This is the site where you can learn all about smoking your own food at home. At Smoky Jo”s we run just the best food smoking courses. Why are they the best? Well, we make them the best! They are held in a great location – a beautiful converted barn in Cumbria where lunch is smoked on the aga, but most of the smoking is done under cover outside. We have a large room for little bits of theory and where you will brine your food before it is smoked. Oh yes, andwe know a bit about smoking food! – We ran a small artisan smokehouse for a number of years, supplying Fortnum and Mason, winning Gold Awards and smoking privately for HRH The Prince of Wales. Above all we have fun. At Smoky Jo’s you will have an enjoyable, interesting and very tasty experience! We cater for everyone and anyone – all you need to have to come on a Smoky Jo’s course is an interest in – or a love of – good smoked food and a curiosity to learn about being able to smoke your own food at home.
We are based at Castle Court, CA10 3LG near Penrith high on the fells overlooking the Lake District National Park. If you would like to you can enjoy a break staying with us on a B & B basis or just visit us for the day.
Our courses are enjoyable – we like to show you how to smoke lots of different foods in lots of different ways so that you will know what sort of smoker will suit your needs. We specialise in helping you design and build your own home-smoker if that is what you want to do or we can help you choose the best smoker to buy. We love inventing ways to smoke and we are very into re-cycling – so our favourite smoker is made from an old filing cabinet – it is called ‘Freddie’ – and a very fine smoker he is too! – Great for both hot and cold smoking. At Smoky Jo’s you can come on a one-day smoking course or a weekend smoking course. On the one-day course we will smoke a whole variety of food, we normally have time for about 12 different foods. This is a range of the foods we smoked last year- chicken, salmon, trout, sausages, garlic, prawns, mushrooms, ham, olives, lamb, almonds, eggs, peppers, mussels, pheasant, scallops, black pudding and more… So we think there should be something for everyone!
On the two-day course you will also go fishing to catch the trout to smoke and you will have make your own recipe sausages which we will smoke the next day. We are also able to run specialist courses for chefs and courses catering for vegetarians. If you have a special interest in a certain type of food let us know and we will try and include it on your course. We have even run specialist smoking courses just smoking a variety of game.
On this blog we will be telling you about life at Smoky Jo’s. You will find lots of hints and tips about how to smoke food, there will be recipes, details on home smokers, photos and comments on each of our courses. we always learn something new from the people who come to Smoky Jo’s more often then not some real gems of knowledge and information – so we will share those with you as well. So there you have it – This is Smoky Jo’s and we hope you will enjoy our blog!