Alaska's Silver Salmon | Brined, Smoked & Canned

all right it's about noon on saturday and we're taking a last-minute trip we're gonna go fishing again this season i already put our salmon fishing poles away but we're gonna go on another trip this is totally last minute we're going to valdez we're going for silver salmon i think it's like a five and a half hour drive so it'll probably take us a lot longer than that these poles last time we used them we broke them actually both of them these are really old reels and i got some new ones some really cheap ones i bought i'm gonna put those on real quick we're gonna grab a net i don't think we need our waders and we're gonna pack some food and we're gonna go so these are the little reels i bought i think i got them for twenty dollars so we're gonna see if these work got two new ones of those we're gonna bring our stringers our scissors beater sticks we're gonna do 20 pound line and you can snag these fish out there which is when you just cast a big treble hook out there and you hook them anywhere on the body but we've heard that these ones like to bite uh vibraxes so that's a vibrex we're gonna pick through this box and we're gonna find a few of these and so we're gonna be using of course we're going to be bringing some food on this trip and we have some of our coleslaw chopped up with some apples and we're going to bring some salmon too all right it is i think like two o'clock and we're finally ready to head out we have a long drive ahead of us but this is my favorite part the journey let's go here we go it is two o'clock and how many miles this drive is like i said it's five and a half hours and we've never been to valdez we've been close we've probably been about an hour and a half from there so here we go [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] all right made it to valdez i'm not sure what it looks like because it's 9 30 at night and it's dark we're gonna do a little fishing i think we found the spot where you're supposed to fish here i got a pink one arrow's using orange i think we're gonna see if we get anything tonight if not get back at it tomorrow i know i want orange i want the orange one here see there's an orange one down in there that one this one no it's orange that's fine see i'm gonna use only time to go fishing yeah let's go fish for a little get in there boys well 10 10 p.m nothing yet um it's almost low tide so i think we're here at like the worst time to fish but we're staying tomorrow and we're going to catch a better time to fish we're seeing fish jump out here these fish are supposed to be like nine or ten pounds out here we've heard uh but we're not catching it yet they're not biting so we're gonna keep at it for a little while longer and i guess we don't catch anything tonight we're gonna we're gonna sleep in the toyota tundra inn and we're gonna be back out here in the morning we have to eat dinner and cruise the town though first we do have to eat dinner and cruise the town hey you almost look like that one all right it's a little before four a.m and i think high tide's in an hour and a half so we're gonna head out there go fishing okay a lot a lot of action this morning there's fish out there for sure seals are coming in and pushing them into the shoreline and eric's using his jedi powers and sight fishing club he changed over to a hook with a weight to see if that would work i still have the spinner they don't seem to be responding to that this time right now it's crazy because these fish are so big in the heart i thought it was a seal is that it wasn't sealed i thought it was a seal but there was a fish there is a seal out here yeah you know what they're like he's working it right there yep oh my gosh finally we were having to work for these fish we got one that's a that's a big silver oh my gosh that thing is huge they're out here now though so i'm gonna keep fishing [Music] okay so eric's caught two fish so far we met a really nice family that was able to lend eric some thicker line because these fish are just massive so he's got 50 pound line on there now i think we both underestimated how big these fish are that fish is huge i'm pretty sure it's over eight pounds because i always compare everything to our cat and that feels like it's over eight pounds for sure that's that was a male i got it cleaned and put away any luck it's picking up well kind of picking up we got three which is sweet they're huge it's like compared to getting like six normal sized fish uh luckily the people in alaska are usually awesome folks and a lady here took me up to her truck and hooked me up with 50 pound braided line i was snapping my hooks off on these fish they're so big and we were using 20 pound line and we noticed that they're not biting our spinners so we both have snagging hooks on it we're just sight fishing we're going along this kind of clear water and we're looking for the fish we're hooking this out there and we're trying to snag them and pull them in but huge fish can't believe it it's crazy i actually thought one was a seal for a second yeah this is the big one i just caught he's missing part of his tail like a seal bit him or something this was in him so someone tried to catch him you get an extra hook yeah they broke their line in him and then look at the other side of him i think that's where i hooked him maybe but look at this nice big fish someone actually snagged him in the mouth i barely got this one barely got him so eating a granola bar too keep fishing it's so heavy these are huge okay we're taking a break we're in 18. i guess breakfast what time is it it's only 8 30. what