Today I will reveal the second craziest homemade cold smoker ever created. It was born from a desire to cold smoke a molasses cured, home butchered ham without breaking the bank and inspired by the craziest homemade meat cooking devise, my father's Hillbilly Ham House.

Behold Alex's Cold Smoking Contraption.

To build this beauty, Alex started with a gifted excess mini Weber grill and removed the top vent. He arranged a length of round furnace pipe acquired for $3 at the Habitat ReStore into the hole, followed by a $5 length of flexible dryer vent. Connections were reinforced with aluminum duct tape, $5 a roll.

The dryer vent ran into the modified lower vent of our existing large charcoal grill. Alex used the angle grinder and many curse words to extend the hole enough for the pipe to fit in properly. The grill remains usable to cook off meat with charcoal.

Useage is simple: Build a small wood fire in the mini Weber. Put the meat on the big grill and monitor temperature. After 18 hours, you have ham!

The dryer vent was incapable of handling the smoke heat for the duration and melted through once. Alex cut off the effected part, reattached with tape, and went about the smoking. A more permanent solution would be durable flexible hosing or connecting pieces of furnace pipe.

Cold smoking is the act of surrounding a piece of food with smoke but little to no residual heat. The ideal cold smoking temperature for a ham is 60 degrees F. Given that the air temperature in summer is generally higher than 60, adjustments can be made. We kept a pan of ice in the base of the meat chamber to help keep cool and were able to average about 75 degrees F.

Alas, our basement is still a little too warm for dry curing, the next step in the ham Alex wished to make. We ended air drying early before mold set in and packaged the ham in slices and chunks for the future. Someday we'll learn that hams are not meant to be made in July.

What do you think of Alex's creation? DIY genius or a bunch of junk?

PS. For classier Weber modifications, head over to our friend Dave's site Webercam.com.

I recently mentioned on twitter that having the first meat of the season hanging in the basement made me feel like our house was a home again. Someone (who are you? I can't find the tweet now!) replied "It's modern mistletoe!"

That got me to thinking about how meat curing is a tasty metaphor for my nearly-eleven-year-long marriage to Alex.

Curing meat takes time and attention from both parties in our house. We help each other to procure the ingredients, turn the meat in cure, and check it as it dries.

Some couples like to have independent hobbies but we like being in each other's business. Even before I ate meat, I assisted Alex with charcuterie because it's a fascinating hobby.

Meat curing and marriage benefit from a healthy dose of humor. Much of making bacon (or duck prosciutto in this case) is icky work - there's raw meat, mildly-toxic salt, and the possibility of insects being attracted to the drying meat. The cure for the gross parts of curing is to laugh. We make jokes (sausage is especially good for word play), gently tease, and sometimes try to drip meat juice on a spouse during a photo shoot. It's all good fun.

When meat is done curing, we cook up creative dishes together. In the case of the duck prosciutto, we added it to homemade pizza. Alex made the dough and I popped open a jar of my home-canned tomato sauce. We added a pile of arugula and mozzarella before topping the 'za with thin prosciutto slices and a grate of Parmesan.

Alex and I enjoyed the pizza with a glass of wine and candle on the table in the company of our daughter Lil (who also served as the photographer for the three portraits above). We savored the from-scratch food we made together.

Curing meat challenges us to work together, listen to each other, and enjoy the finer things in life. Meat IS our modern mistletoe, the object under which we find love.

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Duck Prosciutto Pizza Makes: 1 12-inch pizza Time: 2 hours dough, 20 minutes assembly, 7-10 minutes cooking

1/4 recipe homemade pizza dough 1/4 cup tomato sauce 3 ounces fresh arugula 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese 2 ounces duck prosciutto, sliced as thinly as possible 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees F with a baking stone on center rack. 2. Make a thin circle from the dough and place on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or back of a cookie sheet. 3. Top pizza with a bit of tomato sauce, then arugula and mozzarella cheese. 4. Arrange duck prosciutto and top with Parmesan. 5. Transfer pizza to the baking stone. 6. Bake for 7-10 minutes until cheese is melted and slightly brown. Remove from oven, let rest 1-2 minutes, cut, and serve.

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This post is a part of the year-long Charcutepalooza challenge. Read below for our other meat-curing adventures and reflections.

Waste Not, Want Not Squirrel Rillettes English Pork Pie Photojournal Almost All-Ohio Mouselline How to Make Hot Dogs Like a Girl Mint Lamb Sausage Inspired by Jorgensen Farms Taco Truck Chorizo Sopito Red’s Canadian Bacon or Why I Had to Kill a Pig To Eat Meat Again The Story of the Rachel Salt Cure Old and New Cider Syrup Bacon