Ivan Tkachuk, 31 years old. Kyiv. Smoking - from a hobby to a business.

Finding smoked meats in a store is very simple. But their common drawback is the lack of zest. Everything offered in the smoked food departments - hams, brisket, lard, poultry, fish - are made according to a similar recipe. Therefore, with visual abundance, getting smoked with a unique taste and aroma can be called real luck.

Having the skills to work with the production of smoked meats, and even better, if this is a real hobby, you can easily build an autonomous smoking business that brings a stable average income even at the very beginning.

Well, to launch such a mini-enterprise, you need to understand well how it functions in the conditions of the modern food market in cities.

To analyze this process step by step, and to see for yourself that opening your own smokehouse is profitable and interesting is the purpose of this article.

Features of the smoked fish business

Setting up a small smokehouse can be the start of a promising business. Thanks to this processing, any raw fish becomes more expensive on average by 100–150%. There is no need to assemble a smoking chamber yourself: there are dozens of ready-made models on sale - from amateur to industrial.

But this does not mean that the fish smoking business is automatically doomed to success. First of all, an entrepreneur must understand whether it makes sense to start a business at all. If a dozen similar enterprises are already operating in the city or raw materials have to be delivered hundreds of kilometers away, it is difficult to gain a foothold in the market.

Walk through grocery stores and note down which types of fish are in abundance. Compare your research with the information from the section “WHAT FISH TO SMOKE”. This will help build your business concept. The following factors can inspire additional optimism:

• More than half of processed fish sales are smoked. Despite the high price, these products are in great demand.
• Even a beginner can master smoking technology and learn how to make a product of decent quality after a couple of months of practice.
• Industrial smoking chambers take up only 4–5 m² of space and consume little electricity.
• Production is easy to develop. You can switch to three-shift work and produce three times more goods, start smoking and drying meat, vegetables, and seafood.

Having understood the advantages of the fish smoking business, you need to consider its disadvantages:

• High competition.
• Short shelf life of products.
• Risk of buying substandard raw materials. Even a reliable supplier may have stale, infected or frozen fish in its warehouse.
• Approvals. The authorities check everything from equipment certificates to the salt content of the product.

Methods of smoking fish

Known technologies include cold, hot and semi-hot smoking, impregnation with special liquids. The use of mixtures reduces costs and makes it possible to quickly process large volumes of products, but consumers claim that their taste leaves much to be desired. Therefore, small businesses often use hot and cold smoking:

• Hot smoking is carried out using smoke from smoldering wood chips at a temperature of 100–120°C. The fish is pre-soaked for about a day in a salt solution, then washed with clean water, and immediately before smoking in the chamber it is boiled with hot steam at a temperature of 120–170°C. The finished product can be stored at 2°C for up to 10 days, and in the freezer for up to a month. For business, the technology is interesting due to the variety of product flavors and the short production cycle.
• Cold smoking uses the preservative properties of cold smoke, which is obtained by rubbing a wooden slat against a metal disk. At the preparation stage, the fish is kept in a salty solution for much longer - up to a week, and smoking itself at a temperature of 25–30 ° C takes two to three days. But the finished product is stored at 5–6°C for at least a month, and when frozen – up to 90 days. As a result, the entrepreneur does not need to urgently look for buyers and worry about the sales deadline.

Preparing the fish

Very often, cold smoking technology is used to prepare such a product in smoke. In production, fish is cooked in smoke ovens faster than meat. The same thing happens at home.

It is possible to prepare fish for smoking either by salting or marinating. Moreover, in both of these cases, different recipes can be used for small and large fish. In any case, proper salting or marinating is a prerequisite for preparing a high-quality, tasty smoked product.

What kind of fish to smoke

For hot smoking

The fish must have strong skin without damage: at high temperatures, the pressure inside the carcass increases, which leads to unsightly tears and loss of presentation. The raw material should be quite fatty: during the smoking process, some of the fat will melt out, but the meat will not lose its juiciness.

