You can use gas grills smokers, a built in grill with a smoker extension, or gas grills with a built in smoker to make some luscious smoked salmon or other smoked fish. It takes time and discipline, but the scrumptious and healthy finish are well worth the time investment.

In this world of prepackaged and chemical laden frankenfood, it would be energizing to travel back to a different year when small native clans would smoke their staples over a smoldering fire or in a smoke filled smoke house so that it could be preserved to hold them over during the winter months. This is in our blood. Most societies during the ages had some form of smoking as meat preservation before modern science and refrigeration were created. I won’t dispute against refrigeration, but chemicals in food, I believe, can lead to queasiness or nutritional inadequacy. While food smoking does create some naturally formed chemicals that you would not want to consume entirely or every day, in reasonable quantities it is fine, as is proven by the fact that people have been doing it for ages without any conspicuous chronic or terminal effect.

Let’s smoke some fish.

High quality fish is the best. You can consume fresh salt water fish like salmon and tuna raw. Sushi anyone? If you eat fish uncooked, it must be kept at a certain temperature just above freezing. Besides merely fresh, uncooked as described, or roasting it, you can also freeze it in order to save it for later. Canning is good too but you might have to first learn about safe canning methods. Smoking is yet another option for safeguarding fish. I take pleasure in chilled vacuum enclosed smoked salmon from the supermarket, and I have in times past enjoyed canned smoked herring from Latvia, which were very interesting and scrumptious on rye bread.

You want to be shielded from microbes and parasites, so I advise soaking the fish in a brine (salt) solution first. You can use electric, charcoal, wood, or gas grills smokers for the task.

Obtain your fish. Gut them and cut the heads off. Cut them into fillets and hunks. Leave the skin on. Put the skin side down onto the grates so if they adhere you lose the skin and who really cares? If you were to try this with fish steaks the flesh would stick to the grates and fall loose. All you would have remaining would be a mess and a lot of disillusionment, and discarded fish.

Submerge the fish in a brine solution of salt, sugar, and spices. You can use a preservative but I declair that you don’t need chemicals. Use your own research.

Prepare the fish with this basic brine solution:

1/2 cup non-iodized (Kosher works fine) salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 quart water
Mix until salt and sugar are completely dissolved
Place fish into the solution, being careful to see to it that the fish is completely immersed in the brine and put it in the refrigerator.
Fat 1 inch plus hunks should be in brine from 8 to 12 hours.
Thin 1 inch or less hunks should be in from 6 to 8 hours.

Take your fish from the brine and clean each segmentunder cool water. Being gentle, pat dry and lay the hunks on some paper towel to air dry for at least one hour. After one hour you should observe that the fish has a kind of lustrous surface skin, or “pellicle”. This is normal. This rind serves as a surface for the smoke to bind to during the smoking procedure. After an hour of drying, the fish should be a bit clinging to the touch, and this means that it is ready for the smoking procedure.

Woods such as Mesquite, Hickory, and Apple are acceptable. Adler is another acceptable wood. Don’t use pine as it is inferior and you will get a lousy taste to your food. When using fruit woods, you can also add some fragments of the actual fruit to the wood for added flavor. You will have to refill the wood holder several times during the full smoking procedure.

In your gas grills smoker or other type of smoker, place the fish pieces skins down as mentioned earlier and they shouldn’t be touching each other. Use big enough portions so that you amplify area. This is so because since you require some room between fragments, smaller but more numerous portions would mean not enough room for all your fish. Bigger pieces spaced apart so they don’t touch actually means that you can fit more fish on the cooking grate. See, you are already benefiting from my experience! Here’s another word of advice. If you have a multi level grate system in your smoker, you will want to switch the top and bottom grates through the procedure since the bottom ones get increased heat and smoke.

Twelve hours in the smoker will result in a moist smoked salmon. Twenty four hours will result in a salmon jerky, which is a swell jerky but hard to get any bones out if you run into any. It’s actually clever to try to yank out as many bones as you can when you commence, but there can sometimes be some tiny pointy ones inside the flesh that you cannot see. Do your finest is all I can tell you to do. I used pliers to pick the visibly extruding bones from the raw fish. Remove deliberately, steadily, and straight out. For the twelve hour juicyversion of smoked salmon, any surplus bones are smoothly dealt with throughout the consumption phase. For the twenty four hour jerky version, it is best to just separate the meat while it is still fleshy direct from the smoker. You can utilize it in sauces and gravy but not in soups. Some people use the remaining skin and bones as a kitty food. Your results may vary.

While the salmon is cooling on the grates after the smoking is concluded, you can add other spices like garlic and black pepper, or hot pepper like cayenne if that is your preference. The oily white stuff is salmon oil, which is basically Omega 3 fatty acids and is very healthy for you. That stuff helps to sweep out your blood vessels and it also soaks up spices very well. I relay that because most people would think that it was undesireable when in fact nothing could be farther from the truth.

