BEST CAMPFIRE SMOKED SALMON | Wow!

welcome back to another episode of outdoor chef life i'm taku and i hope you guys been following along on our alaska journey because it's been awesome so far and it's about to get even better today we left anchorage in the canine peninsula area and we're heading north towards fairbanks but along the way i stopped by a river because i heard there was some king salmon running and i got myself a nice one today i'm using roe as bait and there's a few other people using row as well and some people using spinners so i get to the river and there's about probably about 10 people fishing on the river and but everybody's fairly spaced out so i situate myself in between these two bushes because there's nobody there and i get into the water and i start casting [Music] i'm using my okuma 99 guy select pro medium action along with the itx 4000 also from akuma and this is the perfect setup for this kind of fishing nice uh bobber fishing on the river it's just the perfect length and the perfect size is real i'm using roll on the hook and i'm just letting it drift slowly along the river downstream as i do same thing with steelhead and you can also use that technique for salmon as well and i know somebody's gonna ask so i'm gonna say it right now i'm using gloves because i'm using row and the row is really sticky on your fingers and it gets all over the rod all over the reel so the gloves kind of help [Music] so on my very third cast reeling slowly and i see a little tick of the bobber and i just reel real quick and then boom i feel a fish on there some fish on i got one and this fish doesn't feel too heavy at first but then all of a sudden it turns and makes a run upstream and big fish go upstream so and it just starts peeling line and i'm tightening the drag and then it peels even more line just just keeps going i'm like oh oh there's other people fishing on my right side upstream so i tell them hey i got a fish on over here so so hopefully you know i don't tangle up with them and they can reel up their lines and this fish just keeps going up up up and i just go wait up wait into the water a little bit more just to avoid that bush on my right because it's just gonna wrap me around there and it keeps going up and i'm like i gotta turn this guy i gotta turn him trying to turn his head downstream and bring him back down but it's fighting pretty good so the whole time like oh it's a good one this is a good one [Music] and finally i get him to kind of turn his head and it starts heading downstream and it's coming down it's coming down still fighting though [Music] and at this point it's getting pretty close to me and i kind of see a little bit of the fish like yup that's a good one and uh i asked the guys on the river that were upstream hey anybody have a net and they were kind of just laughed and uh they were like no nobody's got a net you're on your own there and i was like all right no problem it's all good uh and then so i just work work my way downstream a little bit along with the fish and there's this little section that i can probably land them so i start kind of coaxing towards towards that that shoreline the riverbank fish isn't giving up too easily but eventually i'm able to bring them towards the shore and there's two big boulders and i get them right in between the boulders there and there's like a nice pool riverbank so i able to kind of just push him towards shore towards the bank and beach him grab it and boom there it is there you have it this is my first king salmon in alaska so and it's a really good one and look at that hook set right in front of its mouth it wasn't going anywhere it was on [Music] all right guys check this out we got it done so quick this is about the third cast i think it was outside i know you jocelyn was just chilling in the van before uh she could even see what i was doing and bam we're hooked up on a nice king salmon there's been guys here that's been fishing for a couple hours with no bites but we got it done i'm gonna just gut this uh because this one is a female and i can tell it's got a lot of row we're going to make something cool for sure so i'm going to just take the row out put it in the uh some containers and then we'll take it to our camp for tonight and we'll filet it over there it's pretty thick here we go there's the row yeah look how big this row is like the size of the row is so nice all right let's try to do this without losing any there you go there's one heck yeah oh this is so nice yeah yes oh nice my gosh that's so perfect all right take the rest of the guts out oh i'm so surprised that the meat is still like really bright orange yeah usually the females they get pale because they put all their energy into producing the eggs but this one is still really nice did she put a good fight yeah pretty decent almost took me up where all the other people are fishing all right let's get to fellaini on the salmon look at this nice uh i measured it out about 34 inch salmon and i weighed it after i took