivation too. Used to get smoked salmon at Costco, but they went up and up. So now I wait for a sale on regular fresh salmon or steelhead trout and make it myself for half the cost.
Now I'm hungry!
Now imagine a nice Ritz cracker with a little cream cheese and chives, topped with that smoked salmon and a spritz of lemon juice...
I've suffered from bitter/creosote taste before when smoking. They were good quality pellets. Any tips to avoid this, I noticed you seem to put your salmon on pretty much right after lighting the pellets and there was a lot of white smoke??
The only thing that I can think of is moisture/condensation in the smoker. When smoke and moisture in the air condense on the fish/meat it leaves you with a horrible bitter/acrid and very "cold campfire" smoky flavor.
The other thing I could think of is just too much smoke for too long. These little cold smoke generators produce a lot more smoke with pellets than they do with sawdust. If that's what you got, I'd make sure there's no condensation and then smoke it fairly short - an hour maybe. Cover it with paper towels and wrap it in a bag and let rest for a day in the fridge. On the next day do a tiny sample to see if it's smoky enough and then smoke again for an hour if not.
@@skipthejunk Interesting, thanks for info.
PS: I'm using a cheap electric hotplate in my DIY smoker on cold days. I put that in the bottom, set it to a low setting and it will heat the bin to 50s, which is where you want to be to avoid condensation. If you have a propane fired smoker, the propane will introduce a lot of moisture, so for cold smoking using a hot plate instead of the propane flame to heat it just a little will avoid condensation.
Actually, the liquid smoke is how most bacon in supermarkets is made today. They use exactly that condensed smoke flavor just filtered and cleaned so it's not that acrid anymore. In some bacon you can taste it when you sample it before cooking. I've had some cheap bacon once where it actually gave me mild digestive symptoms. On packages it doesn't say liquid smoke, it says "smoke flavoring". That's why I make my own bacon - guess we need a video for that too 😀
Going to have to copy that smoker design!
Glad you like it! Let me know if you need more details, I'm happy to send you more photos or explanations.
i have read some recipes recommend adding sodium nitrite (pink salt) to the cure if you intend to smoke for a long time to avoid the risk of certain bacterial growth in the low-oxygen environment of the smoker. how do you feel about that?
Personally I've never heard of that. A smoker is not a low oxygen environment and the fish is salted and partially dehydrated at that point. Not even commercially sold smoked salmon contains nitrite, they're all just salted and smoked. Botulism bacteria can't grow in a smoker because there's too much oxygen and too much smoke, which also inhibits bacterial growth. You not only have the salt and the low moisture as a bacteria inhibitor, but also the smoke. Now if you'd pack that fish in a can afterwards, that would be a whole different ballgame. I just either eat it within a week or two or I vacuum pack it and throw it in the freezer. Smoked salmon thaws really nice because of it's low moisture.
So in a nutshell: if you get the salting/brine process right, you pretty much don't have to worry about food safety afterwards. Whatever might happen would be very obvious by the fish growing a fur or turning slimy with the accompanying smells. I've never had that happen since I smoked my first fish and that was about 45 years ago.
For cold smoking meats like pork loin for Canadian Bacon, definitely use "pink salt". Note that this is NOT Himalayan Pink salt, but K nitrate, a different chemical all together.
Fish absorbs enough NaCl to stay preserved through an 8 hour cold smoke. Important: Smoke in temps under 70 degrees!
Yes, of course. Bacon is a cured product and always was. You could do with just salt, but it would not really be preserved, which was the original intent for curing bacon. It would be more like a salty smoked piece of meat and not taste like bacon at all. Potassium Nitrate just adds a certain type of flavor aside from the preservation of course.
Talking of which: I have a cold smoked pork loin ham video in the making. Takes a few more days since the loin just went into the fridge for curing last night - so I'll be smoking it in about 10 days.
To my knowledge Canadian Bacon is cured in a liquid brine and then hot smoked. It looks cooked to me. Have to look that up. Maybe I should make a video about it - would be a nice project!
