Northwest Fishing Reports

It's that time of year, and I recently got myself a smoker. I like to think of myself as a good cook, but I'm new to smoking fish. Normally I just send them down to my father inlaw, but he only uses one recipe. I like to experiment. I've read the previous threads on smoking and cures and wood, and a few things pop out. I'm on my fourth batch of fish and they keep coming! What is your favorite brine and wood chip combination? Suggestions?

I'd like to make a spicy salmon next I think. I've used the dry brine, I did one with honey and tried some other spices, and everyone loves it, but it seems like there are a bunch of different ways to make it good and lots of recipes online. I trust you guys more than I trust the random cooks posting random recipes.

what type of smoker did you get. if its a big chief there is a recipe book and it has some simple yet tasty. and ill make sure next time me and you nate fish ill have a bag of my recipe for you to try

Orange Juice concentrate is my favorite base flavor for a brine.

Since my batch sizes of fish/brine differs each time, my amounts are sort of all over the board... In a nut shell though it's approx the following:
one or two cans orange juice concentrate
one can of water
half a cup of salt>>>>>>>>> I use roughly half of what the Little Chief recipes recommend
*edited later: scratched the below teaspoons, found the written recipe, use table spoons
cup of brown sugar
tablespoon garlic powder
tablespoon pepper
tablespoon onion powder

I brine over night or longer in the fridge, depends on how convenient the smoking time is for my "busy" schedule LOL

Before I add the fish pieces, I taste the brine and almost always throw something else in... It's not any sort of exact science so just have fun with it!

I NEVER rinse my brine off of the fish, most recipes seem to recommend rinsing.

Apple wood is my favorite, two pans of chips for my fish.... when the smoke stops coming out from the first pan, dump the coal, load up more chips.

Smoking time: I might go as little as 2 hours in the smoker if I want a batch extra moist. Longer = dryer. variables, outside temperature, colder = a little longer, I smoke with the card board box still on the smoker, for safety reasons the manufacturer probably no longer recommends this.

Last night I smoked a Silver that filled my little chief, I didn't brine at all, just season to taste, pop it in the smoker, dinner in 2 hours about. Using leftovers for Zatarans salmon cakes, cream cheese salmon dip, and whatever else Robyn comes up with,,, smoked salmon in pasta> tomorrow.

I LOVE my 2 Little Chiefs, and they love me!

Standard brine to work from is;

1/4 cup of salt to 1qt of water.
soak 12 to 24 hr
Rinse
Rack and dry till the pelicule forms then smoke.


That's your start, from there you can add sugar and spices to taste. Sometimes if I know I'm going to be lazy and the fish may sit in the brine more than a day I'll lower the salt a bit.

This is the salinity use for commercial smoking. Time and concentration, it works.

3/4 cup kosher salt
4 cups dark brown sugar
lots "O" garlic
cracked pepper

Sit for 12 hours or a bit more.
Smoke low heat with apple wood.

Best smoked salmon or trout you'll ever have!

I do mine in a bradley auto smoker and Love it after its cooled off in the fridge.

for a lil more "spicey" ... try sprinkle'n fresh crack'd black on it when you pull it out of the brine and before it starts dry'n out ... i use quite a bit ... not so's it is black 'n grey but a lot .... seems it sorta soaks into the flesh while dry'n and is drawn in with the smoke flavor <shrugs> .. you can take it to another level with fresh ground red pepper flakes .. but IMO i dont like food to hurt me lolol.. but dont be afraid to add some fresh ground herb or spice you like to your fresh crack black ... i grind the pepper and put it in used/empty spice/herb shaker jars .... so i can make my reg ... and add a lil somethin somethin to test recipes on 1 or 2 pieces (or a "rack") ... DOG

ResQ wrote:3/4 cup kosher salt
4 cups dark brown sugar
lots "O" garlic
cracked pepper

Sit for 12 hours or a bit more.
Smoke low heat with apple wood.

Best smoked salmon or trout you'll ever have!

I do mine in a bradley auto smoker and Love it after its cooled off in the fridge.

This is how I do it. But i use alder wood. I do rinse my fish and let it sit before smoking.

Awesome! I'm going to try ALL of these recipes! Smoked salmon is so good.

Salmon U - recipe is the one I like most!

You'll like this one. http://dadgumthatsgood.com/443/

Kosher or rock salt
2 quarts soy sauce
2 cups brown sugar
1-cup honey
2 tbsp ground black pepper


Adjust batch size as necessary. This is for a large batch. I also DO NOT rinse after the soak.

