Are Smoked Foods Ready To Eat? Must I Cook Them?

Are Smoked Foods Ready To Eat? Must I Cook Them?
peppered oak roasted salmon

Is smoked food cooked already? Or do I need to cook it myself at home?

At Black Mountains Smokery we use two smoking techniques – hot smoke, and cold smoke.

The key difference between them is that one involves heat, and the other does not. Both of them infuse the product with a beautiful smokey flavour, but hot smoking (kiln-roasting), also cooks it. This means that “Hot smoked” or “Oak Roasted” produce is cooked and ready to eat straight from the packet. Most of our range is smoked in this way, from our Smoked Chicken & Duck, to our Welsh Dragon Sausages.

Most of our cold-smoked produce is also ready to eat. Cold smoking involves smouldering natural oak smoke but without heat, and therefore does not cook the produce. The products smoked in this way are Smoked Cheese and our Traditional Smoked Salmon, both of these are also ready to eat straight away.

There is one exception!

Our Smoked Haddock is cold-smoked but it does require cooking. The traditional way to cook Smoked Haddock is to poach it in milk. However, you can also bake or grill the fillets as well. For a yummy recipe for Smoked Haddock and Cockle Chowder click here. Delicious!

Our ready-to-eat smoked foods are always best served at room temperature – so do remember to get them out of the fridge and open the packaging in good time!

Please visit our Recipe pages for a good selection of serving suggestions. You can search for recipe ideas for starters, salads, main courses & nibbles as well as ideas for specific smoked foods.

Product Care

Please remember that all our produce (except our Smokey Jo’s Fish Pâté – see below) is freshly prepared and therefore suitable for home freezing. Everything has a shelf life in the fridge of between 10 & 21 days stored at 3 degrees centigrade or less. Once opened it should be consumed within 4 days.

Our Smokey Jo’s Fish Pâtés are made in-house with fresh cream and frozen straight away so they aren’t suitable for re-freezing and they have a shelf life of 7 days in the fridge.