welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen today actually tomorrow I'm
going to smoke this piece of salmon
outside so today I need to prep it and
get everything ready so let's get this
bag open and see what we've got okay so
this nice piece of Atlantic salmon looks
pretty good okay so it's just a little
bit of cleanup there's a few of these
little pin bones in here and I know that
people tell you to grab them with
tweezers or pliers or whatever but you
should be able to just grab them with
your fingers and pull them out it's
really not that difficult it's not as
difficult as some people make it out to
be just kind of there you go okay so I'm
gonna pull all these out okay so that
took about ten minutes to get all of the
bones out and you just kind of run your
hand along the surface of the salmon and
you're gonna feel them and there's gonna
be bones that radiate out in both
directions both to the bottom of the
fish and to the top of the fish and
generally where you see a fat line in
the flesh you're gonna find a bone so
you just kind of run your fingers along
and you see if you find any and pull
them out it's really that easy
there's nothing to it and then just kind
of go along and check and make sure that
you've got them all right here is a very
fatty part of the fish I leave that on
this fatty bit here is gold and there
might be some bones here at the bottom
and along at the top where the fins were
if your salmon has those you just cut
them and now the next problem is finding
container big enough this will lay flat
I don't have one anymore so I'm gonna
cut mine in half right about there now
in Jules and I lived in the north long
lachna kena Thunder Bay we did a lot of
dry cured smoked fish and I really liked
the dry cure method you can also do a
wet brine method which is kind of like
what you do with your turkey you put it
in a big bucket of water with salt and
sugar and other spices I really like
done by dry cure and I like to put only
two things in and one is coarse salt and
brown sugar we're just gonna mix that
together with my hand and get a nice
even mixture okay so I've got a plastic
tub here and I'm gonna take the first
piece of salmon skin side down put it
into the tub and just cover it in this
salt and sugar mixture make sure it's
covered everywhere and it doesn't have
to be on thick it just has to be covered
and then I just take the second piece
lay it on top and finish it off
so almost right away you can see the
salt and the sugar pulling moisture out
of the fish that's great
exactly what we want to have happen so
I'm going to put a cover on this and I'm
gonna stick it in the fridge overnight
and a couple hours from now I'm gonna
come back I'm gonna take a look at it
I'm gonna see how much liquid it is
pulled out and I might flip the fish
over if it's swimming and liquid so to
say and I might do that a couple of
times over that 12 hour period and then
tomorrow we'll come back and we'll move
on to the next step I got the side
tracked so this is about 12 hours later
and you can see how much liquid has come
out of the salmon it's quite a bit in
the bottom and you can see that the
texture of the salmon has changed as
well it gets stiff and it doesn't Bend
quite as well I'm going to take this
over to the sink and I'm going to rinse
off as much of the Cure as I possibly
can okay now if I was going to continue
today and put this on the smoker I would
let this sit out a room temperature for
four or five hours if I had a fan I'd
blow some air overtop of it you want it
to dry out and get what's called a
pellicle and that's going to help the
smoke adhere I don't have time to finish
this today so I want to stick it in the
fridge and I'm gonna leave it in the
fridge for about 24 hours and inside the
fridge it's going to dry out so just
make sure that you've got the fish on a
rack
and I'm putting a pan underneath it so
nothing drips on the rest of the stuff
in the fridge so I'll see you tomorrow
at the smoker here we are twelve hours
later and that fish looks wonderful
stride out nicely we've got a nice
pellicle it's a little bit tacky which
is great that's the sugar on top now
before we go into the smoker I'm going
to turn these over and I'm going to put
a little bit of oil on the skin side
just so it doesn't stick to the grill
great I've got the smoker preheated to
150 degrees Fahrenheit which is the
lowest setting for this Yoder smoker
if I could I'd set it even lower I
really would like to start this at about
130 degrees Fahrenheit and the reason
for that is you don't want to heat the
fish too quickly because the meat will
contract and force out the albumin it's
something that you want to avoid so 150
degrees Fahrenheit low smoke for the
first hour and I'm gonna put this fish
on the upper rack skin side down I've
also cut this little bit of tail off
because it's gonna cook faster and I'm
gonna put it as far away from the heat
as possible and I'm going to close the
lid and I'm not gonna look at it for at
least an hour it's been about an hour at
150 degrees Fahrenheit and we've done
fairly well of tracking that temperature
and you don't have to go overboard with
making sure that you've got that bang on
just be mindful of it at this point I'm
going to turn it up 275 degrees
Fahrenheit and I'm going to baste one of
the pieces with some maple syrup now
we're shooting for a finished internal
temperature on this salmon of about 135
degrees Fahrenheit and this might take
another hour hour and a half to get
there so I'll probably come out and put
on a little bit more maple syrup every
half hour until
we are John so we're just about a little
over two hours at this point and I've
already taken off the little tip of the
tail because it cooked faster so I'm
gonna check these two pieces in the
thickest part and see where we are and
yet we're 137 degrees Fahrenheit so
we're done time to come off Oh falling
apart should have used a spatula hello
Glenn so hot smoked salmon and I didn't
do a very good job cutting it but so
there's two different ways we've got two
different ones here okay so this one I
didn't brush or anything on it while it
was smoking okay so this is just cured
with salt and brown sugar yeah soft and
moist
I like smoked fish a lot yeah not
heavily smoked so this is different than
a cold smoked fish like a cold smoked
salmon doesn't fall apart like this hot
smoked salmon does mmm we said this one
has that one does maple syrup on it so
let's give that a try yeah ahead rub
Forks but you know totally we went
freeform who needs a fork
okay so get this one in half
yeah okay
Hunter sharpen my knife a little more
smoked maple syrup catches a little bit
more of the smoke mmm but all right
they're both really good mm-hmm it's not
and it's not sweet no it hasn't always
expected I think that's what I'm think
trying to processes I was expecting this
sharp it's the sharp sugar flavor
there's sweetness but it's not and
people I think people I see a lot of
comments but why there's always brown
sugar in the Cure and why is there
always some either honey or maple syrup
or something like that put on it on the
smoker and people assume that it's going
to be sweet but it isn't it's not it's
not sweet and the sugar is just part of
the curing process those are both really
tasty mm-hmm so I really like smoked
fish okay no denying so you can eat this
hot off of the smoker you could eat cold
later with a with a salad or whatever
summer yeah great summer thing you can
vacuum seal this and stick it in the
freezer and it will keep almost
indefinitely as long as the seal is good
it will keep in the freezer so why
wouldn't you this will not last us very
long at all so this is just one way to
do hot smoked salmon there's lots of
different ways to do it and there's cold
smoked salmon as well and so we'll
probably do one or two and I'll point
out there's other fish well there's
other fish yes there's so many other
fish but we'll probably come back and do
this again in a couple of different ways
because there are different textures
depending on how you do it this is the
softest textured of the smoked Salmons
so tell us how you do smoked fish if you
smoked fish in the comments below thanks
for stopping by see you again soon
you