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Piker20

Smoking your catch

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Alder is a good, mild, smoking wood. Ours look like this.

Aln-rub-5.jpgAln-rub-leaf.jpgAln-rub-cone.jpg

 

They grow along about every stream in western Oregon.

 

I have only used the Little Chief and Big Chief electric smokers. They work well, but are probably not available in the UK. All of the ones I've seen are 120V.

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Piker, try a website called smokingmeat.com, he has loads of info on the stuff and will answer questions. I did salmon on a smoker(Webber type), and it takes coals on the sides, add wood to charcoal then put the fish on for only 20 minutes, this is a whole salmon fillet from a farm raised salmon, use a mild wood such as cherry, apple and alder are used for best results, so the smoke won't over power the meat flavor.

 

Blane

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I knew a guy in college that used red mangrove to smoke mullet. Probably protected :-) I wonder how buttonwood would work.

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Piker

I smoke fish, brisket, pork butt etc all the time. I use the barrel with a smaller barrel to the side with a wood fire in it. For fish I like any fruit wood such as Apple, pear, peach or plum. Most everything else gets hickory as I have it on hand here at the farm. I also like to brine the fish first and put it on a plank. I dry rub the meats and then spray with cider vinegar during the smoking process.

Fish is pretty quick just a few hours. The brisket takes around 24 hours. I sleep in a hammock at night so I can recharge the smoker with wood. There might be a few cold beverages consumed during the process. I love a good IPA and if I'm really thirsty a good Hefeweizen sure hits the spot. Enjoy

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Yes I believe the fish has to be brined so the smoke 'sticks' and you achieve that deep flavour.

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Yes I believe the fish has to be brined so the smoke 'sticks' and you achieve that deep flavour.

When smoking, less wood is more in terms of flavor. Fish will pick up a tonne of flavor as is.

 

Brine for moisture and/or bacteria control.

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In case you are short of fish you can brine rolled newspaper and smoke it and folks won't even care.

 

Rocco

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Piker 20, I smoked a LOT of salmon, steelhead, and lake trout up north. I have a brine recipe I got from a fisherman on Isle Royale that made fish you'd eat like candy. If you want the recipe for the brine I'll dig it out and pm or mail it to you. Haven't done any for a long time and now I'm salivating thinking about the times we smoked so many fish out of Lake Superior. I'd have the smoker going (all I used was a Coleman Smoker with propane) and people would swing into the bait shop I had up north and ask, "Is it candy yet?" Nope, stop by in about two hours.

 

One thing not mentioned is after you brine and before you smoke you should thoroughly dry the fish fillets or hunks. They definitely smoke better then. Also, you need to bring them to 170 degrees for an hour sometime in the smoking process to insure complete cooking. These would be good for a couple of weeks in fridge but seldom lasted more than a couple of days.

 

Dry smoking for storage is another process all together. As far as I'm concerned those fish taste like salted cardboard. I much prefer the moist smoking method..

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My idea is smoke and consume. If I could catch the numbers of salmon required to smoke and store then maybe that'd be different. I'd love the brine details.

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