Smoking Salmon the easy way.

hey guys my name's Eric and I'm here today to show you how to smoke some salmon now ever since up my wife got me my smoker for a Christmas last year people ask me what's your favorite thing to smoke enough I mean I've tried just about everything but the one I get the most compliments on is the smoked salmon and it's relatively easy to do so you just got a smoker you're looking to do something different or you've never even tried it smoked salmon by long means you better try this recipe fact many my sister made a couple batches she's had it she said this stuff was illegal she'd be a criminal so believe me you have to try this recipe anyway I got these big salmon fillets I got around almost 11 pounds of salmon here he seems way around three pounds of piece this recipe is really basic but first before we get the smoke it we have to brine it in very simple ingredients you need a regular dark brown sugar you need some kosher salt you need a little bit of garlic here which I've already chopped off and finish it off with a little bit of black peppercorn okay so let me show you how we do this we have to cut the fish up rinse it off with cold water and get it ready for the brine which we have to let sit in refrigerator overnight so check out how we do it right now so really all you need to do once you get the salmon out of the wrap is rinse it off with with as cold of water as you can have it and then just you know blot it dry with a paper towel and you just want to kind of slice it into small pieces now when this is sitting in the brine overnight it's going to shrink significantly it's going to pull all the moisture out of the fish but this is also part of the process that helps that smoke kind of soak up in the salmon makes it so delicious so you have to take the good with the bad so you can see I just cut it in these little slices here and just one that size and I'll show you how to actually put it in the pan and apply the burning alright guys I mix the ingredients together and basically you want to do three parts brown sugar to one part kosher salt you want to mix it all together you know you can always make multiple batches a little bit of black pepper and then a little bit of garlic the garlic of course is optional if you're on a big garlic fan you don't need to put it in there but you definitely need the sugar and the salt so basically very simplistic once you get that basic 3 parts sugar to one part salt you just mix it all together kind of spread a little evenly around here in the bottom of the pan now as far as the pan you want to avoid anything metallic you don't want to use aluminum or metal stainless steel which is what this is right here is fine or you can use glassware or what have you she just want to kind of start wearing the salmon individually like this and we're going to put some more on top or we're just gonna layer it in here then you kind of get the idea but ultimately you want to make sure every little piece is covered and we're gonna let this sit in the refrigerator overnight and you're gonna be amazed when you see it once it's done because there's no more brown sugar it all turns into a liquid so you see here you just kind of scoop some on top like this make sure all the fish is covered and that's pretty much it alright guys here you see I have all that salmon put it in this trays with that brine mixture you want to make sure like I said that all the pieces of fish are covered and you will be amazed how this looks like tomorrow morning when we start this start this get it ready for the next step in the process but yeah just put it in a container cover it up tightly put it in the fridge and tomorrow I'll show you the mixed up good morning it's been 12 hours since I put these away and take a look at them right now you could see the sugar and salt mixture basically turned into a liquid it sucked all the moisture out of this fish so it's definitely smaller sized pieces and what we put in last night now let me show you the next step in the process alright guys the next step is you have to rinse each piece off really good under ice cold water as cold as you can get it you don't want to dry it off with a towel or anything just rinse it off lay it out on the smoker rest make sure to spray the rats with something so the fish doesn't stick you can also use olive oil if you don't have any of this spray canola spray and then I just put a little black pepper on it now we just have to wait we have to wait anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half what happens as this fish comes to room temperature it's going to start to feel sticky to a touch and there's a chemical reaction happening in the fish I don't know exactly what it's called but basically when it gets sticky on the top the fish is ready to absorb the full smoke flavor so we have to do this very necessary step some people say you can leave it out up to three hours really depends on the temperature they want it to sit out in a cool area sometimes put people put it in the basement