Best Smoked Salmon Recipe

alright now we got the fish cut and then we want to smoke it now there's several different brands I'm going to show you the old original Bryant's what your great-grandfather used to use this was the old standard everybody use rock salt you can go to the local feed store buy a sack rock salt for a doll take a cup of rock salt you have to put it in a crock or a plastic container can't put it in something metal to that they would add one your grandmother would have spent 20 minutes packing on the brown sugar but a cup and a half of brown sugar so one cup of rock salt a cup of half a crown sugar and two quarts of cool water now having done that you're going to stir this all you want the rock salt will not completely resolved water will only take on so much salt did you can stir it around there get it to dissolve and then you're going to put your fish in there now that only came up to here with this amount of fish we have here we have to double that you can just double it you could put two cups of rock salt three cups of brown sugar four quarts of water getting bring it up to here as you put the fish in it's coming up so if you use a cylinder type device to hold your fish in you use less brine if you had something that was flat like this you'd have to triple that or quadruple doesn't matter as long as the proportions are the same one cup of rock salt a cup of that parameter two quarts of water but you could do that four times this is it this is the only standard and this really works good for fresh fish if I had fish in the freezer and I wanted to do this I wouldn't use this method no the reason I say that is fish will freeze and it'll start tearing down the fibers and as it breaks down the fibers it will take on water so I'm using a wet solution when you take it out of there and you start the smoking process a lot of times it'll be mushy it won't be nice and firm so we don't like that so this is a good one to use on fresh fish although one thing you want to remember when you take the fish out here rinse them thoroughly in fresh water to get these salty deposits off it so one cup of rock salt cut in half brown sugar 2 quarts water that's a good Bryant I'm gonna show you my favorite one we did the liquid right now we're gonna do a dry solution this is my favorite because it never turns out salty you can use frozen fish fresh fish you can use any of them so I'm gonna take a cup of salt I'm gonna actually have a little less than a cup about 7/8 or 3/4 of a cup of plain salt has to be playing so then I'm going to take some brown sugar I'm going to take 4 cups but I'm gonna put 2 cups in there these are heaping cup so I'm not gonna take the time to pack it then I'm gonna put out my soul down on top of it like so around a little bit I'm gonna put 2 more brown sugar in so four heaping cups of brown sugar and one cup of plain non-iodized salt so 4 to 1 we put this in here we're gonna mix this all up together now we're gonna spread this on our fish now you need to have a container can't be a metal container needs to be plastic a crop or glass any one of those words so I've got that all mixed up good and I like these containers you get these at the dollar tree they're a dollar and they stack up really nifty so we'll get one of these I will set it down in here well starts to put my fish in there I'm just gonna start it in lighting it right in the bottom of my container like so now I've got one row I can see how I've got my fish in there then I'm going to take a generous portion of this dried mixture I'm gonna put it on my fish like so and if the pieces aren't too big you got room I'm going to just put another layer right up on top of that I'm just going to keep layering it in there but what you want to do is not put too much in there you can need a little bit of room to move them around so I've got those pieces in there like so then I'm going to take and I like to do this out on the porch unless it's 100 degree weather if you put ice in your ice chest or frozen water jugs in your ice chest it'll bring the temperature down to about 45 to 47 degrees and that's the perfect texture if you get this all four so that works if you put it there refrigerator takes up a lot of space so I'm going to put that lid on now I'm going to show you that one more time here so you can see see how all the powder everything's in there now within an hour to two hours that mole is going to change that is going to look like this now can you see how that's a whole liquid now what has happened is the brown sugar and the salt have drawn the moisture out of the fish this is the water that was in the fish now when I pick up a piece of this fish it's going to be stiff its firm that's ready to go into the smoker if I pick up a piece of this fish what is it it's limp so you can tell the difference so I know this one isn't cured now you put this in the refrigerator you leave it in there for four or five hours it'll juice up like this and then I like to leave it in there for at least 14 hours overnight but in the meantime I'm going to take and rotate my pieces if you don't rotate them what happens is you'll get two pieces that stick together like this you can't get this whole here to it so you to move on they all need to look like so and you've been tailed if you