time we got up at what three three morning did you get attacked who attacked you though a bunny rabbit a little bunny rabbit attached to you oh that's so sad i should oh dude sucks being old ariel knows so this is pretty cool we're kind of uh checking out valdez we're kind of across the bay from the main city i think we stopped and got some coffee and we're checking out uh a fish hatchery and i believe it's pink salmon and i'm pretty sure there's like a really big cannery here that cans pink salmon it's like a really big deal around here but we're gonna go down and check out where these pink salmon kind of work their way up this creek i think it's kind of late in the season but i don't know if you can hear behind me or see the seagulls out here are insane there's like thousands of them [Applause] [Music] so oh there's another one these are sea lions they're huge they're eating these huge fish crazy okay it is lunchtime and then we're gonna go fishing it's maybe an hour after low tide and i know i think that during high tide is better but we still have to get home today because it's really far away like 300 miles or so and eric's been seeing fish jump behind us so i think we're gonna get down there with some spinners and see if we can get any more fish arrows going with the meps real color for one i'm going with the number six vibrax uh big one i don't know we'll see if we can get one right now middle of the day i don't i don't know if the fishing's gonna be too good but we're gonna try [Applause] oh my gosh get it to shore yes good job that's a beauty that's a huge one yes i she bit it right she bit all three that is a monster she's huge i'm so excited we've been out here i think it's like 3 p.m maybe this is my first silver i caught the whole trip which is a beauty i want to get back to fishing got another one aaron and i both had them hurst broke look at that number six i gotta get back out there damn it i'm sorry that was a really good you almost had him gosh it's probably the hardest fish i've ever caught and one of the biggest he's he's longer i think it might be the biggest one big male right gorgeous we bit it he bit it i know well it is 6 13 and we are headed home the fish have been jumping really really well and we've been actively fishing in fact i'm pretty sure both eric and my back is broken because of this we got super lucky this time we are heading home with our limit of 12 beautiful coho salmon from valdez with amazing help from a really awesome awesome person we have already been here longer than we expected because this was a impromptu trip but we definitely are going to come back because valdez is incredible we want to come back at least for a few days and check out all the scenery now we're headed home for a long trip and we're going to see if we can find some coffee we found coffee i know it's like a merchant it's delicious thank you thank you thank you you too this coffee shop is good you guys are in valdez go to the coffee shop right next to the valdez sign their second time here and it's hard to get a good cup of coffee that's really hot and they do it really hot let's try this let's try ariel's that's good okay let's head home people it's uh 6 30. goodbye valdez thanks for having us oh nevermind i gotta get gas real quick ah [Laughter] [Music] 30 inches this one may be the last biggest one right we've got our fish cleaned and we are ready to process them this is the biggest fish i caught it's a female and she's beautiful i think she was 29 inches and there's another male here that is 30 inches that's the biggest one we have some smaller fish over here but honestly i can't even call this small these are all silver salmon and they are all absolutely beautiful much bigger than we expected we're gonna get a lot of meat for preserving which is absolutely awesome we both had a blast i think we finally recovered from the trip and we're excited to get these filleted and make some cool recipes with them and i know for sure we are definitely going to go back there in the future because these fish are just awesome okay well i'm not gonna lie that drive home to the cabin pretty sure i thought it was never gonna end it was like over six hours 320 miles and we drove through the night i think we got home at like two in the morning or something it was all a blur but it's definitely a fun place to go we're gonna go back next year these fish are huge these are the biggest silver salmon we've ever caught it was extremely fun fishing but we're gonna get this guy flayed this is the big one arrow mentioned we're gonna do a couple different recipes these are both gonna be canning recipes uh we're gonna do like half and half half of it we're gonna brine after we're gonna smoke we're gonna add some cool things and we're gonna can it all but we got 12 fish here and we're going to get them played [Applause] i think this is one of the bigger ones that is a massive fillet gonna get a ton i'm thinking one of those fillets will do at least two pint jars at least so we're getting a lot of food so [Music] so okay last one takes a while to do these fish we're getting some huge fillets uh we're gonna finish this one get cleaned up barrels finishing scraping those getting a little extra meat off of them and i think what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut up some chunks and we're gonna start brining half of this salmon we're going to start with this first one we're going to do a brine on these and we're going to be canning these so i'm going to cut them into strips about an inch to two inches thick and we're going to be canning these ones with the skin on so i'm going