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Gas Grills Smokers for Smoking Fish

You can use gas grills smokers, a built in grill with a smoker attachment, or gas grills with a  built in smoker to make some tasty smoked salmon or other smoked fish.  It takes time and effort,  but the tasty and healthy results are well worth it.

In this world of prepackaged and chemical laden frankenfood, it would be refreshing to travel back  to a different age when small native communities would smoke their meats over a smoky fire or in a  smoke filled teepee so that it could be preserved to tide them over during winter.  This is primal  stuff.  Most civilizations through history had some for of smoking as a food preservation before  chemicals and refigeration were invented.  I won’t argue against refigeration, but chemicals in  food, I believe, can lead to sickness or nutritional deficiencies.  While food smoking does create  some natural chemicals that you would not want to consume exclusively or every day, in moderation it  is fine, as is evidenced by the fact that people have been doing it for millenia without any  noticable chronic or terminal effect.

Let’s smoke some fish.

Fresh fish is the best, and you can eat salt water fish like salmon and tuna raw.  Sushi anyone?  If  you eat fish raw, it must be oh so fresh.  Besides fresh raw, or cooking it, you can freeze it to  save it for later.  You can can it as well.  Smoking is yet another method of preserving fish.  I  adore chilled vacuum sealed smoked salmon from the grocery store, and I have previously enoyed  canned smoked sprats from Latvia, which were very interesting and delicious on black or brown bread.

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

Get your fish.  Gut them and take the head off.  Cut them into fillets and chunks.  Leave the skin  on.  Put the skin side down onto the grates so if they stick you lose the skin and no big deal.  If  you were to try this with fish steaks the meat would stick to the grates and falls apart.  You would  be left with a mess and a lot of frustration, and wasted fish.

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

Prepare the fish with this basic brine solution:

1/2 cup non-iodized (Kosher works fine) salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 quart water

Stir until salt and sugar are completely dissolved

Place fish into the solution, taking care to insure that the fish is completely submerged in the  brine and place it in the refrigerator.

Thick 1 inch plus chunks should be in brine from 8 to 12 hours.

Thin 1 inch or less should be in from 6 to 8 hours.

Remove your fish from the brine and rinse each piece under cold water.

Being gentle, pat dry and lay the pieces on some paper towel to air dry for at least one hour.   After one hour you should notice that the fish has a kind of glazed surface film, or “pellicle”.  This is normal. This “skin” serves as a surface for the smoke to adhere to during the smoking  process.  After an hour of drying the fish should be a bit sticky to the touch, and this means that  it is ready for the smoking process.

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

In your gas grills smoker or other type of smoker, place the fish chunks skins down as mentioned  earlier, and they should not be touching each other.  Use large enough pieces so that you maximize  space.  This is so because since you need some space between pieces, smaller but more numerous  pieces would mean not enough space for all your fish.  Larger 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 tip.  If you have a multi level grate system in your  smoker, you will want to switch the top and bottom grates through the process since the bottom ones  get more 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 nice jerky but hard to get any bones out if you encounter any.  It’s  actually good to try to pull out as many bones as you can when you start, but there can always be  some small spiny ones inside the meat that you cannot see.  Do your best is all I can tell you to  do.  I used pliers to pull the visibly protruding bones from the raw fish.  Pull slowly, firmly, and  straight out.  For the twelve hour moist version of smoked salmon, any residual bones are easily  dealt with during the eating phase.  For the twenty four hour jerky version, it is best to just  separate the meat while it is still soft straight from the smoker.  You can use it in sauces and  gravy but not in soups.  Some people use the leftover skin and bones as a cat food.  Your mileage  may vary there.

While the salmon is cooling on the grates after the smoking is completed, you can add additional  spices like garlic and black pepper, or hot pepper like cayenne if that is your thing.  The greasy  white stuff is salmon oil, which is basically Omega 3 fatty acids and is very healthy for you.  That  stuff helps to unclog your arteries and it also soaks up spices very well.  I tell you that because  many people would think that it was “yucky” when in fact nothing could be further 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 sucks out the air and heat seals the bag once the  air is gone.  No air means that the food won’t spoil as fast.  You should still have it  refrigerated, however.  Freezing won’t harm it, but the texture can be affected.

Since the entire process can take the better part of two days, you want to work with batches of at  least 6 pounds – larger batches – to make it worthwhile and cost effective.  Non vacuum sealed but  plastic bagged smoked fish can go for about a month, while the vacuum sealed fish can last for  several months or longer.

I could have put this in the beginning, but a word about wild caught vs farmed salmon.  Now I know  that ay salmon or fish farmer reading this will not like it, but farmed fish is full of fake foods  and antibiotics, if not hormones.  You don’t want that.  Most of the time they get the salmon flesh  orangey pink by adding dye to the food mix.  In the wild, salmon flesh is white if they eat fish like  sardines, 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 fatty acid profile of the fish is TOTALLY  different between farmed and wild.  The fake and processed fish feed cannot match the stuff that the  wild fish eat, and their fats are full of healthy 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.  That  is why I will not eat Tilapia.  It is cheap, but it is also farmed and full of Omega 6 fats, which  can exacerbate inflammatory conditions like arthritis and artery disease.  You don’t want that the  cheaper price is NOT worth it.  Go wild.  If your fish monger says otherwise, get another fish  monger because he is full of something stinky, and I don’t mean rotten fish.

So there you have it.  I hope that this information on how to make smoked salmon is useful and  encourages you to be a bit adventurous, or possibly go get that gas grills smokers or other smoker  appliance that you may need to do this.