the roll out took the guts out the gills and it was 12 pounds so with everything in there probably another three pounds i would guess so probably about 15 pounds i'm just gonna take the head off first i'm too bad i'm not a halibut fishing soon otherwise i would have i would keep the head and use it for bait again and get a big big halibut just taking the head off still got the collar today with this salmon i'm going to try to do something special i'm going to try to smoke it whole no not exactly whole but butterflied so in order for me to sort of butterfly this we're going to do a reverse butterfly actually so that's all that's butterflying on the belly side so in order to do that do the like this so we come up here and we're just basically going to knock out the rib cage right here all along there and then we'll just follow that but we're not going to cut all the way just have to be careful to not cut the skin on the other side so now we're going to take out the whole spine here in order to do that i'm going to slide my knife right below the spine on this side and we're going to cut through some bones here because we're coming to through the rib cage on this side and be careful and try not to cut that meat there try to do it in less strokes because it'll look better that way so we're just gonna sort of saw but slice through and all the way down to the tail and we're just gonna cut it off cut the entire tail off as well and we could take scrape all the meat off of this again but honestly there's not too much okay let's continue we're going to try to take the rib cage off here i like that it's still like really vibrant orange even though it's been in the river for some time you can tell because it's kind of it was kind of colored up starting to have a little pink hue to it and uh they get pretty red once they go up really high into the river i'm going to take the fin off as well so i don't think we need that part but you can tell this one came from the river because it's still starting to get real lean and you can see the meat right here starting to really break apart um very easily it's very fragile and that's you know they they start to deteriorate when they're in the rivers because especially these females they're putting all their energy into the row of producing the row so okay well there you have it a reverse butterflied salmon it's still attached completely there you go it's the back side the fins still on there it's all good and then there's the front all right there's the flesh the next thing we're going to do is we're going to brine it i'm going to make a little salt and sugar brine real simple i might put some chili flakes in there actually and we're going to do a wet brine this time and i have my bucket got my bucket i cleaned it out i washed it out with soap and everything so it's nice and clean in there we're going to make a wet brine salt and sugar some chili flakes and hopefully this whole piece fits inside of here so i'm just going to try try the bucket let's see if it fits so it turns out the bucket is way too small could have seen that coming so let's just uh we're gonna make a brine inside of the yeti so i'm just gonna measure with my handful and i'm using just a cane sugar you can use brown sugar but it would work well for this as well but let's go we're gonna go five handfuls of sugar what was that three four five you usually want to go a little bit heavier on the sugar than the salt now i'm gonna add some water make sure everything's all dissolved and don't be afraid to taste your brine the brine should be salty yet a little sweet i think it needs a little bit more sug a little bit more salt it needs to be salty to draw draw out the moisture once the ice dissolves it's going to get a little diluted too so we'll go to two and a half more [Applause] and we'll do another handful of sugar [Applause] i'm gonna add a little chili flakes to this a little spicy brine [Applause] i think my spicy sweet salty brine is ready i'll just slide this whole entire thing in here oh yeah now that's perfect also what you could do is lay a paper towel on top to make sure if anything comes above the water it's it'll still be soaking in the brine and we're gonna let that sit overnight never leave food outside while you're camping overnight this is going in the van well now it's the next morning and now we're gonna make this contraption that's gonna hold the salmon over the fire over the smoke and i'm thinking i'm gonna use this stick as the main stick and i kind of like it because it's a little bit bowed and when you put it over the fire it's gonna you know hang it a little bit more over the smoke so i think this might work the only hard part is gonna be i gotta split this wood right in half perfectly without messing up so i think that's gonna be the hardest part you know i have some other sticks here that i can break down into smaller pieces and put as my my cross beams and that'll support the salmon as well let's give it a shot right down the middle going well so far