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Smoking Salmon

Preservation of various meats is something that out ancestors did as a matter of course but which modern people have forgotten how to do because of all of the convenience that comes with living in a specialized society. It’s not so difficult to relearn these almost lost arts. Ironically, the Internet and other modern technologies like mass production manufacturing has brought specialized devices tailored to the art of smoking within the reach of the everyman. These devices are inexpensive and well worth it since building one can be troublesome if you aren’t the handy type. Also, the manufactured devices and backyard grill add-ons are much more precise in how they control the temperature and smoke volume.

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!