I've been doing LARGE batches, as much can fit in my smoker. I keep bringing home more fish! I can't smoke 'em fast enough! Does the soy sauce come through in the final taste as soy sauce?

If the filet or pieces do not float in the solution then it needs more salt. Salt is more of a preservative then anything else.Riches recipe is what I use only I add a good dry white wine.

Oooh, white wine sounds tasty!!

haha i relised that reading this is makein me hungry lol

This is a recipe I have honed over a couple years. I am not a big fan of salt, so I whittled down the salt content to just enough to do it's job. My smoker is big enough to hold 5 pinks in one batch, so usually I make two batches at a time and have about 1/4 of a batch left over.

I still haven't gotten the spicy heat that I am looking for - so one of the batches I am doing this weekend I am going to try brushing a light coat of Chinese hot oil on some of the fillets right before it goes into the smoker.

Enjoy[biggrin]

Gringo's "Double Shot" dry brine base mix.

Note: All measurements are "approximate" and "shots" refers to shot glasses (easier to measure than spoons).

2lbs brown sugar
1 cup non-iodized salt (fine sea salt or fine kosher salt)
2 shots (4 Tablespoons) powdered garlic
2 shots (4 Tablespoons) fine ground black pepper
Put it all in a big bowl, and mix it all together.

Take a non metallic container to brine your salmon in.
I got a food grade, 12 quart square plastic container with a lid from a restaurant store (measures about 10"x10").

Lay the 1st layer of fillets, skin side down in the container.
Cover the fillets liberally with the dry brine mixture.
Lay the next layer of fillets meat side down. (so the fillets are skin-to-skin / meat-to-meat)
Cover any exposed meat with brine.
Continue until you have all the fish covered.
Cover the container and put it in the fridge for 12-15 hours.

Any extra brine can be stored in a ziplock bag for next time (I vacuum seal it).

The salt will pull the moisture out of the fish and turn the brine into a syrup.

After the fish is brined, take the pieces out one by one and rinse them VERY gently in cold water (You don't want to scrub them or disturb the flesh, you just want to get the heavy deposits of brine off) and set skin side down on a dry paper towel.

Once the fish is rinsed off, dab the excess moisture off with another paper towel and set out on a rack to dry at room temperature (I set mine on the racks in the oven and leave a note NOT to turn it on!).

Let the fish rest for four to 8 hours, depending upon the thickness of the fillets. You don't want the room temperature to be too hot or too cold, what you're trying to do here is dry the fish out and form the pellicle on the surface of the flesh.

Once the fish has rested, brush the skin side of the fish lightly with olive oil (keeps em from sticking to the smoker racks) and place on the smoker racks. Place them so the thicker fillets are on the lower shelves, and the thinner fillets are on the upper shelves, this will even out how they cook once they're in the smoker.

Add wood chips (I prefer apple), fill water basin (1/2 water, 1/2 apple juice), and preheat your smoker to get it up to temperature (about 160). Put the racks in the smoker for about 5 hours then check for consistency. Again, this is done to taste, and can vary due to wind and temperature fluctuations.

*****

I say this is my "base" recipe because you can add stuff from there.

My experiments:

2 shots of powdered Ancho Pepper - Compliments the sweetness very well - not spicy(hot) at all.
2 shots of powdered Chipotle - Adds a different smokey flavor, spicy, but doesn't blow your head off.

Food science 101 for the crowd that thinks putting salt and things on the outside of any meat is brining. It is not.

Brining is used to raise the water content in what you are brining thus slowing the drying process during cooking (smoking). This is accomplished by putting the meat in a solution of salt and water. A solution that is higher in salinity than the meat you are curing. For those who understand osmosis, you are done. Those that don't well, the cells walls in the meat, those walls hold in moisture or water. The cell walls are a semipermeable membrane. When immersed in a liquid those cells try to equalize the liquid on both sides of the membrane or come to equilibrium. In this effort to equalize the salinity of the cells the cell walls allow the salt and water (+spices) to enter. If allowed to go long enough the water salt and spices will permeate every cell in you piece of meat. That's not really a good thing because it will become over powering, hence the timing the brine and the salinity.

For smoking, once the meat is brined, the outside is allowed to dry and seal in the added moisture, this is called the pellicle. Once a pellicle is attained , you can begin the smoking or cooking process being sure your prize will not be dried out. And yes the added salt allows the smoke flavor to permeate the meat

For those that like to rub your meat then smoke it, to each his own. It is not brining.