1. The most sought after inexpensive fish species is herring;
2. second place in popularity belongs to mackerel;
3. pink salmon is in demand as a member of the salmon family;
4. Among perch fish, catfish sells best;
5. chum salmon and sockeye salmon;
6. wealthy people buy trout and sturgeon;
7. among river fish species, bream and silver carp are in demand.

For cold smoking

When cold smoking, the fat content, breaks and cuts are not so important, but to destroy bacteria and ensure good preservation, the carcass should be thoroughly salted. Of course, the raw materials must be as fresh as possible, since it is impossible to get rid of the unpleasant smell or taste during smoking.

1. the greatest demand is for herring and mackerel;
2. salmon and pink salmon are popular among gourmets;
3. lovers of ocean fish can be offered flounder and halibut;
4. capelin is considered an affordable product;
5. They buy river fish well - carp, silver carp.

Details

Starting stage

Preparing for smoking

The first stage of smoking fish is preparing the carcasses. They need to be washed well and sorted by size. Carcasses weighing up to 700 grams are most often smoked whole, without removing scales or gutting. From carcasses weighing up to 3 kilograms, the entrails are removed, and the scales are left to protect them from soot. Even larger fish are gutted, the head and large fins are cut off.

Then the fish carcasses are washed and dried to remove excess moisture. After this, the fish is rubbed with salt and pressed under pressure for 3 hours.

REFERENCE! If you need to smoke frozen fish, then first defrost it at room temperature, after which you do the same as for fresh fish. Only previously frozen carcasses should remain under pressure for a day.

Cold smoking fish technology

The technology for cold smoking fish is quite simple, but time-consuming. Carcasses are processed at temperatures from 16 to 40° C. The duration of the procedure varies from three to four days. For cold smoking, you need a special apparatus that has an inclined chimney from 7 to 10 meters long.

If you want, you can make it yourself, but it requires a lot of space. For this reason, fish is smoked this way most often in large production facilities. Salted fish carcasses are strung on iron or wooden twine through the eyes. Larger fish are additionally secured through their tails.

Fish carcasses are hung out to dry in the fresh air, and after 2-3 days they are moved to a smokehouse. There the fish is processed with cold smoke. To obtain the required temperature, which must be maintained at all times, smoldering sawdust is used.

Warm (semi-hot) smoking

This technology involves treating fish with smoke at a temperature of 50 to 60° C. To begin with, the fish is salted for 18 hours. If the fish is small, then the time is reduced to 12 hours. After this, the fish is washed and dried with a towel.

To smoke fish this way, you will need special equipment for smoking fish or a regular potbelly stove. Carcasses are hung by the eyes or tails in the place where air and smoke mix. The duration of such smoking is from 10 to 12 hours, during which a certain temperature must be maintained.

IMPORTANT! This method is quite complicated and not suitable for beginners.

Hot smoked fish cooking technology

This method is different from the previous ones.
Here you will need a weak salting (at the rate of 1 kg of salt per 16 kg of fish). Large fish must be gutted. You need to make an incision on the spine and sprinkle with salt. Small fish are not cut up, they are prepared whole. Fatty fish are rubbed with salt and wrapped in tracing paper or parchment to prevent oxidation. After this, the fish is placed in an enamel container. The top of the carcass is covered with parchment. A pressure is placed on top of the container, under which the fish stands for two to three days. Small fish are salted for 24 hours.

After this, the fish is dried for an hour. Then it is washed with clean water, hung or laid out on a wire rack. Chips and sawdust are poured into a 2 cm layer at the bottom of the apparatus. The fish is processed at a temperature of 65 to 85 ° C. The procedure lasts from 2 to 4 hours.

During the smoking process, the lid of the device must be kept tightly closed to prevent the wood from burning. At the initial stage of processing, you need to maintain a strong fire, but the carcasses should be at a sufficient distance from it so as not to burn. From time to time the fish is turned over.

After half an hour, you need to set a certain temperature in the smokehouse, which will be maintained throughout the entire process. The carcasses should be cooked completely through. This is determined by the density and color of the fish. The fish flesh should come away from the bones well. The finished fish should have a golden or brownish crust.