@@markthrockmorton8059 thank you. I had read that cold smoking for extended periods should definitely be done at colder temps if possible. i recall cold smoking on a summer day -- it was 90 degrees F outside and >100 degrees F in the smoker with the slight heat added by the smoke (even though it was cold smoke). i think this is probably better done in the winter. i was also looking at the acme fish (big smoked salmon brand in my area) website and saw that the ingredients include celery powder which I understand is sodium nitrite. uncertain if this is because of the cold smoking or the vacuum packaging (which is definitely low oxygen).
Be very careful using galvanized products, especially around any heat source. Unless, of course, you enjoy zinc poisoning. Zinc toxicity can occur when an individual is exposed to and breathes the heated yellowish fumes produced from welding or heating galvanized steel. For hot-dipped galvanized steel the recommended maximum temperature is 392 F (200 C), before the metal presents a toxicity risk. Better to use metal that is not galvanized.
While that is correct by direct long term exposure to temperatures above 200C, the highest temperature ever used to smoke anything is about half that. In this use as a cold smoker, the temperature of the bin remains below 30C at all times. That little glowing smoke generator does not heat the metal of the bin to anything near 200C because it's elevated from the bottom.
But of course, there's stainless steel products on the market that wouldn't have a problem with high heat. So if you're uncomfortable with a galvanized there's other options.
Did you let it go for the full 8 hours?
@@robertmaye8780 Actually no. It was a fairly small piece so I pulled it after about 5 hours. Thanks for bringing this up, I should amend the description.
I don’t have a smoker so I just cure it with herbs, salt and sugar.
Then press it
That's an alternative to smoking and also quite tasty. I should make a gravlax video...
Just to put this out there: you can build a cold smoker out of a large cardboard box. All you need is a few wood dowels, a grate and something fire proof in the bottom - like a old pan turned upside down to protect the cardboard from the little cold smoke generator. There was a Good Eats episode (Alton Brown) about this many years ago. Your library might have the DVD. It's in the "takeout edition" of Good Eats, the disc titled "Ocean Edibles".
Looks like a galvanized trash can, anyone watching if you get this too hot it will release very toxic zinc fumes from the galvanized treatment on this trash can this is a bad idea.
That's way below any temperature causing zinc fumes. Cold smoking is done below body temperature, so you might as well say touching a galvanized item causes zinc fumes.
The farmed salmon I get since like all farmed animals they're full of antibiotics, fungicides, pesticides and supplements added to feed. Problem is though: you can't avoid any of that in the US food supply anymore, so you might as well enjoy it.
BTW: you can place those cold smoke generators on a wood surface and it's very unlikely to burn. I've used them in large carboard boxes just sitting on a couple layers of tinfoil and the cardboard box was just fine. They're all built to have a half inch distance from the surface - it's not anywhere near the hundreds of degrees needed for zinc fumes to form.
this is a hard no. cooking with a galvanized trash can can creates toxic fumes and byproducts. cold smoking or not, it is not worth the risk. you should rethink this process
LOL. Yeah, glavanized steel starts fuming below 100 degrees. I would agree if the guy would light a fire under the bin or place it on a high powered gas burner. At temperatures below 86 degrees, which is what you use to cold smoke, it's perfectly fine. Even the 220 degrees used to hot smoke aren't a problem if you use an internal heat source. I've been using similar setups all my life - from oil drums to used plastic bins. I actually take a zinc supplement for low zinc levels - so I guess using galvanized steel - which is FDA approved for direct food contact - doesn't really add much to my zinc deficiency.
That zinc panic in threads like this reminds me of the "they're using dangerous lye" panics in pretzel videos - while everyone in this country has bleach on his washer which mixed with something acidic will immediately release highly toxic chlorine gas - yet Americans consider that perfectly safe.
Personally I'd be a lot more careful about using non-stick coated cookware which gasses off highly toxic PFAS fumes when overheated, which people do regularly. Heard of "teflon flu"" Google it - sounds fun and happens much easier than overheating galvanized steel.
But hey, you can go buy yourself a $400 professional stainless steel smoker and have the exact same result. I find it ironic that people worry about zinc fumes in a low temperature environment but not all the carcinogenic compounds in smoked and cured meats...
You can use any smoker setup you're comfortable with.