i think that's pretty good all right let's take a look at our salmon this is one heavy piece of salmon hopefully this works so the salmon looks good feels a little bit more firm now and that's the idea with the salt to firm it up because these ones once they get in the river like i said they get kind of mushy so we're gonna put the salmon so that's it right there and then we'll put the cross beams and it'll support the flaps so with these ones i've wedged the the stick in with the salmon so it's kind of it's pretty sturdy there and with the one down here it's the one underneath is wedged in so and i'm just tying the ends with some fishing line [Music] oh not too bad not too bad so i've made a hole right near the tail and i just want to keep it keep it up keep it from sliding down so i'm gonna put that down like so and i'm gonna tie around this line make sure i just heard something in the bushes make sure there's no bears coming at me oh not too bad let's take a look at that heck yeah that's pretty good okay guys i think this is gonna work i think i'm just gonna put a little bit more chili flakes on here you know this is my guitar [Music] all right check this out it's right in the greatest [Music] and i think we're gonna pretty much have to let this smoke for the rest of the day [Music] okay guys it's looking good it's been about four and a half hours now and it's got it's had constant smoke and the meat is starting to feel fairly firms it's uh has a little softness to it still the back the skin is completely dry nice and leathery it's looking good but i think it's still gonna need another couple hours this meat right here is really thick so it's gonna take a while for that smoke to penetrate and if you guys thought alaska was cold all the time it's completely wrong it's so hot right now and i feel like it's hotter than the bay area it's like 80 degrees at least it is hot all right it's been at this position the whole time but now i'm gonna switch it up i'm gonna take this out and i think i'll just put it like this a little bit closer to the smoke since the wind is just blowing all the smoke away this would make sure that it's still getting a lot of smoke and it's not too hot in there there's no fire at all it's just smoking so it's perfect i'm gonna flip this over whoa let's see well it could go a little bit longer okay well what i was going to do to finish it off before i finish it off made a little whiskey honey glaze so i think i'll just brush some of that on and i think i'll just do one side of it let's see if we can flip this back over without breaking off looks good we'll just let that go for maybe half an hour and it's done we had a casualty i just saved most of it though all right guys it's done all right let's cut this all off and reveal our salmon so on this piece i put the the stick between the the split one on the back side i think doing it on the on the um on the meat side is better because that could happen if you do if you stick it on the back side get out of here guys oh sheesh that looks good this piece here oh my gosh it's so oily i think these collars are going to be delicious this is literally so so juicy still look at that my gosh it's dripping it is dripping just take a look at this just falls apart smoked smoked so perfectly that's good i like the chili flakes on there it gives a nice little kick in the brine i think i could either left it in the brine a little bit longer or made it a little bit saltier but it's really good because the thicker pieces don't have as much of that the brine flavor just that the belly piece the oh my gosh it's perfect go ahead try it that piece is the buttery is uh different than like a regular hot smoke yeah this is it's like in between yeah like in between pretty much oh it is very oily it's so fatty yeah i can feel that just the oil just coat my mouth yeah even though this fish is like coming up the river it's still so it's got so much fat i would have expected that yeah i'm guessing these fish are going really far up the river so they have to have a lot of fat storage yeah it's like a like a copper river king which i want to get to but we haven't had the chance to go for that copper river kings heard the season wasn't all that good for them but oh drippy drippy i know it's so it's so good it's juicy yeah that was the collar piece that's a nice piece [Music] oh right one last thing that was well worth it thank you guys for watching this episode if you liked the video make sure to hit that thumbs up subscribe and if you haven't seen the rest of our alaskan adventures check them out but more to come on next week on taco tuesday see you guys peace

Channel: Outdoor Chef Life

Views: 2,646,197

Keywords: smoked salmon recipe, catch and cook, smoked salmon, grilled smoked salmon, best smoke salmon, king salmon fishing, king salmon recipe, outdoor cooking, cooking in nature, Smoked over fire, Alaska king salmon, Alaska vanlife, how to smoke salmon

Id: rcLkW20tJXQ

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022