Technology of smoking fish in production

In production, technology differs in processing methods and scale. First, the fish is cut and salted, after which it is placed on wire racks. Then the carcasses are processed in 3 stages: drying, boiling and smoking, after which the fish is cooled and packaged.

The nuance of industrial smoking is that after drying, the fish is coated with a sauce with a thickener. After that, they are returned to the smokehouse, from where they are taken out ready-made next time. Using this method, moisture evaporation is reduced and new flavors can be obtained.

REFERENCE! Modified starches are used as thickeners.

Smoking with liquid smoke

This method is a new development. To begin with, wood is burned in the stove. The smoke generated by this process is passed through the water. The result is a liquid with a rich smoky aroma. Afterwards it is cleaned of harmful compounds. The result is a solution that contains much less carcinogens than smoke from an ordinary fire.

You can make liquid smoke yourself, or you can buy it in a store. Next you need to take the fish, cut it into large pieces and salt it. Add liquid smoke here and keep the fish there for several hours. Then the fish needs to be cooked over a fire.

Documents and permits for the smokehouse

Some entrepreneurs build small smokehouses on their garden plots and summer cottages, and distribute the finished products among friends. But to the private food market. To run a full-fledged business, you need to create an individual entrepreneur using a simplified taxation system. OKVED codes of an enterprise can be as follows:

OKVED for smoking fish

After receiving registration documents, the entrepreneur must coordinate the activities of the smoking shop with government agencies:

• Rostechnadzor . Monitors the correct installation and safety of equipment.
• Rosprirodnadzor . Measures the amount of emissions into the environment.
• Rospotrebnadzor . Checks the workshop for compliance with sanitary standards.
• State Fire Supervision . Study the implementation of fire safety requirements.

Like any food production, smoking of fish is strictly controlled by the sanitary service. Therefore, the product cannot be sold without first receiving documents confirming its safety for health:

• Declaration of conformity with TR CU 040/2016 standards. After studying the products and the workshop itself, it is issued by certification centers for a period of up to 5 years.
• Veterinary certificate. Issued by a veterinarian or veterinary service department based on certificates from suppliers and samples of the finished product.
• Veterinary certificate No. 2. It is completed via the Internet in the Mercury system by an authorized employee of the enterprise or an accredited doctor.

Smokehouse room

SanPiN 2.3.4.050-96 imposes specific requirements for the organization of fish production, the implementation of which may require a thorough reconstruction of the building. So, on the territory of the enterprise the following should be allocated:

• room for defrosting, cutting and salting fish;
• hot and cold smoking workshop;
• product packaging area;
• refrigerator for raw materials;
• refrigerator for the finished product;
• area for washing and drying fish boxes;
• locker room for employees;
• bathroom with area for washing work clothes.

Since smoking equipment takes up minimal space, for a workshop with a capacity of 300–600 kg per day, a room of 150–160 m² is sufficient. In order not to waste resources on its repair according to sanitary standards, it is better to find an object that already meets the main ones: a former canteen, a closed food production facility, a catering establishment.

What you need to pay attention to:

• The smokehouse must be located at least 50 meters from residential buildings. When producing more than 5 tons of fish per day, the sanitary zone increases to 100 m.
• The recommended ceiling height for the smoking shop is 4.2 m. In small enterprises it can be reduced to 3 m.
• When planning production processes, it is necessary to exclude counter or cross movement of raw materials, finished products and cutting waste.
• The workshop must have separate exits for unloading raw materials, sending finished products and removing waste.
• Cold and hot water supply.
• Discharge of wastewater into a sewerage system separate from the household network.
• Floors in cutting and smoking rooms should be made of moisture-resistant materials with a slight slope towards the ladders.
• It is recommended to cover the walls of the workshop up to a level of 1.5 m with ceramic tiles, and above them - paint them with oil paint.
• All production premises must be equipped with taps for washing floors and foot-operated washbasins.
• To remove smoke and reduce the temperature in the workshop, a ventilation system and separate hoods should be installed above the smoking chambers.
• All fish cutting and processing areas must be equipped with bactericidal lamps and electrostatic insect repellent lamps.
• Industrial furniture and work equipment must be made of stainless steel. The use of wood in work processes is prohibited.
• Disinfection mats soaked in bleach should be placed near all entrances to the cutting and processing areas of raw materials. They are changed daily.
• Lamps in production and warehouse areas must be covered with shades to prevent fragments from entering the product.
• In the workshop, next to the smoking chambers, it is necessary to equip panels with primary fire extinguishing equipment.