Storage is a breeze if you have a vacuum sealing machine. I mean the type of machine that attaches to a plastic bag which contains the salmon, and it draws out the air and heat seals the bag once the air is no longer present. No air means that the food won’t go off as quickly. You should still have it refrigerated, however. Freezing will not damage it, but the texture can be impaired.

Since the entire procedure can take the larger part of two days, you want to work with amounts of at least 6 pounds – larger amounts – to make it useful and cost effective. Non vacuum sealed but plastic bagged smoked and refrigerated fish can go for about a month, while the vacuum sealed fish can stay edible for a few months or longer.

I could have put this in the beginning, but a bit of advice about wild caught vs. farmed salmon. Now I realize that any salmon or fish farmer reading this may not like it, but farmed fish is rich with fake foods and pharmaceuticals, if not hormones. You don’t want that. Much of of the time they get the salmon flesh orangey pink by adding dye to the food recipe. In the wild, salmon flesh is grey if they eat fish like anchovies, and the pink color actually comes from them eating krill and shrimp. The color of wild salmon is a pale pink color, not orange. Also, the fat composition of the fish is TOTALLY different when you compare the two. The counterfeit and processed fish food cannot compare to the stuff that the wild fish consume, and their fats are full of nutritious Omega 3 fats like DHA and EPA. As a matter of fact, farmed fish are the opposite, usually full of dangerous pro inflammatory Omega 6 fats. This is why I will not consume Tilapia. It is cheap, but it is also farmed and rich in Omega 6 fats, which most certainly magnify inflammatory conditions like arthritis and artery disease. You don’t want that because the inexpensive price is NOT worth it. Go against the grain. If your fish monger says otherwise, then get a different fish monger because he/she is full of something malororous, and I don’t mean rotten fish.

That was a lot of information! I feel confident that this knowledge on how to prepare smoked salmon is productive and reassures you to be a bit confident, or possibly go get that gas grills smoker or other smoker device that you may need to perform this.

Now is the time to get some experience and hone your skills so that you can be the star backyard chef who will create smoked barbecue like they do at the large competitions and local smoke houses. Well, you can anyhow try to approach that. It is a worthy goal. No one ever rose to low expectations!

The indirect method of smoking allows you to use an ordinary grill as a smoker and believe it or not, you can create some excellent meat this way. Smoking meat is a great way to tenderize tough cuts of meat, such as ribs, brisket and pork shoulder. Smoking meat is cooking it between 190f and 225f while in the meat smoker. Cold smoking meat is primarily for cured meat like ham, bacon etc. And is done inside the meat smoker grill at temperatures below 80f. Cold smoking always takes longer than hot smoking. You can short smoke meat like steaks and chops on the barbecue grill with gas grills smokers or long smoke meat inside gas grills smokers. Whether you smoke your meat inside a gas grill or meat smoker, any way that you decide to push smoke into the meat is a great way to enjoy it.

Smoking meat calls for acquiring the proper internal temperature. Because outside temperatures will determine cooking time, you cannot rely on time alone. There are many recipes available but they cannot be applied across the board. Meat smoking is also a growing trend for great flavor by adding taste to food without adding extra fat. When the smoke surrounds mild meats like pork, fish and poultry, it produces a scrumptious flavor and rich color that’s futile to resist. Smoking is almost trivial with some experience to do and can be completed in a kettle-style grill using indirect heat and adding wood chips to banked coals. At least two hours before you plan to start cooking, place wood chips or chunks in water to soak. Estimate two chunks of wood or a good handful of wood chips for each hour of planned smoker time. If you have unburned soaked wood after finishing smoking, it can be dried and used at another time. Build the fire about 40 minutes before you plan to start grilling. Remove the grate from the covered cooker and build a hill of about 25-30 charcoal briquettes on one side of the fire grate, light them, and let them burn down to glowing embers, covered with gray ash. Leave only one of the bottom air vents open directly under the briquettes. Place an an aluminum pan filled two-thirds full of water opposite the briquettes.

Smoking meat is mainly used to break down and add flavor to the meat. It can also be a low heat and slow method that works great for fatty or tough meat like beef brisket, beef ribs, pork spareribs, or lamb shoulder. For that signature smoky flavor, you need wood chips. Apple, maple, mesquite, and hickory are the best wood chips to use. There are some considerations when smoking meat on your own. To prevent E. Coli and/or other sickness, observe cleanliness when working with raw meat. Wash counters and your hands often, separate meats in different stages of preparation, and cook & chill using proper temperatures. Defrosting the meat properly is an important step in the process. Defrosting while smoking can cause bacteria to breed within the meat. Remember, smoking takes longer. Regular grill cooking happens more rapidly and the bacteria would not have time to grow, but with smoking it is a real possibility.

