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From Publishers Weekly
Not every cookbook would include a recipe that begins, Dig a pit 3-feet-deep, 4-feet-wide, and 40-feet-long. But this is Texas and, given 300 pounds of brisket, there is no more invigorating an experience than this kind of open pit barbecuing as championed by Walsh in his collection of barbecue memoirs, trivia and history. A newspaperman at heart, Walsh interviews the top pit bosses across the state and shares their secrets: Harley Goerlitz instructs beginners (more…)

Smoked Salmon

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.

Some of this will depend on what type of grill that you have and how easy some parts can be removed.  You need access to the inside of the grill well.  I have a Weber grill.  This is how I clean it.  This is not a professional cleaning, but it gets most of the junk out.

First, make sure the that drip pan under the grill is not overfilled with grease.  You don’t want the scrapings that will fall into the hole at the bottom of the grill to make that overflow.  If it can take some scrapings without overflowing, then just leave it until the end.  By the way, make sure that you have some more of the proper disposable drip pans for under the grill since you will need to replace it with a clean one in the end.

Okay, with a wire brush scrape the grating that holds the food.  Get off what you can.  Remove them and put them somewhere where yo don’t care if there is a grease stain.  I just bring mine over to the hose in the yard.  I simply put them on the grass and use a non toxic degreaser spray and spray them.  I let them sit for however long the cleaner recommends.  When the clearner does it’s job, I hose them off and repeat for the other side.  You might have to get the grates ends where thicker buildup is.  This is also the area where due to the proximity to the grill walls while installed you can just never quite brush off properly.  let them dry on a drop cloth or on some ripped open paper bags.

On my Weber grill, there are angled pieces that come out and the burners come out easily.   If you can’t remove what is in your grill, and if you can get your scraper and hand in there to do the job then great.  Just be careful not to damage the burners or anytthing critical.  Go slowly.  This is not a race.  You should have set aside enough time and have good weather.  Get a paint scraper.  I now simply scrape off the inside of the grill walls and bottom, removing all of the built up char and soot.   Use the scraper like a shovel and haul out what you can and dump it into a garbage bag which you should have with you.  When the bulk of it is out, you can push the smaller hard to remove powder through the hole into the greasy drip tray for disposal.  Now, you can either reassemble, or if you are a clean freak you can use some oven cleaner and rags, but if you are unsure of the chemicals and perhaps their effect on things like the burners and such, just leave it be.  The grill will never be as clean as it was when it was new, and it doesn’t ahve to be.  Soot is soot, and as soon as you cook on it once there will be more soot.  The object here is to remove the excess built up grease and soot to prevent blockages, airflow problems, and fires from having all of that excess fuel in the form of unburned grease and fat sitting there.  Don’t worry about germs, because heat kills those.  It’s just the gross factor of all of that dirty looking stuff which turns many people off, and having a well performing grill will be your true goal.

Once you are confident that you have cleaned it out enough, reassemble the burners and or angle pieces or whatever is in your grill.  When the grating is dry, put those back on.  You now have a grill that will perform much better than it did when it was dirty.  Fire it up before cooking and turn it up high to burn off anything that might be on the grates, but you should have used a grate/oven cleaner that is non toxic or safe for ovens.

I didn’t do that at the beginning of this season, and I am paying the price.  I will be sure to do this in the late Fall because I miss the performance of a clean grill.

4 Piece Stainless Steel Barbeque Tool Set with clear finish, wooden handles. Consists of Spatula, Fork, Tongs, and Basing brush

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