Fall in Northern Central California brings cool evenings and mornings perfectly suited for cold smoked New York Strip steaks in my MAK 2 Star General Super Smoker Box accessory. With an ambient temperature of 50ºF I decided to cold smoke two New York Strip steaks for grilling tonight. I've seen many grilled steak recipes using cold smoked meat and tonight I plan to add this to my ever growing repertoire. I've used my MAK 2 Star Super Smoker Box for cold smoking cheese and salmon to perfection and looking forward to these steaks.
Started with two Costco Choice grade 1½ inch trimmed New York Strip steaks which were previously cut from a full New York Strip. Preheated my MAK 2 Star General with Pacific Pellet Gourmet Hickory wood pellets to 180ºF (Smoke setting on the MAK). With the ambient temperature in the 50s it afforded me ideal weather conditions to use my MAK Grills Super Smoker Box.
The trick to cold smoking is to keep the temperature inside your smoker below 100ºF. With a temperature of 180ºF ± 5ºF in the wood pellet smoker-grill pit the smoker box started at a temperature in the low 60s and after 45 minutes of smoke reached a high temperature of about 75ºF. The MAK 2 Star General Super Smoker Box has it's own very accurate thermometer to monitor it's box temperature.
As you can see, the cold smoked steaks were not cooked at all due to the low temperature environment. I placed the New York Strip steaks in a freezer plastic bag to allow the smoke to mellow and penetrate the steaks. Wrapped the bag with plastic wrap to keep any hickory smoke from escaping the bag and permeating into the refrigerator. The steaks can be used thereafter or frozen.
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