to leave the skin on them and the brine is easy we're gonna do five cups of brown sugar we do two cups of salt we're gonna put it in our big bucket and like i said we're gonna cut these into strips we're gonna do 12 fillets so that's half the fish that'll be six fish and we're gonna mix it up in that bucket probably gonna let these ones sit for just like maybe 12 to 18 hours we don't want them too salty and then we'll rinse the brine off of them and then we'll move on to the next step and we're going to keep these cold so as soon as i get these all chopped into strips and get the brine on them they're going to go back in the ice chest with some ice to make sure they stay nice and cold so we're going for jokes about like that nice looking salmon so so these fillets are huge i still can't get over how big these fish were down there when we were down there and really nice lady she actually gave me a bunch of 50 pound braided line which was awesome because we went down there with just regular fishing line that was 20 pound and we've done it before where we go fishing at these places we're not expecting the fish to be that powerful and we snap our line we lose a lot of fish um so we're gonna be changing over our lines to 50 pound braided line for sure before we go for these fish again and one of the cool parts about when you're canning salmon is you don't need to be too careful about getting all the bones out we just get the big bones out and then we leave all the small pin bones in there and you process these for like 100 minutes in the pressure canner so all the bones just kind of dissolve so it's super easy you don't have to be too careful at all just about done here and then we'll mix our salt and sugar on this fish so here goes our dry brine it's going to start off with just sugar and salt and it's going to draw a lot of liquid out of this fish enough where it's actually going to submerge this fish in the brine so i have five cups of brown sugar we make our own brown sugar it's really easy you just add molasses to regular sugar and then we're gonna do two cups of salt i'm just gonna mix this up [Applause] okay into the ice chest i don't know maybe 12 to 18 hours so we might check it tonight or we might wait till tomorrow morning then we're going to rinse this batch off last time we didn't rinse it off it's a little salty we're not going for too salty of a brine on this one so [Applause] [Applause] well i thought smoker season was done so i put the smoker away we went on this last fishing trip we caught our fish so i pulled the smoker back out still recovering from this trip it was a lot of driving a lot of uh action-packed fishing so i made myself another cup of coffee but we're gonna get the smoker fired up we're gonna start it with some kindling and i got a bunch of birch i'm pretty happy with the birch i just started smoking the fish this year earlier this year with the birch it's easier for me to get because i don't have to go the back woods to get it i can just get out of the woodshed and i haven't really noticed a flavor difference compared to the alder so we're using birch again this time [Music] okay i'm gonna get this little fire really hot gonna kind of clean off the grill for us and then i want to keep the skin intact on this fish so i'm gonna put a little bit of olive oil on the grill make it easy to peel the fish off and then we'll put a little salt on the fish and then we'll start throwing the birch on put the door on and we'll go for about four hours on this batch man i cannot i still can't get over how big these fish were that's two fillets off that big male but uh we let this go for about four hours smells really good we're gonna get started canning this one first so we're pulling these off now we're getting everything set up on the table we're gonna start slicing these into nice strips look at that those are huge those are huge okay perfect these are beautiful we've got some celery for our recipe and we're also grabbing an onion and some parsley too the first recipe we're gonna be doing was one that was actually sent to us by someone that lives up here in alaska and they said it was like the best thing ever they used to make a ton of it we're gonna kind of alter it a little bit but her recipe was you do the salmon like you usually would in a jar and you add a tablespoon of tomato sauce a tablespoon of hot sauce i think it was like maybe salt and pepper but that was it and we're gonna do that but we're also gonna do celery onion and parsley from the garden of course yeah it's gonna be different for us we don't usually we usually keep it really simple sometimes we don't even season the fish so we'll smoke it and can it but this is gonna be kind of fancy yep we're excited we've caught a lot of salmon this year so this is gonna be kind of a cool recipe i'm gonna slice these into chunks they're going to fit in the jars we usually don't leave the skin on either but we're going to leave the skin on this time and you're going to chop the veggies but this is gonna be really good that's not even half that's not even a quarter of a filet that you just did we're gonna be here all day what smells always helps to have your gear ready ahead of time we have all our jars rinsed and cleaned and we've got our lids and our bands all counted out although i think we didn't anticipate it's going to be it's going to be quite a bit more than we anticipated we only have 35 and i think it's gonna be well over 40 maybe i think it's going to be like 60. between this one and the other recipe will probably about 60 jars this is gonna be a lot these don't fit a lot in here we're trying