Homemade Smoked Food Gifts for Christmas: What to Make and How Long They Keep

Which smoked gifts keep best?

Split your list into two groups before you start. Dry gifts, such as salt, sugar, chilli powder and nuts, have almost no moisture for bacteria to grow in. They keep for weeks or months in a sealed jar at room temperature, they can be posted, and you can make them well ahead. The smoke flavour slowly fades rather than the food going off.

Chilled gifts, such as butter, cheese and soft hot-smoked garlic, are fresh foods that happen to be smoked. Smoking does not preserve them. They keep for the same time as the unsmoked food, need to stay in the fridge, and should be made in the last week and given by hand, not posted.

Most of these gifts are cold-smoked, which flavours the food without heating it. A maze-style cold smoke generator burning wood dust inside a lidded barbecue, box or cupboard is the easiest way. Our guide to using a cold smoke generator covers lighting and burn times. Do your cold smoking on a cool, dry day, keeping the chamber well below 25°C, and below about 20°C for butter and cheese so they do not soften. Nuts and soft garlic are hot-smoked, which cooks them as it flavours them.

How to make smoked sea salt

Smoked salt is the easiest and longest-keeping smoked gift, and it is a good one to make first. Use flaky sea salt or coarse sea salt crystals rather than fine table salt, because the larger crystals take on more colour and smoke.

Step 1: spread the salt thinly on a foil tray or a fine mesh, no more than 1cm deep. Step 2: cold smoke it with oak, beech or alder dust for 6 to 12 hours, roughly one or two full burns of a generator. Stir it every couple of hours so the smoke reaches all the crystals. Step 3: taste a few flakes. For a stronger, darker salt, give it another burn. Step 4: let it sit uncovered for an hour, then jar it.

Oak gives a deep, classic smoke; alder is softer and good if the salt will be used on fish. Salt itself does not go off, and in an airtight jar the smoke flavour holds for months, so it is ideal for posting to family further away. Our guide to smoking dust vs wood chips explains why dust is the right fuel for long cold smokes like this.

Smoked sugar for cocktails and baking

Smoked sugar is a lovely gift for anyone who makes an Old Fashioned, a hot toddy or a smoky crème brûlée. Use demerara or golden granulated sugar. Moist sugars such as muscovado clump badly and take longer to dry out.

Spread it thinly, cold smoke it for 2 to 4 hours with a sweeter wood such as apple, cherry or maple, and stir it halfway. Sugar picks up smoke faster than salt, so taste it early. Keep it in an airtight jar, where it keeps for months like ordinary sugar. A label suggesting uses, such as rimming a whisky glass or sprinkling over porridge, makes it feel like a proper gift. Our guides to apple and cherry wood cover their flavours.

Smoked almonds and other nuts

Smoked almonds are the gift most people actually eat first. Hot smoking gives the best result because the nuts toast as they take the smoke. Toss 500g of whole, skin-on almonds with a teaspoon of oil and a good pinch of salt, spread them in one layer and hot smoke them at around 120°C (250°F) with hickory or oak for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring once or twice, until they are crisp and toasted right through when you bite one. A complete hot-smoking kit is all you need for a batch.

If you only have a cold smoker, cold smoke the nuts for 3 to 4 hours, then roast them in the oven at 160°C for 10 to 15 minutes. Cashews, pecans and hazelnuts all work the same way.

Cool the nuts completely before they go in jars, or trapped steam will make them soft. Because nuts are oily, they slowly go rancid, so make them in the first half of December and tell people to eat them within a few weeks. Nuts are one of the 14 allergens, so label them clearly.

Smoked butter, smoked garlic and smoked cheese

Smoked butter is brilliant on steak, jacket potatoes and corn. Use a block of good salted or unsalted butter straight from the fridge, cut into slices or curls on a cold plate so more surface takes the smoke. Cold smoke it with apple or alder for 1 to 2 hours on a cold day, then chill it, beat it smooth and pack it into a small tub or roll it in baking paper. Smoking does not make butter keep any longer, so give it a use-by date no later than the one on the butter you started with, keep it in the fridge, and make it in the last few days before you hand it over.

