It’s a warm September afternoon in Stetson, and “Big Red” is out smoking in Allen Hepler’s back yard.

The old metal refrigerator, painted crimson, is packed full of kielbasa hanging from wooden dowels. Using a dimmer switch, Hepler turns up the heat and adds a handful of damp hickory sawdust to a pot on a hot plate inside. In a few minutes, sweet-smelling smoke starts to waft out of a stovepipe on top of the fridge. Hepler waits a while, opens up the door and checks the temperature of the sausage with a thermometer. It’s over 145 degrees – safe to eat. Lunch is ready.

It’s a meal to remember, with three varieties of fresh, unsmoked sausage, and the succulent pork and venison kielbasas that Hepler put into Big Red at 5 that morning.

Hepler, 35, has made sausage for years. When he and his wife, Kirsten Hautala Hepler, 33, bought 80 acres in Stetson five years ago, he started raising his own pigs for bacon and pork. Each fall, he brought the meat to a local smokehouse, but several years ago, he decided to build his own, out of an old red refrigerator with the Freon removed.

“He loves this – he’s just so into it,” Kirsten said. “But just five years ago, he knew nothing about it.”

Hepler is among a growing number of people who have decided to try their hand at smoke cooking in recent years. Though it takes a little longer than the oven or the grill, the payoff is worth it – it imparts a rich, smoky flavor and deep pink hue to pork, chicken, fish and beef.

“There’s an awful lot of people who do hot smoking in this state,” Hepler said. “It used to be a country thing, but there’s been a resurgence, a renewed interest.”

Though smoking originated as a way to preserve meat and extend its shelf life, it has evolved into a culinary treat. John Head of Denver, Colo., a vice president at the Culinary Institute of Smoke Cooking, said people crave the type of food found at authentic barbecue pits – piles of ribs, shredded pork sandwiches or a tender beef brisket.

“The popularity of smoke cooking is growing by leaps and bounds, largely because people have decided to start cooking things at home that they normally eat in restaurants,” Head said.

Hepler started smoke cooking because “you can’t buy real smoked meat in the store,” he said.

Most “smoked” meats that you find at the grocery store, such as kielbasa, bacon and ham, are mass-produced and injected with smoke flavoring.

With real smoking, “There’s a fair amount of labor involved,” Hepler said.

There are two types of meat smoking: hot and cold. Hot smoking takes place at temperatures between 180 and 250 degrees F. With hot smoking, meat doesn’t need to be cured. Cold smoking takes place between 120 and 160 degrees F. Bacon, sausages and jerky are examples of cold-smoked foods. Hot smoking actually cooks the food, whether it’s a chicken or a slab of ribs. Cold smoking can cook food, but it doesn’t have to. Because cold smoking takes so long and the temperature is so low, meat needs to be cured to prevent botulism.

“Curing is very important,” Hepler said. “The risk is always there. There’s no smell, no flavor that tells you botulism is there and people can get very, very sick, or they can die.”

Before cold smoking, meat should be cured in a solution of sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite, available from several manufacturers, including The Sausage Maker, which Hepler recommends. Though some people think they can cure with saltpeter (potassium nitrate), table salt or ascorbic acid, none of these is acceptable.

Head recommends that beginners start with hot smoking, where there’s less room for error. You don’t need an elaborate smokehouse, or even a converted refrigerator. The Frugal Gourmet recommends smoking meats in a metal garbage can. You can use your barbecue or gas grill, provided you have more than one burner, though it’s harder to keep the temperature low.

“For someone who’s a little clever, you can build your own container in your back yard,” Hepler said.

To smoke on the grill, you need to maintain a temperature of around 225 degrees F. To do this, turn on one burner on the lowest setting, and monitor with an oven thermometer. If it gets too hot, open the lid. Place a pan full of wood chips or sawdust directly on the coals or gas burner, and put the meat on the grill rack opposite the heat source. There’s no set cooking time – just use a meat thermometer to determine when the meat is done. Keep in mind that smoking will take substantially longer than conventional cooking methods, so if you’re in a hurry, you may want to stick to the microwave.