Smoking meat is by far the paramount means of achieving that desired flavor but it also requires the most effort. With the benefits of our up to date barbecuing tools the equivalent results can be realized without all of the extra work involved. The most rapid way to add the smoke flavor to any meat is by the use of liquid smoke. This can be added to any food from baked beans to grilled fish. There are several caveats to this item as it does not impart a genuine smoke flavor to your recipe nor should the liquid be employed on a constant daily basis. We recommend this product only to create more interesting homemade sauces. You can use your backyard gas grills smoker to smoke meats. Several producers of grills now include a smoke trough where you can insert a mixture of wood chips, pellets or chunks of hardwood for use as smoking material. The hoods on these grills typically require closure when meat smoking is needed. If you have an older grill which lacks the trough don’t worry, as you can buy a smoke box at your local houseware outlet, or you can put together your own out of aluminum foil pockets to hold the wood
chunks. The only problem with using the backyard grill for smoking is that the grill tends to cook the meat too rapidly. Please remember that the art of correctly smoking meat is to cook the meat slowly over a longer period of time at lower temperatures. Making use of the typical propane grill setup for smoking the meat can result in the food being done much too quickly while failing to impart the desired subtle smoky notes. This is why you need low temperatures and the right tool for the job. Fortunately such equipment is available today for minimal cost.

Smoking meat is great for providing a warm and accomodating atmosphere for guests, perhaps inside a nice gazebo or around a picnic table. Most of us savor the simple joy of staying outdoors and eating tasty grilled meat but it often doesn’t cross our minds that what appears to be healthy grilling can turn out to be less than healthy. Heterocyclic amines and polycylcic aromatic hydrocarbons may sound like complex words to most of us, but if we look carefully into their meanings we may look at grilling in a whole different way. Heterocyclic amines are cancer causing substances that appear linked with the grilling of muscle meat and they have been shown to possibly cause tumors in animals and perhaps even in humans.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, for example, are cancer causing compounds produced by fats leaking onto the fiery coals and then being released through the smoke. The smoke emanated releases these compounds which coat the meat. There is a silver lining though! The above cancer promoting compounds do not necessarily mean that you should ban grilling from your summer time gatherings. There are some steps you can take to reduce the amount|number of these compounds from coating your meats. Marinate your meats before grilling and grill a lot of non meat fare along with the meat to avoid filling up on meat alone. Also, do not overcook or char your meat. The more charring, the more cancer causing compounds will be formed and found on your burger. Cook your meat slower and at lower temperatures, and grill every other night because in moderation, grilling and meat smoking can be thoroughly enjoyed.

Unless you find a lucky deal at an estate or other sale, I would steer clear of very low priced smokers.  Cheap smokers are usually rife with hidden costs.  Weak, unsubstantial, and unfit construction promotes heat loss, so fuel costs escalate.  Keeping a steady smoking temperature is very hard with these.  Cheap and flimsy put together smokers won’t last very long,  most likely requiring replacement after less than a few years.

The old adage, “You get what you pay for” applies here as it does in may other areas of life.  Heavier purpose built construction will last longer, resist the damaging effects of heat and weather better, and keep the fuel costs down by not allowing the heat to easily escape during operation.  The smoking outcome is better as well since if the heat is maintained better, less effort is wasted in the cooking process and the food is smoked faster.  It’s much easier to control the temperature with a properly built smoker.  Isn’t temperature control one of the cornerstones of food smoking?  If you make the commitment to pay for quality up front, then you won’t go wrong.  Your investment will pay you back many fold with delicious smoked fare which will be the talk of the town and coveted by other pit masters.

Liquid smoke is used as a flavoring in recipes where you want a smoky flavor without having to actually smoke the food being prepared, or in liquid dishes which you can’t actually smoke.  Also, it is used extensively in the preparation of bacon.

Using the grill at yard or pool parties is like being in the hot seat.  This is meant to be taken literally as well as figuratively.  The “grill master” is an honored participant in any outdoor summer food fest.  Unless going with catering staff, this spot is usually taken up by the man of the house, the host himself.  This can just as well be performed by a woman, but it is usually a man’s domain.  The grilling function is very closely aligned with the remote control master on the indoor side.

So, nothing spells summer like a fired up grill, maybe the sounds of people splashing in a pool, and even the sounds of the radio playing popular summertime tunes.  Add to this a blue sky and some white puffy clouds on a sunny day, and it spells H-E-A-V-E-N to many.

On a day like that, nothing can go wrong.  Nothing.

Enjoy!

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It says:

The smoking attachment for use with a barbecue grill has a smoker box with a solid bottom plate, left and right side walls, a rear wall, a top, an open front and two doors that close and substantially seal the smoker box. Support brackets on the side walls support the smoker box on a grill box with the solid bottom plate above a grill heat source. A smoker box divider plate divides the smoker box into a wood chip chamber and a smoking chamber. A wood chip box holds wood chips and sets inside the wood chip chamber. Tray and rack holders support racks and trays with food products in the smoking chamber. Smoke from the wood chips passes through smoke passages in the smoker box divider plate and through smoke passage apertures in the tray and rack holders. Vertical smoke baffles on the tray and rack holders control the distribution of heat and smoke.