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HOME Food: Smoked Meats Craig Silliphant If you’re friends with Ron Loucks, you’re flush with delicious smoked meat for life. He loves to use his smoker, and because he mostly smokes game meat that legally can’t be sold, he has a lot to give away each year. I recently paid Ron a visit so he could show me the fine art of making smoked goose jerky. When I walked into his kitchen, I knew immediately that he wasn’t messing around. The first difference I noticed between my kitchen and Ron’s, was that where I have one fridge, he has two fridges and a deep freeze—that’s dedication.
In fact, Ron has been smoking meats for around 35 years, perfecting his techniques and marinades. Admittedly, this felt a bit like cheating, learning 35 years worth of secrets in an afternoon, but hey, we writers are a lazy yet inquisitive lot. Ron discovered this lifelong passion in his early 20s, when a friend introduced him to his first real taste of smoked meat on a frozen lake one winter. “I went ice fishing with a buddy and he brought out smoked fish for us to try,” he says. “I liked it, so I started with fish, giving it a whirl here and there. I had crude methods at
first, barrels and dry smoke. But the flavour was there.” A few years ago, my Dad had one of those store bought smokers that he’d use once in awhile, sometimes with deer meat that he or his friends had procured. So I assumed that being the expert, Ron would have a smoker that would be the envy of the richest cowboys at Cabela’s. On the contrary— as Ron showed me, you don’t need a fancy schmancy smoker to do the job right. “I bought my smoker at an auction for six bucks,” he confides with a grin. He took me to his back-
Karin Melberg Schwier yard to see the smoker and as I walked across his green lawn, I could smell it right away, an unmistakable and delicious smoky aroma. The smoker is basically a metal closet, less than six feet tall. Ron opened the door for me to reveal shelves for metal trays in the upper part of the compartment, and on the bottom, a bowl full of smoking chips. Propane fuels the heat, which in turn heats the briquettes that smolder the smoke chips. Maple or cherry are Ron’s wood chips of choice. “Years ago we’d go into
Fall 2014
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