The Smoking Process

 

After canning all my fish last year, this year I decided I wanted to smoke it, all of it, then can it. Last year it took me 2 days to do all of it, so I guess you can imagine that adding the step of smoking would dramatically increase my processing time. I can easily see why people pay to have all their fish processed after a large haul! I was tired and sore and cranky when I finally finished, but oh how I love my smoked salmon!! The following blog is my step by step instructions. No, I am not going to get into food blogging, but I do want to smoke more fish in the future and I will personally need this blog entry to help me remember how to do it. My dad taught me exactly what to do, and so I could probably ask him in the future for another lesson, but he is getting older and may lose his memory. So here it all is, for both of us (you know in case he forgets.) So read it if you want to, or not, it is all the same to me. ;)

Start with a clean/sterile work surface. Or use a make shift old painted piece of plywood fastened to the lid of a trash can, attached to that trash can, cutting board. Whichever you choose.

Despite the totally redneck cutting board/work station, I am actually very compulsive about cleaning my work station, because 1) the fish are slimy and they totally, completely gross me out. And 2) Well, refer back to 1.

So after bleaching my board, I laid my fish on the board and rinsed them all off, both sides. I noticed that by the 2nd day the scales fell off a lot more than on day one and that made a bigger mess.

Then I cut them about every inch. I did not cut through the skin. The reason I did this was because these were thick fillets, and I wanted them to get the brine clear through and to smoke clear through and hopefully faster as well. I think it worked and the added benefit was they were about the right size strips for putting into the jars and canning after they were smoked.

Aren't they pretty?

Brown sugar brine is: 2 lb brown sugar and 1 1/4 c. canning and pickling salt. I think you could do quite a bit more salt, maybe even 2 cups. You let it sit for 12 hrs with the brine on it. This brine does not use any water and I did not rinse the fish after it had sat for 12 hrs. I tried another brine as well and it was 1 c. white sugar, 1 c. brown sugar and 2 cups pickling salt added to 16 cups of water. (The fish sat in that for 2 hrs and then was lightly rinsed and then dried on the racks for 12 hrs.) I liked the other way better because your fish doesn't sit out in the air so long.

I put a little brown sugar mixture in the bottom of a cooler. I laid 3 fillets across the bottom skin side down. Put brown sugar across the top of those liberally, then laid three more meat to meat on those. Continued doing this until I had enough fillets for my smoker. (My smoker holds 20 fillets, big chiefs hold about 10.) I had borrowed a big chief, but for that many fish in the future I would borrow 2.

I closed the cooler and put it in a tote and filled it with ice and water to keep the fish cool. If you have room in your fridge you could just put the fish in a tote and put it in your fridge. You let the fish sit in the brine for about 12 hrs. (This time is no scientific number, I did this with as little as 8hrs.)

Then I took them out of the brine and put them on the oiled racks (I used olive oil because I don't like Pam, so I didn't have any.) Trust me, it is much easier to get the fish off if they are oiled. I oiled between each batch, using Pam would have been a useful time saver.

I let the fish sit with the door open for fresh air for about 1-2 hrs, or until I thought I had collected enough flies around my house. I do believe that the longer you let it dry the less "white stuff" (which you can see in the next picture, it was in piles on the bottom of my smoker) you will have spill all over your smoker. But, I don't think this is a super necessary part for the end result. I did it with one hour up to 3 hours and some even over night with a fan blowing on it.

Then I put a pan of wet cherry and alder chips in the bottom, filled to heaping and plugged it in. The cherry isn't necessary, but I have heard you want to stick with Alder for Salmon. (I did put a little dried stuff in the bottom just to give it a start.) (Another note, I bought chunks of wood, as opposed to the finer chips/shavings, I had no problem with it, The dry stuff I put in the bottom of the pan was the finer/smaller chips.) This whole process literally gave me gray hair--you can actually see it in this picture

I closed the smoker and covered with a box to keep in more heat. Once there was no more visible smoke (about 3 hrs depending if your wood was wet or not,) I would open it up and add more wood chips and sometime rotate the fish if I had some bigger fillets on the top. I kept all my small fillets at the top. I smoked mine at least twice, then I just used my best judgement, but didn't worry too much about if it was "done" because I planned to can it.

After it smoked between 5-8 hrs (really it did vary that much, I wasn't too obsessed about the time.) I would pull it out and I skinned it all right then. It was very easy to pull off. Also because I don't like the gray stuff, I took off a lot of that and for some reason the spine really grossed me out, so I removed that as well. Obviously none of that is necessary and can be skipped.

(Yes as a matter of fact my back was killing me when I finished this three day project.)

My dad suggested that I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours to cool down to let the smoke flavor get stronger. I only did that once as I was too anxious to get the canning done and be done with this project. I was really anal about getting most of the brown stuff off, as well as the string down the back, which I assume is the spinal cord, and I didn't want to eat it.

(By the way, this tote will FOREVER smell like smoked fish--even after I ran it through the dishwasher.)

So at this point if you cooked it long enough you can vacuum pack it, or you can can it. Here are the jars I bought to can, I ended up using all of them!

Every square inch of my kitchen counters were completely covered!

I boiled the lids and the rings. I ruined several lids because I left them to boil too long and the seal melted.

I was using two different canners. The one on the left was HUGE!

At one point I ran out of propane and had two spares that turned out to be empty as well. Nice.

I put them in a canner and waited for the steam to escape and once it started I timed that for 10 min, then I put on the weight at 10 lbs and began my 100 min. Actually I did several batches for only 90 min due to a little miscalculation, and I thought 100 min was 1 hr 30 min. Those jars turned out fine and we haven't died yet.

I literally stuffed the jars so full that I had to squish the fish down to get the lids on. It will cook down in size quite a bit and I wanted my jars to be full. I didn't add any oil or water as it often says to do. I had plenty of liquid/oil come out especially on my fish I didn't smoke as long.

When I make the salmon I use most of the oil for moisture. I could have packed them even tighter.

This is the big daddy cooker, guess how many jars I have in there.

Did you guess 16 pints? Well technically 24 half pints and 4 pints!!

I was worried it was too much for the cooker, I am glad to report that it turned out fine.

Out of my 148 pints I only had ONE not seal! :D

I did do one batch of smaller fillets that I cooked all the way through so that we could have some to eat safely. This is a good example of a big fillet vs a small fillet, or what I call a lost Kasilof Red.

These are our packaged "safe" smoked salmon.

For future reference, this is a TWO person job.

PS. Dad in case you made it this far, and can remember what I wrote at the beginning, I was just kidding about the memory loss...