Salting methods

In Soviet times, the technology of cold smoking fish in production was labor-intensive. Expensive and difficult to maintain equipment was used to prepare such a product. But the fish ended up being very tasty and aromatic.

Today, such a product is smoked in production, unfortunately, in most cases not according to GOST, but according to TU. Accordingly, it often turns out not too appetizing. At home, if you wish, you can cook even more delicious fish than store-bought fish. But of course, such a product must be salted correctly before smoking.

Small fish are usually not cut when preparing for smoke treatment. In some cases, it is not even gutted. This product is usually prepared as follows:

• the fish is washed well;
• pour a small amount of salt onto the bottom of an enamel pan;
• rub each fish with salt, paying special attention to the gills;
• Place a layer of fish on the bottom of the pan and cover it with salt;
• repeat the procedure until the pan is filled.

The laid fish is then left for 2 days. During this time, it will be saturated with brine and will be ready for smoking.

Do-it-yourself cold smoking of large fish involves the use of the following preparation technology:

• the heads and entrails of the carcasses are removed and washed thoroughly;
• rub the fish with coarse salt and put it in a pan;
• leave the product to salt for a day;
• prepare a brine from 2 liters of water, 25 g of sugar and 0.5 packs of salt and pour it over the fish;
• The carcasses are left to salt for another 5 days.

You can add a little pepper and bay leaf to the brine for flavor. It should first be boiled on the stove and cooled.

Fish smoking equipment

To save money, you can assemble equipment for smoking fish yourself using diagrams from the Internet. However, not a single homemade chamber can pass sanitary inspection and ensure mass production of the product. Factory smokehouses are produced in different variations, but the most effective among them are electrostatic ones - here special accelerators attract the flow of smoke to the carcasses, which shortens the smoking process itself by two to three times.

Smokehouses vary in performance. The simplest ones process only 40–100 kg of raw materials per day, while business cameras can handle a ton. The most famous manufacturer of smokehouses in Russia is Izhitsa LLC. Its range includes models “Izhitsa-1200M” for cold smoking and “Izhitsa-GK” for hot smoking: their capacity is 600 kg of product per day.

Fish smoking shop equipment

Also, consumables are required for a fish smoking business. The volume of their consumption depends on how much product the entrepreneur wants to produce:

• alder chips for hot smoking (35 rubles/kg) - 1 kg per 80–100 kg of product;
• alder rack for cold smoking (RUB 25/pc.) - 1 pc. per 100 kg of product;
• table salt (8 rubles/kg) - 1 kg per 10 kg of raw materials;
• spices (250 rub./kg) - 1 kg per 100 kg of raw materials;
• cardboard box (RUB 15/piece) - 1 piece. for 20 kg of product;
• vacuum packaging (1 rub./pc.) - 1 pc. for fish;
• label (1 rub./pc.) - 1 pc. per box or packaging.

Is it possible to make a smokehouse

Such equipment is sold in almost every hardware store today. However, nowadays you can mainly buy ready-made chambers for hot smoking. In addition, such equipment is quite expensive. Therefore, in most cases, owners of summer cottages prefer to assemble smokehouses for cold processing on their own.

Setting up such a device in your garden or vegetable garden will not be particularly difficult. The most important thing that needs to be achieved when making such a smokehouse is that the smoke is cooled before reaching the fish or meat. This can be done, for example, by creating a ditch about 3 m long between the fire and the chamber.

