How to Make Smoked Salmon (Brine Recipe, Drying & Smoking Process)

we had a great time fishing with Chris and the guys tons of fun catching big salmon if you haven't got a chance to watch that video you can check it out right here here ok anyways check it out right here and we had a ton of fun again when I thanked them for taking us out one of the best things though about that trip is when you get back and you've got loads of salmon now what do you do with it one of my favorite things is actually smoking salmon so we're gonna go over a quick recipe on how to smoke the salmon first of all to get the process to work the best you need to brine the salmon and what that does is it's going to draw out some of the extra moisture out of the fish and also make it easier for the smoked flavor to penetrate and on top of that it's going to impart some flavor to the fish itself based on what you put in it now the process that I use for brining is called a dry brine basically it takes three dry ingredients you mix them together and put it on the fish and that'll start to draw the moisture out of the fish once it draws the moisture out that mix together of liquid plus the dry ingredients turns into a liquid brine that the fish will then soak in for the next day or so length of time that you want to brine it is really up to you some people do 12 hours some people do 24 48 I've talked to people that will leave it in the brine for three or four days it just kind of depends on what you're looking for how much salt and flavor you want impart it into that fish how much you want to taste like the natural fish beforehand for today we're doing three half Flay's of salmon and so I mix three-quarters of a cup of each brown sugar white sugar and kosher salt mixed it together put it on the salmon put it in the container and put it in the fridge in about every 4 or 5 hours I'll just flip it turn it and then come back to it the next day I went ahead and let this brine for about 48 hours and now what we're gonna do is take it out of the brine rinse it completely off just don't tell the wife I'm going to use the lawn furniture to rinse off the sugar mixture here and then let it sit to start to air dry a little bit you want to get some of that moisture off with a paper towel and then let air just start getting to that surface and it's going to create what's called the pellicle which is basically a thin crust that that smoke will adhere to it's probably gonna take about two to three hours for that to form make sure flies aren't getting on it in the meantime you put a fan on it speed up the process and then we'll be ready for smoking now I'm going to be smoking with Applewood chips so I took some Applewood and I went ahead and soaked it overnight so you can get a lot of moisture in there that'll create a ton of smoke if you put it on there dry it's just going to burn and it's not gonna impart the flavor that you're wanting here we go welcome to hillbilly land and the hillbilly land smoker looks Purdy now we're gonna get the charcoal started we're gonna go ahead and put our Applewood chips on there and get some smoke going I went ahead use some luminol file to make a little container put the soaked Applewood chips in the Salmons been drying for about two hours now and you'll see its kind of lost that shiny look it's kind of got more of a matte sticky film to it and these could actually stand to probably go for another hour so get a little bit more firm but I'm running out of daylight so we're gonna go ahead and get these on the smoker and get started place these as far away from the heat source as possible for right now we don't want them to cook quickly we just want that smoke to roll across it come through here come out the vent and just flavor it and we're gonna hope to keep that at about 150 to 160 degrees you're gonna need to smoke it for about one to three hours depending on the thickness of the flays what you're looking for is an internal temperature of a hundred and forty degrees and the thickest part of the salmon that's when you're gonna know that it's done smoked ready to go alright so we hit a hundred and forty degrees may have taken us until two o'clock in the morning hey that's the hard part with the charcoal but anyways 140 degrees now we're going to take these off let him rest cool down a little bit and then we'll take care of him in the morning all right so here we go a big old plate of great smoked salmon straight from Lake Michigan really easy recipe just several steps that you have to pay attention to throughout the process but the final test of course I've got to try it no just kidding that's great now if you're not a big fan of fishy fish which a lot of salmon and trout can be really fishy one big thing that I would highly recommend when you get this off the grill let it cool down for a while and then you'll find out that the meat will separate from the skin extremely easy when you flip it over you're going to notice a lot of gray meat is what I call it on a fresh fillet it actually looks red it looks like there's blood in that meat that's real close to the skin you'll notice a lot of that gray meat right up tight to the skin what I like to do is to go ahead and take a knife and just gently rub across the green you'll find out that that gray meat just wipes right off that's where all that really strong fishy flavor is and if you've got somebody that doesn't like fishy fish or if you don't like it as soon as you get rid of that gray meat all of that fishy flavor is gone and you're just left with great salmon with a nice smoke taste nice sweet salty cure mixture and it turns out great now I'll go ahead and take these smaller portions and we're gonna go ahead and vacuum seal them and put them in the freezer and that way we can enjoy it throughout the year so how to smoked salmon pretty easy I'd recommend you start a little bit earlier than 8 o'clock at night otherwise you're going to be doing it by a flashlight but hope you like it

Channel: Total Outdoor Programming

Views: 46,408

Rating: 4.5897436 out of 5

Keywords: salmon, chinook, smoker, brining, pellicle, wood chips, trout, fish, charcoal, dry rub

Id: yDKkg2vDyPc

Length: 5min 58sec (358 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018