Smoking salmon at home...

One of my interests is traditional American barbecue (as opposed to grilling); I have both a New Braunfels Silver Smoker offset and a (gasp) Brinkman's Electric bullet.  While I prefer the offset for most anything, I've made several attempts at smoking fish (specifically, salmon) and the electric is much easier to manage for this.  Note that the 'stock' Brinkman's runs around 230F, which is too hot to produce good hot-smoked salmon, so I had to make a modification.  It's easy really; I got a 2000W rotary dimmer, a heavy-duty 6-foot extension cord, some twist-on caps and a bunch of zip-ties and made up a heavy-duty,  in-line dimmer (obviously, not to code).  It's easy now to dial the smoker down to 160-165F for hours on end, and the dimmer heat-sink doesn't even get (too) warm.  If you try this at home, don't skimp - you really need a 2000W dimmer for the 1500W electric smoker.

An important part of getting good smoked salmon (or any fish, for that matter) is brining the fillets before smoking them to set up a pellicle.  I'd made several attempts using a dry brine, a mixture of non-iodized salt, sugar, brown sugar and spices that is used to coat the fish, and was never happy with the results.  Dry brining just left way too much salt on the fish no matter what I did, and the spices really don't alter the flavor of the end result.

This week, I tried a traditional wet brine, in which I mixed just 1/4 cup each non-iodized salt, sugar and brown sugar into a gallon of water and soaked the 1.5" to 2" chunks of fillet overnight in the brine (in a covered plastic tub, in a refrigerator).  After draining and patting the pieces dry, I dusted them with a little black pepper - that's all - let then air-dry on a wire rack for about an hour, and then smoked them at 165F for 8 hours using a handful of Alder pellets  in the bottom of the smoker about every 45 minutes for the first 5 hours.  Well, 8 hours was a guess and it was too long for most of the pieces; they tasted great but were a bit over-cooked.  My next trial at this will probably dial the process in, smoking for around 6 hours and tossing-in a handful of Alder pellets every 45 minutes or so the entire time.


Posted by danasblog [General] ( March 15, 2006 07:08 PM ) Permalink