You can make a home smokehouse, for example, using the following technology:

• a fire pit is dug on the site;
• a trench 3 m long is laid from the pit;
• at the other end of the trench an old metal or wooden barrel without a bottom is installed;
• the trench is covered, for example, with slate and filled with 15 cm of earth.

To make it easier to hang food on top of the barrel, you should place a grate. Fish or meat will be attached to it in the future. The technology for cold smoking fish or meat at home using such equipment will not be particularly complicated. During smoking, the barrel chamber simply needs to be covered with a piece of thick cloth.

Where to get fish for smoking

You should not open a fish smoking business without first agreeing with one or more suppliers of raw materials. Contractors must be reliable: if a truck filled with boxes of fish does not arrive at the workshop at least once in the morning, the businessman will lose thousands of rubles in revenue.

It is important to have documents and certificates for raw materials, without which it is simply impossible to register and sell the finished product. It is clear that such a supplier will not be a nearby supermarket or grocery market. You should look for partners in other ways:

• Pond farms or farms that grow it in closed water supply systems.
• Wholesale suppliers of chilled or frozen fish. You can get acquainted with them on the sites: fishnet.ru
• b2b-center.ru
• fish.krab.ru
• fishretail.ru

When planning to enter into an agreement with a supplier, purchase a small batch of fish and evaluate its quality. In the future, each delivery should be inspected by a technologist so as not to miss substandard raw materials:

• Quality fish have red or pink gills. A greenish or brown color is a reason to refuse the purchase.
• The eyes should be clean and transparent. Cloudy pupils or foreign matter may indicate parasitic infections.
• A good fish has an elastic, toned abdomen. If it is swollen or already stained, the product is clearly not fresh.
• Dried, protruding fins with creases or unnatural bends may indicate re-freezing of the carcass.
• The scales should be shiny and fit tightly to the body. In expired fish, it begins to puff up and is easily pulled out with your fingers.
• The carcass must have the appropriate smell - iodine and salt for sea fish, mud and algae for river fish. A strong ammonia impurity is unacceptable.

Hot smoking

The hot technology of smoking fish differs from previous methods. This method requires light salting at the rate of 16 kg of initial product per 1 kg of salt. Large fish will definitely be gutted. An incision is made on the spine and sprinkled with salt. Small specimens are prepared whole, without cutting.

Fatty fish is rubbed with salt and wrapped in parchment or tracing paper to prevent oxidation. Then the carcasses are placed in an enamel container. The top of the fish is again covered with parchment. The container is pressed down from above with pressure. Small fish remain to be salted for a day, large specimens - from two to three days.

Then the fish is dried for 60 minutes. Then it is washed with clean cold water, hung or placed on a smoking rack. Sawdust and wood chips are poured into a layer of 20 millimeters at the bottom of the unit. Carcasses must be processed under strict temperature conditions from 65 to 85 degrees. The duration of the procedure is 2-4 hours.

During the smoking process, the lid of the unit must be tightly closed so that the wood does not ignite. At the very beginning of processing, a strong fire is maintained, but the fish should be at a decent distance from it so as not to burn. The carcasses are turned over periodically.

After half an hour, the desired temperature is set in the smokehouse, which is maintained throughout the entire process. The fish must be cooked completely through. This is determined by the color and density of the finished product. The meat should separate from the bones easily. The finished product has a golden or brownish crust.

Smoke shop team

The fish smoking business involves many operations. An entrepreneur needs to find a supplier, buy and deliver raw materials, cut and salt them, soak them in water, smoke them, negotiate with clients, and fill out the necessary documents. That’s why all family members work even on small home smokehouses. If we talk about a workshop of serious power, then we cannot do without a staff of employees.