Smoking doesn’t need too much supervision, however. On the day he made kielbasa, Hepler started at 5 a.m. by hanging the links in the smoker. He went back to bed for an hour, got up, turned up the temperature and started working on the addition to his house. At 2 p.m., he took the kielbasa out of the smoker, sliced some up for finger food and then put a few links on his grill, along with homemade bratwurst, Sicilian sausage and breakfast patties.

With smoke cooking, patience pays. Though it may take hours to cook a chicken, the meat is so tender it falls off the bone, and the whole bird is infused with flavor. And homemade kielbasa has a richer taste than the kind you buy at the grocery store.

“The idea is to cook it low and slow,” Head said. “The key to smoke cooking is flavor.”

And the flavor comes from the wood. Almost any hardwood will do – hickory is one of the most common, but in Maine, alder is plentiful, and alder makes a wonderful smoking wood. You don’t want to use softwood, especially evergreens, because the tar and resins can be toxic. They also will make the meat taste horrible, according to Head and Hepler.

“You don’t want a ton of smoke all at once,” Head added. “You don’t want dry wood, and you don’t want green wood. Don’t use 2-by-4s. Pine is awful – it’s sappy.”

With smoke cooking, there’s a lot to learn. There are plenty of resources on smoke cooking, but you have to be careful about the source, Hepler said. He recommends “Smoke & Spice” by Cheryl Alters Jamison, Bill Jamison and Chris Schlesinger; “Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing” by Rytek Kutas (The Sausage Maker); and the smoke cooking Web pages on About.com. Head recommends the Culinary Institute of Smoke Cooking’s book, “Barbecuing & Sausage-Making SECRETS,” available at www.bbqcookingschool.com. If you’re really interested in becoming a pro, you can enroll in the CISC’s master barbecue cooking school.

It’s taken Hepler five years to amass all the knowledge he has, but he still wants to keep learning. After a few years of using cookbooks, he has started to develop his own smoke-cooking recipes, which he keeps in a big blue binder with the title “What’s Cookin'” written across the front in black marker.

“It’s like a history book,” Hepler said. “It keeps evolving.”

Smoked Chicken

Courtesy of the Culinary Institute of Smoke Cooking

1 31/2-to-4-pound chicken

Spice rub

Wood chips or sawdust, soaked for a few hours

The night before cooking, remove the giblets from the chicken, trim the fat, rinse and rub inside and out with a commercial spice rub. If you prefer, you can make your own with a mixture of salt, pepper, garlic and paprika, or lemon pepper. Don’t be stingy with the spices. Wrap chicken in a bag and leave in refrigerator overnight.

Preheat grill or smoker and maintain at a temperature of 225 degrees F (use an oven thermometer to check). In a gas grill, this usually means turning one burner on at the lowest setting and leaving the rest off. In a charcoal grill, this will take a little bit of experimenting to get the right temperature. You may have to leave the lid open during cooking.

Place wood chips or sawdust on a steel pan or wrap in several layers of aluminum foil. Place directly on heat source. Put chicken on the cooking rack opposite heat source. Check after 3 hours. Cook until chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees F.

Smoked Kielbasa

Recipe courtesy of Allen Hepler

Note: Insta Cure No. 1 is a blend of curing salts available through The Sausage Maker in Buffalo, N.Y. For information, call (716) 824-6510. If preparing Smoked Kielbasa on the grill, you won’t need curing salt because it’s nearly impossible to get the temperature low enough to cold smoke the sausage. Hepler suggests either preparing the kielbasa as fresh sausage and cooking it on the grill as you normally would, or hot smoking the kielbasa and checking the internal temperature regularly. Recipe can be halved.

10 pounds coarsely ground pork

1 pint cold water

1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 teaspoons Insta Cure No. 1 (see note)

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon MSG

3-4 teaspoons marjoram

4 teaspoons cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons white pepper

natural casing

Combine all ingredients (except casing) and stuff sausage into casing, tying off at regular intervals.

Preheat smoker to 130 degrees F. Hang sausages in smoker at 130 degrees F with dampers wide open until dry, about 1 hour. Increase heat and smoke at 160 to 170 degrees F under heavy smoke until kielbasa reaches an internal temperature of 152 degrees F, about six to eight hours.

Shower with cold water until sausage cools to a temperature of 120 degrees F.

Makes 10 pounds.