Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => The Fish Kitchen => Topic started by: fullahead on November 05, 2005, 06:33:16 PM
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Could someone give me some advice on smoking Chum salmon? I have smoked sockeye in my big chief, and it turns out really good. How could anyone go wrong with sockeye, I know. When I tried smoking Coho in October, it came out to moist. Maybe more salt in the brine, would dry the fish better? ;D
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More brining or maybe simply a longer smoking time. The chum may be substantially thicker than the sockeye salmon. What sized pieces were you smoking?
Take care,
Peter
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Longer and maybe a little hoter try putting the box over your smoker.
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I find that helps also
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the box over your smoker is an excellent tip................however i had a little chief smoker and they arn't the best, there cheap and you get what you pay for, I just purchased a propane smoker and its excellent, i tried smoking some beef jerky in there and just wondering if any of you have had any good results in making any sorts of a spicy jerky.
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Longer in the smoker is what you need to do . More salt is a bad idea as you can never get that salty flavor out once it's in there.
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Do some homework and read a few books on the subject. Smoking is an age old slow cooking method of cooking and preserving meats. The idea is to get the fat and oils out of the meat as they are what causes decay. The princple is simple the more fat you get out the longer the product lasts. I smoke mine until hard to the touch but not to the point of being charcoal. The product is almost black when finished and has a shelf life of a year when vac-packed and placed in the deep freeze. It is also a good idea to take a food safe cource too; no-one wants pass food poisoning on to family and freinds.
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If the flavour is right then don't mess with the recipe. Putting the box over will keep more heat in and will cook your fish. With my Little Chief I used to place the box over the smaoker and even wrap the box in a tarp. And you do get a product that is smoked, cooked and edible. The good think was that the quantity you get out of the little cheif lets you store it in the fridge without without taking up too much room over the two weeks that the smoked fish lasted me.
I now use the Bradley and I find that after 2-hours of keeping the vent minumally open to really soak in the smoke, I open up the vent to push the drying process. With your smoke is moisture which is coming off the fish. You need to keep the vent open to let the moisture out. I'm looking for that rubbery testure that comes from dried not cooked fish.
I'm considering attaching small enclosed squirrel cage type fan to my smoker to move the smoke around inside and accelerate the drying. I'm also going to incorporate a thermocouple and temp controller to ensure the temp doesn't exceed 150 F. Go over that and your cooking fish.
The other thing is to keep a log of the conditions of every smoke job including receipe, smoke/chip flavour, weather conditions, temp, times, weight and thickness of fish pieces, brine time etc. Once you have enough data, graph your results and you'll improving your success. You'll also get find your most efficient smoke time by minimizing the urgency to open the smoker to check the fish.
Experiment and have fun - that what it's all about.