Among them there should be a technologist with a higher education diploma in the food industry, who is able to distinguish high-quality raw materials from bad ones, draw up technological maps, and adjust the production process. Workers must have sanitary certificates, without which they cannot work with food products. For a workshop producing 300–600 kg of smoked fish per day and working in one shift, you will need:

Smokehouse staff

Cooking sausage

The technology for cold smoking meat and fish at home, therefore, is not particularly complicated. It will be quite easy to cook sausage using this method. To get this smoked homemade product, you will need the following ingredients:

• 2 kg beef;
• 1.5 kg lean pork;
• 1.5 kg of solid lard;
• 10 g sugar;
• pepper to taste;
• 200 g salt;
• 3 g ascorbic acid (instead of nitrate).

The meat for making sausage is salted and refrigerated for 4-5 days. Further:

• the product is scrolled in a meat grinder;
• mix it thoroughly with the addition of ascorbic acid, sugar and spices;
• lard is cut into small pieces and added to the minced meat;
• spread the mass on the board in a layer no thicker than 10 cm and keep in the cold for 2-3 days.

Next, the cooked meat is stuffed into well-washed intestines and everything is tightly bandaged. Before smoking, the sausages are left in a cold room (+5 °C) for a week. Next, the sausage is smoked at a temperature of 20 °C for 2-3 days. At the final stage, the sausages are kept in a cool, dry place (+10 °C) for 4-6 weeks.

Who to sell smoked fish to

Today, smoked fish is available in almost every grocery store and supermarket, and therefore it is difficult for a newcomer to break into the market. It is better to start searching for sales channels in advance, so that after purchasing and setting up expensive equipment you do not encounter a lack of interest from buyers. What can you come up with to solve the problem:

• Start with small to medium sized grocery stores. They usually already have suppliers, but the owners don't mind trying something new.
• It is more difficult to reach an agreement with supermarkets. As a rule, they require payment for shelf space, and pay for the goods only after two to three months.
• The menus of sushi bars, cafes and restaurants also include smoked fish. They can also order more exotic products - eel, mussels, squid.
• The product sells excellently in beer stores and bars. Such customers prefer small fish or seafood snacks.
• If there are no resources to work with retail, it is worth looking for wholesale companies that package and resell goods to stores and supermarkets.
• It is useful to set up a kiosk at a food depot or farmer's market. If you have a wide range of products, you can open your own store.
• You can sell fish on online trading platforms.

Fish is supplied to retail chains packaged in individual bags or cardboard boxes containing up to 10–20 kg of product. Each package must have a label with the date of manufacture and expiration date.

Fish smoking business plan

You should not expect that the smokehouse will reach maximum capacity from the first days. Until customers try the products, you can limit yourself to working one shift and producing 200 kg of hot and cold smoked fish per day. When estimating the amount of raw materials required for this, you need to take into account that during processing, carcasses lose on average 10–40% of their weight from the evaporation of moisture and rendering of fat:

Raw materials for smoking

Even if you don’t have to invest a large amount in repairs, there will be other expense items at the start. The most significant purchases will be the purchase of equipment and raw materials for a month of work:

Initial investment

Raw materials need to be purchased every month. In addition, the entrepreneur must pay for the labor of workers, rent of premises and utilities. Special attention is required to the disposal of waste from cutting, the purchase of detergents for daily cleaning of the workshop and the disinfection of premises, which is carried out by specialized companies:

Monthly expenses

Is it possible to cook beef

The technology for cold smoking pork at home is therefore relatively simple. But if you wish, you can also cook beef or poultry at the dacha using this method. Meat of these varieties, when exposed to cold smoke for a long time, as already mentioned, can become dry and tough. To prevent this from happening, such products will need to be heat treated before smoking. Usually, such meat is first simply placed in a pan and water is brought to a boil.

The profitability of smoking fish

Is smoking fish profitable as a business? Studying wholesale prices, you can see that the finished product is more than twice as expensive as the raw materials. If an entrepreneur has distribution channels for 400 kg of products daily, in 25 working days he will earn almost 3 million rubles:

Income from smoking fish

As the smokehouse business plan shows, even if the workshop is loaded at a third of its maximum capacity, the payback point will be reached in just five months:

The profitability of smoking fish