have a piece that isn't cured because it'll be a different color these are all looking good in here and if it feels a little bit left just moving around get it down front down into the solution now you can leave this in here for 14 hours where you can leave it in there for four or five days it depends on how much time you got and when you can start this movie so I leave it in there at least overnight 1214 hours then take it up when you take the pieces out you squeeze him off like this and you put them on your rack and dry them and then you start the smoking process alright now we've shown you two methods to use for brining your fish the one with the liquid and I only suggest using that whenever you're doing with fresh fish frozen fish seems to take on too much water now we've had it in there overnight 12 to 14 hours you can leave it longer whenever you take it out put it on your rack you have to rinse it with cold water and the reason for that is sometimes you'll have a little deposits of salt this will rinse it under the faucet really good with cold water rinse all that off and we're going to put it on our rack and our big cheese smoker and if you read any instructions they'll tell you to spray it with Pam or with whatever and it won't stick it'll stick the guarantee it I like to buy these little nylon things like this they fit right on there they sell them and it'll it won't stick to it you take it out put it in the dishwasher in your worship so if I was doing this take it out of the brine I take my piece out I'd put underneath the faucet I'll rinse it really good and let's put it on my rack now that's the way I'll do it now if I was doing it the other method that we showed you with the four cups of brown sugar one cup of salt you take it out and you just squeegee it off with your hands just like this not rinsing it and you lay that on your rack okay so now we get all of our pieces later on a rack and we're gonna put it on the rack like so and I usually do this on the house on the draining board you can do it outside but the Flies will drive you nuts and you blow it with a fan now the reason I'm doing that is it'll form a skin on the outside you can feel this this is dry it's about ready to go in the smoke so you blow with the fan forums that skin then as you start the smoking process it won't break open I let the oil out it'll always be nice and moist so everything's going to stay in there as long as you don't get too much heat and that's the advantage of using a constant heat temperature type thing like the Big Chief it will only go up to about 165 degrees so and if you use another kind of a smoker one like a profane smoker you get your heat to high it breaks it open you lose your oil so we're going to blow it with a fan and that usually takes two or three hours it won't spoil everybody always ask me does it spoil no it won't spoil because you've already cured it so we're going with a fan and you feel it and it's dry to the touch now it's ready for the smoker so I'm going to use a top-load Big Chief smoker now I know from my past experience this is my favorite what does I can take the rack out and I can blow it like so but for a lot of people that aren't as husky or as healthy as strong as some other people the front load smoker works a lot better because you don't have to do all that lifting so you can just pull out your axe butcher fish on it put your fan in front of it boil it you don't have to handle this much we're gonna use the top so I've got all my fish dried blown with the fan this weighs about 45 pounds so it gets heavy then I'm going to put it into my smoker I want to show you one little thing the most common thing that goes wrong with smokers is people will set it on the deck I have this one setting on the deck the heating element in this is right here in the bottom that's the hottest spot put it on a couple of plumber stone blocks or a couple of bricks get it up off the deck you'll never have any trouble with get it up off of the cedar whatever you have to have for a deck then I'm gonna put my fish now you see how heavy this is now if you had the wife doing that this front-load work much easier so after I get in there I'm gonna plug in my smoker and I'm gonna add my sawdust now I prefer puller chips now you could there's all sorts of different flavors Apple alter mesquite cherry you name it there's all sorts of different flavors that's the fun part of smoking is I'm going to use alder because I know that that's consistently good so I'm gonna throw my pan heating pool put it to the smoker put my lid on and start my smoking process now the next question everybody's going to ask is how long is that going to take it depends on the temperature it is outside like today it's going to be about 95 degrees I could probably have this done six to eight hours it was in the wintertime and it was 45 degrees and it was wet out it probably takes me 8 to 16 hours there are times when I've smoked fish as long as 20 22 hours it's not insulated now that always brings to mind a lot of people want to set this in a box that's been done before but just remember it gets hot in the bottom if you got any paper on the bottom it'll catch on fire I suggest you do it this way right here now in smoking you can use it'll only take on so much smoke flavor