Smoked garlic comes two ways. Cold smoked whole bulbs, smoked for 8 to 12 hours with oak, stay firm and keep like fresh garlic in a cool, dry, airy place, so they make a good gift tied in a bunch. Hot-smoked garlic is cooked soft and sweet, a little like roasted garlic, and it is a cooked fresh food: keep it in the fridge, eat it within a couple of days, and never pack it under oil.

Smoked cheese is a crowd-pleaser, and firm cheeses such as Cheddar, Red Leicester and Gouda are the ones to choose. The method, wood and food-safety points are in our full guide to smoking cheese at home. The key rule for gifting is that smoking does not extend the cheese's own date, so follow the date and storage instructions on the cheese you bought, keep it chilled and give it in person.

Smoked chilli powder and paprika-style seasoning

You can make your own smoked paprika-style powder from red peppers, or a hotter smoked chilli powder from red chillies. Halve and deseed sweet red peppers or chillies, hot smoke them over oak or beech until soft and lightly coloured, then dry them in the oven at its lowest setting, around 60 to 80°C, with the door slightly ajar for several hours until they are brittle and snap cleanly. Already-dried chillies can simply be cold smoked for 3 to 4 hours.

Grind them in a spice grinder and sieve out any tough bits. The powder must be bone dry: any softness left in the pieces means moisture, and moisture means mould in the jar. Stored airtight and out of the light, it keeps its colour and flavour for several months. Wear gloves for hot chillies and keep your hands away from your eyes.

Can you give smoked oil as a gift? The garlic and herb warning

Smoked oil is easy to make: pour a light olive or rapeseed oil into a wide, shallow dish, cold smoke it for 2 to 3 hours with oak or apple, stirring now and then, and bottle it. Keep it plain, store it somewhere cool and dark, and it keeps like ordinary oil.

The trap is adding flavourings. A bottle of oil with garlic cloves, fresh herbs or chillies in it looks wonderful, but oil shuts air out, and low-acid ingredients sitting under it are exactly the conditions Clostridium botulinum needs to grow and make its toxin. The FSA's botulism guidance lists foods preserved in oil among the foods linked to botulism, and warns that bottling herbs or garlic in oil at home can be risky because the conditions are hard to control. US home-preserving guidance from the National Center for Home Food Preservation is that homemade garlic in oil should be kept in the fridge and used within 4 days.

So for a gift, put nothing in the bottle except smoked oil. If you want garlic in the picture, give a bulb of cold smoked garlic alongside it.

Packaging and labelling smoked gifts

Use clean, dry glass jars with tight lids or clip-top seals for salt, sugar, nuts and powders. Wash them in hot soapy water and dry them completely, ideally in a low oven, because any water left in the jar will spoil dry gifts. Butter and cheese go in a small lidded tub or wrapped in waxed or baking paper, ready for the fridge.

Label every gift with what it is, the date you made it, a best-before or use-by date, how to store it (cool and dry, or keep refrigerated), and the full ingredients. Then list allergens clearly. The FSA's 14 major allergens include milk, tree nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts and cashews, peanuts, celery, mustard and sesame, so smoked butter and cheese need a milk warning and nuts need a nut warning. If you make nuts in the same kitchen as other gifts, say that on the other labels too.

Dry gifts are fine to post. Anything that says keep refrigerated should be handed over in person, kept cold on the way, and ideally given with a word about eating it soon. A small tag with a serving idea, such as smoked salt on chocolate brownies or smoked butter melted over new potatoes, helps people use it.

When to make smoked Christmas gifts: a December timeline

Late November: check your smoker and generator, and stock up on fuel. A wood dust variety pack gives you several flavours to try. Buy jars, labels and ribbon now, too. Our guides to the best wood chips for smoking and which wood chips you need help with choosing.

First week of December: make the long keepers: smoked salt, smoked sugar and smoked chilli powder. Jar and label them as you go. Post anything going far away by the middle of the month.

Second week of December: make smoked nuts, smoked oil and cold smoked garlic bulbs, so the nuts are still at their best on Christmas Day.

The last few days before you give them: smoke the butter, the cheese and any soft hot-smoked garlic, keep them chilled, and hand them over in person. For the rest of your Christmas smoking, such as salmon, mackerel pâté and the Christmas ham, follow our Christmas food smoking plan, which runs alongside this one. If you are buying for a smoking fan rather than making something, see our gifts for food smokers.