Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Brine for smoked salmon?

I have about 15 pounds of fresh king salmon filets. My usual brine is is a cup of kosher salt, half cup of brown sugar and a quarter cup of soy sauce to a gallon of water. It's pretty good, but I know some of you guys have a lot of experience with salmon. Don't want to screw this opportunity up. Any recommendations for a really good salmon brine? Thanks.

I would ask watch4bear. His smoked salmon is simply fantastic. I have no idea how he preps/smokes it. PM him if he doesn't see this.

Will do. Thanks.

Increase to 1 cup brown sugar (dark).

1/2 to 1 cup soy sauce.

Fresh garlic 1 or 2 cloves and/or:

garlic salt and onion salt (1/2 teaspoon each)

small amount of ginger.

Marinate at least 12 hours.

Hopefully, he will se3 this and post it. It would, potentially save him from a lot of “pm traffic”! I’ll thank him in advance! memtb

My brine is similar to yours, except I use either two cups of brown sugar or add some molasses to the mix. I am mostly kippering mine so the fillets stay in the brine overnight then they're hung in the smokehouse for three to five days depending on weather, to partially dry. During that time they are cold smoked with fruitwood about three times or so. From time to time I might throw one handful of adler chips or sawdust in the smoke wood mix to give it a little more zing. I don't care for straight alder-smoked fish. Alder is one the bitter side. One of the best smoke woods is cottonwood which is what most of the native folk use in the interior. Anyways, the fish are then taken down, cut up and placed in half-pint wide mouth mason jars and pressure canned for 90 minutes at 10psi or higher.

For just plain old dried cross-cut salmon fillets, I use plain salt brine @ 50% or higher for a few minutes, a quick dip in fresh water, hang until dry cold smoking intermittently. For dried strips like the native folk make, 100% for about 2 minutes, hang and dry with a constant light smoke.

The very best is the simplest...
Per gallon of brine:
2 cups unionized salt
3 cups brown sugar

Dissolve salt and sugar in about half of the water by boiling. Then add ice and get the brine very cold.

Soak in brine for 90 minutes. Longer and texture is compromised.

The most critical step is forming a pellicle by drying on the racks before smoking. It is critical.

Smoke at less than 145F. If white denatured proteins ooze out it is overdone. Every bit of the ooze steals moisture from the flesh itself and compromises texture. Cooking too hot will cause the problem and poorly handled fish will have cracks in the flesh where the problem will show itself.

Peel the alder- bitter is in the bark. willow too. Dunno about cottonwood. I dry my green alder for a year or more if I can- and my wife doen't burn it up in her stupid deck fireplace.... ( I gave her hell for that this summer... good thing I was too busy to smoke any fish . )

I do it very similar to SD-, except I don't screw around wilth the smoking. I'll smoke it for an hour or two for the smoke flavor, then kipper it in pint or - gasp- yes - quart jars! Straight, no water added - doesn't need it. I do strips, not chunks or fillets.

canned in pint or quart jars, it keeps forever- unlike that which must. be kept frozen. Properly cold smoked (to almost jerky level) , the stuff keeps a long long time also. Canned ( kippered) is my preferencehowever.

Or I'll do a layerd dry rub on the strips with the brown sugar and salt and overnight it in the fridge, then hang ( well- rack pellicure) , then smoke, then can.

I go 50-50 salt to brn. sugar, a cup of each per gallon. I like to add some maple syrup and Worcestershire to some batches. I also like Gravlox which just get coated in salt and dill and then dry age in the refrigerator.

I never have to worry about how long it keeps, it never last that long.

Can you make squaw candy if you can't get seal oil? Pardon my political incorrectness but I am not sure what they call it now.

15 pounds of king fillets, I am envious. My brine is 1 to 1.5 cups of non iodized salt, 2 cups dark brown sugar and 1 cup of dark black strap molasses to 2 gallons of clean or non clorinated water. Fish strips are stirred every half hour for 4 hrs. I may try Sitka's brine to save some time. I think many brines will work just fine because of what brine accomplishes.

I have used alder for over 30 years both with bark and without. I can't tell the difference

I believe most of the salmon strips on the Yukon is not brined, air dried, smoked a long time in big well vented smoke houses with cottonwood.

I tend to leave of sauces, spices and condiments. This is a preference after much experimentation and is a personal preference.

I do a dry brine. 1/4 cup salt for every cup of brown sugar. Stir a few times over 24hrs. Rinse under cold water and form pellicle. Sometimes I like to put course ground black pepper on the fish before forming the pellicle. Smoke until desired consistency.

I do a dry brine as well.
2lbs of dark brown sugar. 1.5 cups of kosher salt, 2 tsp of Garlic powder.
cover fish and put in fridge overnight.
In the morning I gently rinse the fish, then put on racks to dry.
Smoke with Alder, 2 pans full. Smoke until done.

