Smoked Salmon, Whitefish and Gravlax, Or What Has BigMike Been Doing ?? LOL

You know I was having so much fun smoking meat my wife was feeling a little left out.

So I took a couple of hours digging around looking for recipes online and on YouTube and we hit Sam's Club and then I went CRAZY...  First off some smoked fish, super easy and the results are amazing. We always have a bag of IQF (individually quick frozen) talapia filets in our freezer so that was the white fish. When at Sam's I grabbed a 3 pound slab salmon filet (both sides skin free !!), I cut off the last third for smoked salmon and used the wider heart of the filet for the gravlax. So do try this.

For smoking fish you want to BRINE it first, dead simple recipe.

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup sea salt (coarse)

juice of 2 limes

1/2 gallon water

For salmon: 1/4 cup real maple syrup to baste

Mix ingredients well in a bowl. Now place your white fish filets (about a pound) in one zippered freezer bag and the small salmon filet in another. Place about half of the brine in each bag then remove air from the bag and seal well. Refrigerate 24 hours, turning bags every 6 hours or so. Next day remove bags from fridge, remove fish from bags and rinse very carefully. Then lay in a 13x9 pan and blot well dry with paper towels. Refrigerate again for about 3-4 hours. A white film will develop on the fish, that is fine, this film is called the pellical and will aid in good results.

Setup your smoker with a hunk of hickory or maple wood and rub a little EVO on the grill you will set the fish on - set smoker to 225 and slow smoke TWO hours. At the start and mid way thru the smoke cycle I basted the salmon with real maple syrup. Turn off smoker and let cool inside smoker an additional hour. Whallah you have smoked salmon (and white fish).  Dead easy to make a fabulous spread with each.

1 pound smoked fish

1/2 pound cream cheese

3 scallions chopped fine

1/2 cup fresh dill chopped fine

juice of 1 lime

1 Tsp hot sauce

Crumble fish in mixing bowl and with beaters combine all ingredients on slow speed until it is really well mixed. Season with S&P as necessary, taste sample on a cracker. BUT PLEASE place in a storage container and let rest FOUR hours - now the flavors will have had a chance to meld and really, really taste yummy. It will disappear when you serve to your guests with Wheat Thins or Flat bread crackers.

For Gravlax

1 1/2 to 2 lb salmon filet skinned, remove all pin bones

1 or 2 large bunches of fresh dill (about a pound)

1 cup coarse sea salt

1 cup white sugar

1 Tsp finely ground black pepper

1/2 cup Triple Sec or Grand Mariner liquor

Place two large pieces of plastic wrap side by side so they overlap a little. Lay salmon piece in middle of the overlapped area. Mix salt, sugar and pepper well. Really cover ALL surfaces and edges of BOTH SIDES of the salmon with the dry mixture. Now lay down a whole lot of fresh dill (stems and all) on the fish, carefully flip over and do the same on the other side. SO now we have the dry mixture heavily applied everywhere with the dill on top everywhere. Drizzle the orange liquor over the fish and then very tightly seal up the plastic wrap folding so it's tightly wrapped and sealed. Place this parcel in a heavy zippered storage bag and refrigerate for 3 days. I laid a package of bacon slices on top to weigh it down a little. I flipped the bag over every 8 hours during the 3 day duration. At the end of the 3rd Day remove fish from fridge, unwrap and rinse very well all over with cold water to remove all dill, salt, sugar and so on.

Lay filet flat on a cutting board with the END of the filet to your right. Slice as thin as you can on the bias from left to right (in other words thick end toward thin end of the salmon). Place salmon in food storage containers and store one in freezer and keep one in the fridge for eating. It is so remarkably better than ANYTHING you can buy in a store.

Make little canapés with toasted pumpernickel or hearty wheat bread squares, spread cream cheese, salmon slice, thin cucumber slices, lemon zest curls, thin red onion and more fresh dill to doll it up. REMARKABLE...

Well I wasn't there so I can't say how this fella did his. A big part of smoking is the brine and then the pre smoke drying are huge.

Now my smoker has an optional cold smoke baffle for COLD SMOKING fish, but when watching the videos the company puts out

and seeing recipes other Cookshack owners post it's clear they are just using a low setting. Just watch what Stuart from Cookshack does and you'll get the results you want.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYORr4AmtBQ

As for not going mushy, wanting some salmon texture - my wife complained about that when she first tried our spread - but a day later after everything had a chance to sorta meld together she loved it. I would suggest putting the cream cheese and lime juice and dill in the mixer and creaming it really well so it is super fluffy first, then adding the broken up smoked salmon and only running the mixer a bit once you do that. You're gonna love the taste. I would suggest using a sweet fruit wood like Applewood for the smoke - or Maple wood.

And if you can find a used Cookshack smoker on Craigslist it's the way to go. You lay out the extra money up front but man is it easy to use and cheap too run - only a tiny amount of wood is burned and the amount of power is minuscule. Less than watching a normal tv