Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Tis the season

Time to smoke some coho.



I know there are some real good fish smokers on this forum, lets see em. The closest batch is sprinkled with some smoked habanero powder

Looks good ,even with the pelts on the table

Those are mink that I need to send to Moyles. Oops. This batch is in the smoker currently

I can see a learning curve coming I hope....

I can season deer, and hang the jerky to dry, and make sausage with the best of em, IMHO.

But we've never smoked fish. Have no clue. Going to have to google one of these days I suppose.

Looks great though. Almost good enough to eat right now.

I use a 3:1 brown sugar to salt dry brine. It works for me

Always preferred kosher salt, and added a bit of olive or veg oil as well. Alder seemed to make the best smoke flavor IMO. Good stuff.

This is our 'smoker'

Beauty as always Klik. Do you brine them at all or just air dry?

Strips are always brined. If the weather is 'wrong' (so the flies are bad), then I give the 'dryfish' a quick rinse in the brine too to help ward them off. A day or three in the air to harden them up a bit, and then into the smoke. Cool, rainy weather might mean a quicker entry into a warmer smoke to avoid mold growth.

Those look delicious

Some Reds I smoked.
I too like the 3/1 dry brine recipe. Quick and easy, comes out perfect every time.

Klik
So you air dry first, and then smoke 3 days later?

Usually, and forgive me for smoking nothing but jerky and sausage all my life, once the skin hardens on the above two, you can't really get more smoke into it, so we smoke asap on them, and then only if it needs heat in teh smokehouse, but we never need heat, usually always need AC and dehumidifier...

Yep, we use a traditional 'cold smoke' method; smoking 'wet' makes the end product very harsh, but once the surface is set and the flesh has firmed - drying at coolish, open-air temps- then they go in the smoke. Smoke 'attaches' to the fat in the fish, so oily fish works better than the lean ones (the shorter river fish).

My experience only involves coastal conditions where ocean breezes and cooler temps are the norm. 50s and 60s daytime with good breeze, while nighttime often involves damp very cool air. When the weather gets 'rainy' (which is rarely big drops for short periods, and more often just wet air at around 150% humidity ), we put the fish in the smokehouse and just let the fire 'run' open (not killing it to smoke). The heat isn't high enough to cook the fish, but enough to help dry them, and there's enough smoke to flavor them. We never do that if they're still dripping wet though. (I think there would be spoilage problems if you tried to 'cold-smoke/dry' them too early.) I lost quite a bit of product to mold before I learned (from Yukon fishers) to use heat to force things when we get a stretch of wet days.

Realize there are two basic methods and you cannot generally combine the two. I have seen more incredibly bad smoked salmon with that as the goal...

Dry brined pink salmon. Not sure the proportions of the salt and sugar as it's what looks right and allowed to set for 3 hours at room temp, then a quick rinse, pat dry and a few hours with fan to set the pellicle then 5 hours in the big chief with a pan or alder/hickory.



And yes Art, too hot hence the albumin.

Yes to what Art points out. Hot smoked...cooked, is probably safer. Don't fool with 'cold-smoked' unless you understand the needed conditions...and probably learn hands-on, firsthand. I am aware of people who have moved Anchorage-Way from their familiar haunts on the coast who were disappointed to learn that their usual techniques wouldn't work in their new location.

Both methods, done right and well, are worthy treatments of some of Alaska's finest.

Sounds like I might should invest in an informative book on the ways to smoke...

Like you said, what works here on deer, may not be worth a flip in interior AK on a fish for sure!