I use two to three pans of these chips it'll take 45 minutes to burn that chips out of it after a certain the third pan I won't put any more sawdust in I just use the heat all the chips do is flavor so after the second or third pant whatever you like you don't need any more chips one other thing I like to caution people on is when you take your pan out you just have the ashes don't just throw them on the ground next to the deck or throw them over in the bushes put them in a metal bucket we've got a lots of fire started from that also so be careful with that so if you're smokers going it'll take that about 15 minutes it'll start smoking real good 45 minutes per pan change the three pans I checked my attention all the time doing it I can tell by just feeling it whether it's done or not if you have any questions take a piece cut it open if it's pink all the way through it's done if it's opaque like this translucent it's not done so but don't overdo it you when you blow dry it like we just did with the fan you almost can't overcook it as long as you have a Big Chief smoker with 165 degrees if you had more temperature you could but these things are pretty forgiving gonna take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours but check in from time to time the only way to do fish right now if we've added about 4045 minutes now remember I'm gonna tell you a metal bucket now the plastic bucket I put a little bit of water in the bottom I take it out take the asian drop it into there then I'm gonna go up mine okay again I'm going to do today I'm going to do three of these pans of chips make sure you put it in a metal bucket keep the smoking alright now we've had it in our smoker here for about six and a half hours now remember today it's 93 degrees so it takes less time if this was a normal day of 70 degrees take that eight nap alright we'll lift it out oh it looks beautiful the question I get asked the most is how do you know if it's done I can tell by just pressing on it feels just pulled right out well you'll know it's done so and if you really look at this it's beautiful except for it looks sort of dry here these week these are the bellies and they always look boiler I don't like that look so I'm gonna put a finish on the outside I'm gonna take some honey I'm going up so it's nice and pliable and I'm going to brush a little bit of honey on these pieces and that will give you that honey coating on the outside plus it won't look dry and if you like to really jazz it up you can put a little cracked pepper on that hi my kids like the crack pepper on so you brush it each piece a little bit of honey I always put a catch here so it doesn't drip out on my table and that quick you can put the honey on and this these pieces here I'm going to take a little bit of cracked pepper and just put on top of it now the honey is going to stick to the fish and then the cracked pepper will stick to the honey and it'll stay on there otherwise your cracked pepper just fall off of the drag fish so if you want to have a crack peppered one you can also put onion salt garlic so everybody mine love garlic salt on him just be careful that you don't put too much on there because it will get so I'm gonna put this back in the smoker for about 20 minutes just so that will all blade is over all right now we got the honey on there and I put cracked pepper on some of it I'm gonna put it back on the smoker some of these pieces are actually done but I want to put them in there for about 20 minutes and then I'm going to take them out and then there's two two rows here that aren't quite done yet I'm going to put another hour on that it's fine for me but it's a little bit tough women and guys don't have the strength now the next question someone's going to ask is after that's done how long is it gonna last what I always tell everybody if he used four cups of brown sugar 1 cup of salt you mix it all up good put it on top of your fish you left it in there 14 to 16 hours you tuck it up squeegee it off put it on your racks put the fan on it blown until it was dry put it in the smoker just 2 to 3 pans and I saw this smoke until it's done take it out it won't last long because you're going to eat it it's that good so but if you vacuum-packed it put it in the freezer it allows the total you lose the seal on the back you just put it in your refrigerator not back him back to the last about 2 to 3 weeks it'll get a little mold on otherwise which I guarantee it you'll need it the best time to eat it as soon as I think that all the smoker was still warm it's absolutely the finest effort I remember I'm just showing you the basics the brown sugar salt and then the rock salt brown sugar and water those two are the simplest ones there's lots of things you can play with but learn the simple ones first and then you can expand on to something oh that's smoking fish pretty easy you you

Channel: Smokehouse Products

Views: 1,618,644

Keywords: smoked salmon, salmon, cooking, smoker, Smoking, Recipe (Website Category), Food, Best, how to make smoked salmon, Kitchen

Id: Jk3xl6H9o94

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 12 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/richardanaya]

You know you're a Cascadian when you use Tillamook ice cream tubs to hold salt and sugar.