I dry brined for a very long time and got tired of the inconsistency and frequent over-salted batches.

Hypertonic brine is absolutely more consistent and 90 minutes never over-salts...

I have seen mountains of barely to totally inedible, over-salted smoked salmon.

As usual, I'm sure it can happen, but I've smoked a bit of fish, and a few mutual friends of ours will attest to it being pretty good.

I have another friend who's father did commercial smoking in WA. He has a brine that calls for 7 minutes soak time. Do not let it sit longer or you'll be chewing on dried out jerky. I've also had the same thing happen with deer and moose jerky. So I've seen hypertonic brine over salt.

For jerky in thin strips, absolutely! Far more surface area and far less thickness...

Do you know of any commercial operations not using brine? I do not... not to say the average commercial smoked stuff almost makes it to mediocre.

And we do hang with some serious commands!
; )

I have no idea what any other commercial operation uses for their fish. But for the simple fact that a wet brine uses so much less salt and sugar making it more economical, I'd have to say that they're using wet brines.

I always cut my salmon into snickers bar sized pieces. maybe that's why I've had such good luck with the dry brine.

I'm with the less is more crowd. Salt and sugar only with low heat and short smoke duration.

I've generally had better success with dry brine. 1 part kosher salt to 4 parts light brown sugar. 4 hours only in brine, rinse, pat dry and put on racks in refrigerator overnight to form pellicle and allow salinity to equalize a bit. In a pinch a couple hours in front of a fan rather than overnight in the refrigerator will work. The dry brine pulls out some of the moisture from the fish, and reduces required smoking time. Also texture is a little firmer (more of a cure, than brine).

For wet brine I've used 1 cup kosher salt, 2 cups light brown sugar, and 1 gallon of water for 90 minutes. I do need to experiment a bit more with extending smoking times to perfect this method.

I know the question was about brine, but one point I didn't see mentioned was air flow. I've had white "boogers" on fish that never saw more than 140 degrees. In attempt to maintain temperature I closed the vents off too much and ended up with a bit too much humidity and protein deposits on the surface. Opening the vents up and letting the smoker do it's thing has yielded better results.

Dry method has always been great for us. Try some halibut some time...use apple wood, alder is too sharp for mild white fish.

Many years ago I built my second smoker out of T&G cedar and a 4x8 sheet of stainless expanded metal cut into 2x2 squares giving me 8 removable rust free racks and a wooden structure that does not rot. The sides are removable and screened in so the fish can dry on the surface while keeping the salmon loving bees and flies out. My smoking pan is and old iron wood stove humidifier and holds close to a small bag of commercial chips sold everywhere and I use a 50/50 mix of alder and apple wood.

I load the racks up and put a load in the chip pot and sit it on a dual electric burner turned on high. With the sides off it never gets hot enough to over heat the strips. Once the strips are glazed over I put the sides on and use a total of one bag each of alder and apple chips to get the smoke flavor I want. After that I pull the sides back off and let the strips dry to the texture we like, which is thin and oily. In my opinion I am using drying more then smoking to get the strips where I want them and the strips, depending on the weather sit in the smoker for about 3 days with the burner and sides off.

For many years we have been blessed with three or four kings from the Kasilof river. Those are our favorite salmon for smoking and reds are second. But, about any fresh well cared for salmon produces good smoked and dried table fare.

The fish prep consists of a quickly bleed and killed salmon that is handled as gently as possible and split into two fillets. I then take a big fillet knife and cut the meat off leaving about a 1/2 inch of meat on the skin. I cut that up into about one inch wide by 8 inch long strips. The brine is simple and I have four dedicated fish brine buckets and use a brine of 2 cups of table salt and one cup of brown sugar per 2 gallons of water. The thin fish strips soak in there for 2 hours and are very lightly rinsed and placed on the racks.

When the strips are done we vac pack them and in the freezer they go. The other meat from the salmon is vac packed for other meals or canned and we place the skinless meat on cookie sheets and give it about and hour of smoke for canned smoke salmon for dip and sandwiches. The other non smoked canned salmon is for Mom's great salmon patties.

I have seen fish smoking and drying techniques from the Yukon River to Bristol Bay and Chignik and tasted good smoked fish from about every place and done by friends and some not so good. Some of the smokers looked like 3 story condos and some used a make shift structure and tarps and the wind and bugs had free reign. We all have our own method done to suit our tastes. I feel like I am better at it then when I started smoking fish in the 60's and getting fish from my parents fish wheel on the Copper River , man those fish were slimy. After being in the Kenai area since 1980 I prefer fish fresh from the ocean that are bright in color.

I think once a person finds what they like and can do it the same way every time one ends up with consistent results.

Once in awhile we will lightly smoke some halibut with apple wood and can it. One of these days I want to scavenge up some old dried cotton wood from the beach and try that for smoking. Many Alaskan's use that wood every year for their smoke house. Thank You Lord for Alaska's great tasting fish!