So all that said, there are two philosophies for smoking, one is brining and the other a dry rub. The terms are not interchangeable.

Bodofish wrote:Food science 101 for the crowd that thinks putting salt and things on the outside of any meat is brining. It is not.

Brining is used to raise the water content in what you are brining thus slowing the drying process during cooking (smoking). This is accomplished by putting the meat in a solution of salt and water. A solution that is higher in salinity than the meat you are curing. For those who understand osmosis, you are done. Those that don't well, the cells walls in the meat, those walls hold in moisture or water. The cell walls are a semipermeable membrane. When immersed in a liquid those cells try to equalize the liquid on both sides of the membrane or come to equilibrium. In this effort to equalize the salinity of the cells the cell walls allow the salt and water (+spices) to enter. If allowed to go long enough the water salt and spices will permeate every cell in you piece of meat. That's not really a good thing because it will become over powering, hence the timing the brine and the salinity.

For smoking, once the meat is brined, the outside is allowed to dry and seal in the added moisture, this is called the pellicle. Once a pellicle is attained , you can begin the smoking or cooking process being sure your prize will not be dried out. And yes the added salt allows the smoke flavor to permeate the meat

For those that like to rub your meat then smoke it, to each his own. It is not brining.


So all that said, there are two philosophies for smoking, one is brining and the other a dry rub. The terms are not interchangeable.

I disagree. A dry rub stays dry. With a dry brine, the salt pulls the moisture out of the meat which then mixes with the spices - at that point (2 hours or less) you have meat in a solution of salt, water & spices just like you describe above and the brining process is essentially the same as a wet brine.

My favorite brine is a very simple recipe given to me by my fishin buddy from work who lived and fished in Juneau AK for several years. It produces some of the best smoked salmon I've ever tasted. It's a 4 to 1 brown sugar / salt mixture that is applied dry. So for 4 average sized pink salmon, fillet them and cut the filets into single servings. Place a thin layer of the salt - brown sugar brine mixture down in a large bowl. Place the first layer of fillets skin down on that first layer of brine. From there simply layer the fillets covering each layer with the dry mixture until all of your fillets are covered. Cover the bowl with foil and let it sit overnight in the fridge. The next day you will see that you now have a syrup type mixture that your fillets are bathing in. Take the fillets out and rinse them clean in cold water and pat them dry. I use old clean towels for this process. Once dry, place them on your smoker racks and smoke at about 160 degrees F for 3 hours. I use mesquite wood chunks you buy in a large bag at True Value or Fred Meyer. As I write I have this exact recipe in the fridge marinating 4 of our 8 pinks from today’s catch. Looking forward to smoking them tomorrow afternoon after fishing.

Sorry Gringo but I have to disagree. A dry rub is not brining and does not do the same thing. You may make the meat salty but that is not brining, that is salting.

So with out bringing out my food sciences course material and posting a text book, here ya go. Now I think we can all agree that to brine it takes water or liquid and not from the meat its self.

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I guess I should probably chime in here. Bodo is correct in his definition of brining. It is my opinion that smoked fish should be brined. The main reason is unless you like a drier smoked salmon product brining is the easiest way to achieve moisture. Salt without a liquid will draw moisture out of the protein. Unless you are cooking the protein in a quick method rubbed meats and fish will then become dry. In mexico there is a beef dish called machaca where the beef is covered in salt and allowed to air dry which when smoking would have similar effects. You could give a dry rub a try but probably want to use a lot less salt to ensure that less moisture is pulled out of the fish. I have always brined my fish before smoking. Something else to consider is to brine the fish in a fairly simple brine and then when the fish is done brining rinse it off and add a dry rub to it before placing it in the smoker, that would be a good way to add heat to the fish as well. You could also add some crushed chili flake to the brine to add heat too. Just my opinion and it certainly doesnt mean it is the only way and would be interested to hear results of other methods. I smoke fish at my restaurant 20 - 30 pounds at a time 3 - 4 times a week and have always had consistent results by brining first. My favorite way right now is to brine it in a mixture of salt, dark brown sugar, maple syrup and water. Then the way my commercial smoker works at the restaurant I have to refill the chip box about every 2 hours. Every time I refill it I brush the salmon with a mixture of honey and water. This gives it a nice caramelized exterior and leaves the interior very moist. I think though now that gringo has brought it up and got my wheels turning I would like to try dry rubbing it before it goes into the smoker. Have fun smoking fish all and good luck figuring out your favorite recipe.