According to anthropologists smoking food existed before homo sapiens and the technique first appeared 250,000 years ago, about 50,000 years ago discovered our species!
The main advantages of smoking is maintained and improved in taste. The smoked meat “holding” more than the roast and many anthropologists believe that this discovery was one of the reasons that led to the evolution of the human species. If you spend less time worrying about food, you have more time to think and develop your brain.
The meat was probably the first food that was smoky and soon followed the fish. It said that tribes Sumerian and Chinese had big productions of smoked fish. In Ireland smoking fish became known around 2000 BC, ie about 1500 years before salting discover!
For many people smoking was a big deal, especially when winter was heavy and there was a serious risk of famine. This need for survival contributed to specialization of smoking techniques. The Scots and Norwegians became “masters” to smoking salmon, Russian sturgeon in the Japanese eel and tuna.
There are two basic methods of food smoking, the hot and cold. With the hot method, you can hang the raw food over the fire with enough and dense smoke and let there be “fired.” Instead, the cold smoking to keep the temperature of the food at levels hot room, so the food remains “raw”, but to improve the taste and to ensure proper hygiene.
Cold smoking is most easily done at home, but apparently none of the two methods is more correct than the other. Each is equally good results, depending on the flavor you want to achieve.
Regarding the wood used to smoke foods, it changes from region to region, depending on availability and taste that we want to create. In Europe mainly use wood of oak or pear, while in America is more widespread use of hickory.
The basic technique of smoking, however, has not changed for about 1000 years. First soak your food in saltiness for a few hours or days to “irrigate” with salt and then the dry and put smoked. Smoked bacon supermarket smoked for only a few hours and it is not maintained for long. Cold smoking on the contrary is more time consuming.
Fish and meat obviously have a field day, but the man has smoked almost everything can be eaten: the caciocavallo cheese from Sicily for example, comes from ancient Rome and in the Hubei province of China, and smoked apricots considered the specialties of the region around 700 AD Occasionally they have smoked nuts, eggs, and vegetables, but rather to maintain, rather than to improve the taste.