ABOUT US

I grew up on a farm in North Germany just after the war, where my family had farmed traditionally for hundreds of years. Our farm was completely self sufficient, making our own butter, cheese, breads, preserves and jams. My father also produced small goods from his home slaughtering and my fondest memories are of his delicious smoked sausages, smoked hams and bacon, salmon halibut, trout and eel. I left home at 16 to train at Swiss Hotel School - the toughest but best training in Europe, initially to train as a chef. After graduation I worked on 5 star passenger liners and in my twenties traveled to Africa where I worked as executive chef in many leading international hotels. I have lived in many countries including Korea Indonesia Singapore and Hong Kong, and now live in Australia. In my travels I could never find the quality of smoked goods that we had at home, so I converted old fridges, tucker box freezers and 44 gallon drums into improvised smokers, until finally I built my first metal smoker - a similar concept to what we had at home - only smaller, and perfected the concept to a fine art! Claus H. Ernst Proprietor of Smoke Oven made easy