I have a pile of salmon and want to give smoking a try.

Any rec's on a decent smoker for fish? Electric? Propane? What should I look for to be able to cold and hot smoke and be able to produce a hard, drier, jerky style as well as the more wet smoked style fish?

I've smoked the shiet out of some salmon on the Little Chief electric smoker.

Little Chiefs do alright then? Good to hear, as I'm a cheap bastid with a new kiddo that's seemingly spending money faster than I can find it!

I gather being able to maintain a nice, even, low heat is the main thing?

I had a little chief for years. Smoked a ton of fish in it.
The only problem was holding the heat in the winter.

Lil' Chief, equal amounts of brown sugar, sugar and salt.
Dissolve in water.
Soak feesh overnight in solution in fridge.
Load racks, pepper to taste.
Commence smoking.
I soak my chips in water too.
In winter I put the original box it came in over the top of the smoker to hold in smoke/heat.

P.S. That box has alotta tape on it now, to hold it together...

If I'm doing alot of feesh, I smoke it for 3-4 hours then put the smoked on a cookie sheet and finish it in the oven on LOW.
That way I can can reload my Lil Chief.....

If cool out I would put a cardboard box over it, or you could get fancy and have a thermal 'blanket' to put over it.

Equal amounts of Br sugar, sugar and salt? whew! Soak overnight? Whew! Overkill and unecessary on the salt and brine time.

I do a little brown sugar and salt for a few hours, rinse and pat and let sit till you get a nice pellicle.

Getting ready to go in the the Little Chief

Can you control the temp on the Chiefs? Do they get very hot?

Seems its a good idea to keep temps below 140?

Appreciate the feed back and recipes.

I'm going to be doing white and red kings. I'm partial to the " salmon candy" style of smoked fish I've had before.

No independent control. Little Chief is plug and play.

Control is the temp of the day, and putting a box over it. I also had an one of those no fire insulated blanket that fit right over it (they may sell one), that kept the temps up on the cold days.

A big or little chief is a great hot smoker for salmon, but you're going to need something else for cold smoking.

Before the wasps set up house, this was my cold smoker.



A basic 2X2X3 box with an old bbq with some drier ducting for the smoke. After much experimentation I found the best way for my to get a consistant product was to dry brine the fillets with brown sugar and salt for 2-3 hours at room temp, a quick rinse in cold water to remove the excess sugar/salt, then pat them dry with paper towels. Cut them into strips and put in the smoker and run a fan over night to form the pellicle.



I'd build a small pile of birch kindling the burner and when they burned down to coals I put a chunk of wetter alder and let it smolder for a few hours until burned out. If the alder flamed up I'd hit it with a spray bottle of water, you want to keep the temp in the smoker around 100F. When the wood burns out, put the fan back in for another day to dry out the fish.

For hot smoking the dry brine prep was the same, only I'd put it in the Big chief, put the fan in the flapper door for the wood chips and run it a couple of hours. After that I'd put a mix of water soaked hickory chips and alder chunks and put plug the smoker into a light timer set for 5 hours. A single pan of wood chips is plenty of smoke flavor, and 5 hours seems to get the fish dried just right. The nice thing about the timer is you don't have baby sit it, just plug it in and let it go. Seems smoking is often an evening proposition for me.