Who said you couldn't?

A long time ago I published articles here about my home smoking of meat. When you have a house with a garden and a smokehouse, it's easy. But is it possible to smoke in, say... a block of flats?

Who says you can't?

Let's do it.

We'll buy a kilo of pork belly, skin on, but no bone. Weigh 25 grams of salt per kilo of meat and sprinkle the meat. If you want a smoked flank as good as the butcher's, use butcher's (pink) salt.

If you like garlic, crush a few cloves and rub into the meat. Or use dried garlic. Then vacuum the salted meat and refrigerate for 4-5 days to give the salt time to penetrate the meat.

Then unwrap the meat and rub with liquid smoke (available in spice shops). Someone dilutes a tablespoon of smoke with two tablespoons of water and coats the meat with this mixture, someone sprays the smoke directly on the meat. It doesn't really matter how you do it, but as long as you don't overdo it. Liquid smoke is very aromatic.

Vacuum the smoked meat again and leave it in the fridge for about two days.

And then comes the actual smoking of the meat: you put a steaming liner in the slow cooker and put the salted and rested meat on top. You dry it out, you don't baste it with anything. You turn the slow cooker on low and forget all about it for eight hours.

After eight hours, turn off the slow cooker and pull the meat out. Cool it down, cut it open and look at the beauty :)

The meat from the slow cooker is beautifully soft, nice and tender, just falling apart. Fresh sourdough bread, cucumber, beer... Paradise exists.