Alaska: Smoking Salmon

[Music] so we got this fish from a commercial fisherman up in Talkeetna and it was fresh the same day so we I just drove up there kind of at a moment's notice went up and got ten whole fish there silver is silver salmon the sockeye run has been really slow this year oh I get that one and then look at that silver shine we brought them home and put them you know gutted them and cleaned up and put them in a brine solution with brown sugar and salt and some spices and and then we laid them out to dry to form what's called a pedicle which is kind of this glossy finish that you get on the meat and just a little bit drier and and it does kind of go undergo a transformation when you take it out of the brine it it looks more red a little bit drier than the fresh meat you can see the difference between the two yeah this has what I think it's a pellicle on there and it's really kind of a glossy tacky coating and these are just beautiful looking fillets they do get a little bit less of this pink color and more of a deep red after they've been in the yeah there's like even more so they're a little drier so um so what's the difference between these and these over here yeah these ones I made it basically of that and did about well all these fillets I put in there with two quarts of water and 2/3 of a cup of salt and two cups of brown sugar it's a very simple brine solution for those left them soaking overnight in the fridge how about yours okay so mine was a dry rub essentially but what you do is you take your three cups of brown sugar one cup of salt and then you add in a few spices I used black pepper and garlic and some cayenne pepper and and then you just stick all the fish together inside of a bin I just used a Rubbermaid bin and weighed about 12 to 14 hours and when I pulled the fish out of the bin there was a lot of moisture in it because all that salt and sugar just drew the moisture out of the fish even though it was a it was at first a dry rub it turns out to be kind of a turns into a Brian yeah it turns into it a brine okay cool so we're gonna smoke it over we got the little chief going I have a little apple chips left over I'm gonna mostly use alder and we're gonna load up the rack that's over there and it goes in here on top of the chips and it's electric so it'll sit there and smoke we're gonna probably smoke it for about eight hours maybe four pans of of the fruit wood there so we'll see how it turns out and we're gonna kind of compare our two different recipes the dry rub and the brine solution all right so we got the drip pan here for the smoker probably put quite a few more of those on that rack and maybe put the bottom that's one and a half fish that I have there and the big Flay's and you probably have at least another fish your smaller filets huh yeah we decided to do all ten fish so what's on the table here's a total of ten we didn't eat one fresh gotta have some pressure so this ritual of putting away salmon is important for whites and natives alike and this extends to wild game and so on to here in Alaska as you see behind me I have various freezers and those are just big tall freezers and then one chest freezer but that's so we can get a significant amount of game and other preserves and store them for the winter which is always a satisfying thing for us to do so over here we've got the Trager grill getting started with a batch of salmon there to smoke I've got about four and a half fish in there beautiful looking fillets [Music] I'm also gonna coat these with maple syrup we're using Hollander so the altar is fantastic for fish the Sportsman's favourite keep them in the bucket here to really keep them dry one problem we have this then they drove water then they don't burn properly copper nice and cool for a good six or eight hours of smoking get them going about the little chief out here to the patio and it's got a new bachelor chip so it's gonna start smoking soon and the trigger is really going it's pouring out of there it's the drip jar smoking away got a nice load of alder in there what do you think Harrison it's pretty pretty good it's gonna be yummy I think so Hammond is yummy how about smoked salmon yeah even better what's your favorite way to eat it just by itself or do you like to make smoked salmon gravy or smoked salmon like I like it on the bagel mix them with cream cheese on a bagel that'll be so good that's really part of the Alaska experience isn't it are you Alaska kid you swim in the ocean yeah a lot you like this one in the ocean insert yeah once you get used to it kind of get it feels warm like the wide ocean once you get used to like your skin is numb no no it doesn't it doesn't know it actually feels warm yeah once you just have your feet in it for a while it's like hey this is like the yoc if elastic kids can do anything well I've never met a girl who could do that and not get numb okay what I've done here is just get them in the smoke but after about an hour I'm going to paint them with some equal certain furniture also works great and there's a little more lasting so hey guys it's almost 1:00 in the morning and we've got the fish out of the smoker and I want to show you what the final end product is gonna be ok guys here's the final end product it's about 1:00 in the morning and pulled the fish out of the smoker and this is what the salmon looks like beautiful beautiful coloration lovely fish all preserved that brining and smoking this is all the stuff that was in the Trager smoker and then this is from the little chief this we did more of a dry rub on it so it turned out a bit drier so look at that it's but dryer flaky very delicious you could only smell and taste this and this is a little more moist I used a maple syrup glaze on it just look at that you can see the volume is considerably down shrinks quite a bit as it dries out it's still a lot of fish and then here's some that I offer this piece I took something off the skin side there this is what it looks like so it's really just fantastic smoke preserve product hmm all right well you guys have a good night hope you enjoyed the video and please like and subscribe to our channel if you get the chance we'd appreciate hearing your comments [Music]

Channel: Boondoc Travels

Views: 19,069

Keywords: iMovie, smoked salmon, alaskan salmon, alaskan wild salmon, salmon, smoking salmon, alder smoke, alder, fish, smoked fish, fishing alaska, kenai, silver salmon, coho salmon, sockeye salmon, russian river, russian reds, russian river reds, preserving fish, preserving food, preserves, traeger grills, traeger recipes, little chief, traeger, treager, little chief smoker, big chief, big chief smoker, smoker pellets, pellet stove, pellet smoker, chips n' chunks, chips and chunks

Id: 9DiR6qtI_lM

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 29 2018