Those boogers do not form until 145F and are really easy to recreate at those temps... maybe a thermometer reading too close to an edge, a hotspot in the smoker, or ???

Well, we've found out who loves to (dry) rub their meat.

I'm a liquid briner. A soak in Yoshidas is never a bag thing.

Actually, dry brining is more economical. It is just too hard to maintain consistency in commercial operations.

I love auto-correct! I tried to say we hang with gormands and it was corrected to commands!

Unless you have tasted scads of bad teriyaki salmon!
😉

Just straight yoshidas? Over night?

It was a short lived problem that went away with increased ventilation. I attributed it to a excessive moisture issue. It was a while ago so hard to tell what else might have been going on.

I use an older Bradley analog smoker with an Auber Instruments PI&D controller. Temp probe dropped in from the top, no contact with fish or racks. I've been generally very satisfied with the setup for salmon. It is however a bit under powered for 25# batches of moose summer sausage and snack sticks.

I've had smoked halibut from a local sausage and seafood purveyor. It was OK, but wasn't overly impressed. I generally prefer oilier fish when smoked.

Jumping off topic a bit from the original posters question. If you don't mind sharing, what is your recommendation for brine and smoking temps/duration with halibut?

Smoked halibut doesn't sound the least bit appealing to me. Halibut should be dunked in beer batter and go for a swim in oil at 350 F until golden brown.

This^^^^

Tried that one today with a small batch. Super easy and got two thumbs up from the home crowd. I did put a little glaze on half using brown sugar, maple syrup, and garlic powder. Smoked low for about 6 hours (though my smoker did spike once) and it stayed real moist. Thanks for the recipe.

SO... going to gut a fridge... I'm thinking if I had a stove, like one of my backpack stoves, set up outside and pipe the smoke in down low, thats COLD smoking? Am I right?

Cold smoking is the goal?

All I've ever done is smoke deer sausage and thats a pan of coals covered by a bunch of green pecan or such and put in a sealed smokehouse and overnight it gets all the smoke it ever needs then turn on the AC and dehumidifier to get to dry sausgage what we don't pull as fresh smoked.

I smoked this at 125°-130° for about 4 hours, then stepped it up to 135° to just about 140° for the last hour or so. Damn electric smokers can be finicky and it’s easy to get a spike in temps where it will jump up way to high. This stuff turned out real moist but a nice firm skin on it. My boys have already hammered a pile of it.

Looks very good! Getting consistent control will allow you to get the texture right and that is key to having really good smoked fish.

Salmon is actually hot smoked/kippered to produce typical "smoked salmon" and cold smoked for the various styles of dried and smoked salmon. The cut-off is about 140F. Which puts salmon right on the edge. Jerky is essentially cold-smoked strips.

I've smoked halibut and also bought it from AkS&S and it's not even close to good smoked salmon. Stevelyn has it right, that's the best way to do halibut though halibut weaver is also very good when done correctly.

As for smoked salmon, I use brown sugar, non-iodized salt, and water, like Art said, simple is always best with smoked salmon.

looks like I'll need some type of thermometer then. Never used em when working sausage. Its an art I suspect, and I'm still on the crayons and big chief tablet.

Then use the big chief smoker.

IMO the best halibut is the biggest one, smoked.

As a deep-frying fish any of many, many white meated species works great. Halibut is not close to the best in that regard. I will take ordinary cod over halibut.

But if you take a great big chunk of halibut and brine it a little longer (3 hours) and let it sit in the frig for a day or two before creating the pellicle and smoking it is fantastic. The texture is almost ham-like, very firm and coarse-grained. sliced thin it is extremely good. I have tried the same thing with other fish and never liked it as well as halibut. You also have to work to get the internal temp up to 140F because it is so thick. I think I would do the sous vide thing to it these days.

I didn't say that hailbut was the best fish for frying, I said it was best served that way. I don't like smoked halibut, doesn't matter how many times i try it.

LMAO. I should head your way before I head to Delta and bring some beer. But I have appointments.
I suppose since I was laying on the runway at Farewell waiting on a new plane drinking bud straight, I could manage to drink a few with you some day!

Not near enough practice for bending elbows with 'bender!

Just make sure you spill lots of beer on his boot tops!

He loves that. You can read all about it in my new book: "CWH - the parts I remember".

It's more of a pamphlet really.

There was a book about Hemingway, "The Way it Was..."

I've never held my own with beer folks. In fact, more than about 3-4 makes me feel overly bloated etc... now bourbon, had we had a full bottle of jack... or such... IE left the better Jamesons at the camp, it might have been an ugly flight back... I was betting the plane would not make it to us, the sun was almost gone...

acy, so how did the salmon turn out? Kind of leaving all of us hanging.