Used 1 to 1 salt to sugar ratio, finished product seems way to salty. This my first try at smoking salmon, and I have a bunch more to do. Any thoughts?

I pack salmon in a dry brine of 60 to 40 ration brown sugar to salt. Add some garlic powder, black pepper red peppers flakes , dill in the mixture.

Not too salty.

Are you rinsing filets after brining really well?

Yes rinsed "filet" well. In dry brine over night.

use more brown sugar than salt and soak a bit in clean water after the brine......

Most of today's commercially smoked salmon is way too salty. Most of the recipes used today are way too salty. I think the old brine recipes are carried over from the days when smoked fish and meats used salt as a preservative due to the lack of refridgeration. When I started smoking fish I began with a time honored recipe(wet brine) which contained about 10% salt(floats a potato). My current recipe now has about 2.5% salt and could be less. I brine for taste and not as a preservative. My suggestion is you drop the amount of salt. You can make up the difference in sugar. Sugar also acts as a preservative but is not as effective as salt. For what its worth I have shipped my salmon with the reduced salt and no refridgeration all ofer the country and as far as Afghanistan without spoilage. BTW, My stuff is cold smoked and dried like jerky in strips. pak

Excellent advice! I used to do it this way, as well. It keeps better than most folks think.

Ed

member "pak".........knows his stuff on smoke'n fish, listen up.........

I use salt and brown sugar as a rub over the salmon while it sits in the fridge overnight. I use 25 % salt and 75% br. sugar. The next morning, I wipe all the excess off and dry the salmon and then add mapleine and brown sugar to the top of the salmon for the actual smoking. It sounds as if you are using much to much salt.

Overnight is too long... 90 minutes is long enough. Once the fish is moved to racks to start forming a pellicle the salt will equalize through the fish some. Which is one reason the dry rubs are not as uniform as wet brining, IMO&E.

The actual salt ratio is really not that critical as long as it is hypertonic. I use a cup of salt and two cups brown sugar per gallon of brine, then rinse quickly after brining.

Skip all the fancy extra tastes and junk until you have the basics down for texture, again IMO&E. You will probably discover it is better that way.

Also, the pellicle is critical. If the fish goes much over 140F the oil and protein released will form ugly white ooze on the surface and the texture will suffer. Curds on the surface are never a good sign...

About how many typical filets will that brine?

How long do you brine at that concentration?


Thanks.

Brining for more than 90 minutes is counterproductive.

I usually brine about 2-3 gallons of salmon in pieces averaging about 8-12 ounces and use about 2 gallons of brine. It varies with silvers versus reds because of the differences in size between the fillets, so I use volume measure instead of weight or numbers of fish.

Commercial smokers usually reuse brine repeatedly, monitoring the salinity. They do not add much salt to the mix after each load of fish.
art

I,ll second that opinion! But need more to confirm opinion again!

Mid-course correction. Thanks.

Concentration/time is always my bugaboo.

Hypertonic, <90 minutes, quick COLD rinse, and you cannot be too salty.

Some like to make easy stuff hard...

For several years I used a dry rub/pack/whatever... Long enough to realize how foolish it is. Mixing a brine is faster, easier, and more uniform everytime.

I like salty, but the CEO does not.

Hopeingly this will be more acceptabler.

I started out dry rubbing because I liked the kippered better than cold smoked. My tastes changed and I discovered that my family also liked the lighter smoke/brine as well, so I switched.

I have done a VERY light dry rub and then let the pellicle form, then smoke, but it wasn't the same as the brine.

Most folks marinate fish and seafood far too long, when cooking or smoking.

Ed