# Smoked and cure meat : Root cellar



## Wintergrower_OH (Sep 21, 2010)

What would it take to store smoked and cure meat in root cellar ? How deep would the root cellar have to be ? What R value would allow you to keep the temperature around freezing ? Was thinking of using sip or icf blocks for the walls . I pretty much have got the basement root cellar done for canning goods , potatoes and apples , wheat , flour .


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## dkhern (Nov 30, 2012)

after meat was cured and smoked we used to keep it in the smoke house into the fall. smoke house was 1" rough lumber walls w/some cracks dirt floor. summers get to 100+.
in a cellar id think moisture would be biggest concern.


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

Cellar will only get to the temp of the earth, actually warmer than the winter temps most places. It stableizes the temps and keeps moisture levels high and more stable, not near freezing, more like 50 degrees. Need an ice house for that. My springhouse is much cooler than my cellar. Water temp is about 6-8 degrees in the winter from my spring....James


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## Warwalk (May 25, 2011)

An R-value won't keep something cold... or warm, for that matter. It will simply resist (hence the name) the transfer from hot to cold or from cold to hot. If you want a rough approximation of what your ground temperature is, a good way of guess-timating is to take the July avg high and low added with the January avg high and low, add these four numbers together, then divide by four. Coincidentally, your well water would be approximately this temperature as well.

To me, with a smoked meat product in a cellar environment, I'd think just as important would be using a good dehumidifier to keep the air water content low.

Also, with most smoked or cured meat, the very act of smoking or curing should work as a good preservative. If you're making meat with a long cure time, make sure to read about / use Prague cure # 2... short cure times would use Prague cure # 1. This also goes by other names, such as Instacure.


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