to keep them in chunks and keep the meat kind of together usually when we do canned salmon we just take it off the skin we pack it in there but this one we're going to try to make it look kind of good right i don't know about you but putting potato and tomato sauce i don't think we can go wrong what do you think if i start to put them in the pressure canner okay one more so how many jars have we made so far i've got six seven six seven eight nine ten ten so that's at least a ten there so we'll make over twenty yeah we'll probably end up with under fifty dollars but so how many got here one two three four five six seven eight i'm not saying you can't we'll probably just make them all right i just sleep inside yeah it's like they're hot packed or anything you just make them all so i look forward to a lot of our food but these i don't know i'm really looking forward to these ones we're doing super easy we're just putting onion in there on the bottom a little handful of the celery a little bit of parsley actually i'm doing quite a bit of parsley we got a bunch of that to use we're packing the salmon in there like i said we're doing it skin side out so these look kind of cool when they're in the jars and hopefully it'll make this salmon kind of stay together that way you can just kind of pull out a chunk because you pressure can these for 100 minutes and it kind of i don't know kind of really cooks the salmon so hopefully these will stay together for us we pack them in and then i'm doing some hot sauce about that much and then we're doing a little bit of tomato sauce and that's it we'll see how these turn out all right last one in the pressure canner we have 23 jars that we completed so it'll fit in both of these loads which is awesome we're going to get these started and clean up and get started on our next recipe okay we're getting separate for our second recipe we're going to use the brine fish so we still gotta wash that off and dry it but i'm gonna grab some garlic and start peeling this our garlic is not all the way dry so i'm gonna take some of the ones that kind of aren't gonna store as long you can tell they kind of are coming apart i'm gonna take those i'm gonna peel them the best way we found to peel them is i stick them in a mason jar i'm gonna use a quart we just shake the heck out of them since these aren't cured all the way these are they're kind of a pain to peel so i'm gonna get started peeling garlic that's a big one you told me i act like a child all the time what's going on here okay so this is the salmon that we cured and yesterday when we did it i think it's been about 18 hours we just did the sugar and the salt we did no liquid but if you look in here yep it's completely covered in liquid so that brine just draws all the moisture out of the fish it's kind of cool it really firms up the fish this fish is a lot firmer than the ones we just smoked this one has a nice red color to it but we're going to rinse this off completely and then we're going to pat it dry and then we'll be ready to put it in our jar so i'm going to put it in here first and i'm going to rinse it with some water oh my gosh look at the look at the color on that skin next batch we're doing the cured salmon we're gonna pack in the jars we're doing a lot of jalapeno in there we're doing a lot of garlic in there and we're gonna do a little bit of ginger and some olive oil what do you think that's a lot of ginger too much ginger ginger's very smell that no that's pretty fun okay i would do it hair lesson uh we think olive oil on top probably this is absolutely perfect we're gonna have three batches exactly and we double stack in our pressure canner so our pressure canners they hold uh 16 in each one so we got one going there we're gonna do this one there and then we'll have one more to do after that we're gonna do these all for 100 minutes well i just got back from town i was filling up our propane tanks and ariel was handling the canyon for us i walked into the house and it is probably the best this house has ever smelled that is because of this canned salmon right here this is the one with the tomato sauce and the hot sauce it looks beautiful it's got a nice dark color to it it just smells amazing i cannot wait to try that one this batch is done so let's take a look and see what these ones look like okay these ones also look amazing we ended up with 46 jars all together which is great uh we did really well on salmon this year it's the most salmon we've ever caught in our lives in a year so a lot of this salmon is um is going to carry us on to next year we did that purposely we wanted to focus a lot on fishing this year so next year we could focus a little more on hunting a little more on building so a lot of the salmon um will be next year too all we've got left to do tonight is finish this last batch but that is going to do it again we're just super thrilled with the sandwich a great tip and we'll see you guys next time you

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 460,339

Rating: 4.9481897 out of 5

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, cabin life, tiny house alaska, fishing in alaska, cabin living, off grid living alaska, off grid cabin, alaska fishing, garden alaska, homestead alaska, alaska salmon fishing, fishing salmon alaska, curing salmon, smoking salmon, preserving salmon, canning fish, canning smoked fish, smoker for fish, coho salmon, silver salmon, valdez alaska, alaska silver salmon, brining salmon, fish smoker, wild alaskan salmon, alaska salmon

Id: VgVMAnVaeQA

Length: 37min 45sec (2265 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021