Sunday

Smoking A Salmon

Smoking a fish is not so difficult and not much time consuming when compared with smoking of meats such as pork or chicken. Salmon can be used as an excellent smoked fish. Smoked salmons can serve you as a delicious recipe, as long as you are ready to spend some time smoking a salmon. Salmons are also rich in omega 3-fatty acids, which are good for your body and act as an anti depressant.


There are various varieties of salmons available that you can be used for smoking. Some fishare good for smoking and some might be risky. For example smoking a farmed salmon is highly risky. Hence, you can choose a good quality wild Alaskan Salmon or use chum salmon, because of its rich oil content. The fish with rich oil content serves best for smoking and it surely serves you with a good taste.

There are two ways to smoke a salmon. One is to cold smoke it at very low temperature over a very long period to get the kind of smoked salmon, you like. Or you can hot smoke it to cook the salmon with a smoke flavor. Cold smoking is used to preserve the fish without actually cooking it but the advantage of hot smoking is that you can do it in a much lesser time.

The first process of smoking a salmon is called as brining. The brine is a mixture of 4 cups of warm water, 1 cup of kosher salt, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 cup of brown sugar. Stir the mixture rigorously until it is well combined. Now cut the salmon into chunks of equal size and place them in the brine mix with skin side up. Close the lid of the container and Put the container in the refrigerator for about 12 hours.

Take out each piece of salmon out of the brine, after 12 hours. Now you can rinse it lightly in water and let it to dry. After an hour, you can see a light shiny portion over the top of the salmon. Now rub each piece of fish with butter until there is a light coating over it. After that, you need to rub each piece heavily with brown sugar. Thus, you have prepared the fish for smoking.

Now you can change the temperature in you smoker to 150 to 180 degrees and let it be rolling with an alder smoke. Now you can put your salmon inside and close the door of the smoker. After 2 hours, if you can see the salmon flaking, you can take it out and serve it.

A preferred way to eat a salmon is to thinly slice it with Melba toast and sliced red onion, lemon and capers. Smoked salmon as an appetizer is usually served with bread and with a squeeze of lemon. The flavor of the salmon is really better the next day than when it is actually cooked. So you can seal each piece of salmon while it is warm and put it into a refrigerator.

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