or in their garage you can put a fan on it to help speed the process up luckily today it's a little overcast it's not that hot so I'm just going to leave it here on the kitchen counter and we'll come back in around 45 minutes to an hour and see how it looks like another thing you want to do while you're waiting for the salmon is you want to get your wood chips and get them soaking in some water so they'll smoke real good I like the apple chips particularly for the salmon whatever would you choose try to use a lightweight fruit like cherry or Apple I've had such great results with Apple I use apple so make sure you get some of that chips open for at least 45 minutes to an hour so it's like perfect timing all right so it's been around an hour and it is perfect when you touch it now you can see it's it's tacky it's definitely sticky your finger adheres to the the fish so this is exactly how you want it so let's get outside and fire up that smoker all right guys I have the Pro Series smoked hollow smoker it has these little trays for the wood what I always like to do is put a little bit of dry wood in initially and then I'll grab some of the soaked wood I want to put up too much you want to have enough room for it to kind of smolder and that's about it we're all set guys I got the smoker fired up I got a dual burner so I lit both of them get it up hot temperatures put some wood in the wood chips yeah it's starting to smoke you want to eat it up through my 250 and then kick it down I turn one burner off bring it down to around 190 to 200 we don't want to do it too hot we want to try to allow the fish to absorb as much smoke as possible so we want to keep the temperature as low as we can so if there's one burner out you should be okay right now it's right around 200 so we're perfect and smokes just slowly starting to come out so by the time I get the fish in here we should be good right guys I got three your axial salmon in there you always want to put the salmon as far away from the heat source because you just don't want to cook it too fast you want it to absorb that smoke flavor you can see I can't stand here for long because the smoke from the apple Woods is coming out the top chimney you want to keep that open on the bottom and open on the top to allow that smoke just to absorb and allow to keep the temperature as low as possible right now it's around 150 but it's gonna climb up to around 180 190 you want to cook it anywhere from say 180 to 200 anything higher than 200 you risk on cooking the fish too fast and it won't be as smoky so you want to try to do it as low as possible typically around an hour I'll start checking it out after that it might the bigger pieces might require a little longer but the smaller pieces I will probably be done by then you can just take a fork it's very flaky you'll be able to tell when there's no more translucent pieces when you break a piece apart under that it's finished so do its thing we'll come back and check it in around an hour let's try it now got stand back it's a little smoky let's see yeah we want the temperature to be around 140 just make sure it's fully cooked it's going to continue to cook a little bit we just don't want to overcook it as an old dry out okay we're 1:22 three you know what another good way to do this brought a fork out here I'm just gonna flake off a little piece oh hey grace all right let's see oh it looks done check that out here oh my goodness delicious it's done all right guys it's all done I've had sitting out for a few minutes here cooling off my wife Monica is gonna try a piece here where hopefully you could see the consistency of it she hasn't tried it yet so go ahead and see how you like it Wow that's amazing perfectly smoked so moist it's not over dry okay we'll put it in the drawer so this is absolutely amazing it's very flaky and moist which it just cooked perfectly hold apart the smoky flavor it's not too overpowering and definitely the fridge fresh like this for up to a week if you put it in a freezer planning to put it in the freezer it freezes wonderfully you just take it out but it defrost overnight in the fridge and then change this is good as if it just came out with a smoker so I'm gonna try a piece something what do you think of this now like I do into heaven out of this one mm-hmm ever tried to smoke salary I think that is fantastic adding a little bit of garlic really added more flavor and it's not over it's not too much wow that's the best you ever did it is what I said this is the by far the best batch you made this is an addictive well thanks for watching guys subscribe to like the video I'll try to get some more smokey videos up soon thanks for watching mm-hmm

Channel: Smo'King BBQ Tips & Recipes

Views: 239,516

Rating: 4.7238402 out of 5

Keywords: Smoked Salmon, Smoke Hollow, Pro Series Smoker, curing salmon, smoking salmon, easy smoked salmon, how to smoke salmon, smoke salmon, smoked salmon recipe, pit barrel cooker

Id: 3qDSS9Z5uIo

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2016