One of my favorite sources of protein and Omega 3’s. If you do your own brine and smoking you can really cut down on the sodium content the only negative to wild-caught Alaskan Salmon.
I could find no data on home brine/smoked. Here the wiki
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I’m interested in more details about the brine and smoking procedure.
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The standard brine is 3 cups brown sugar 1/3rd cup non-iodized salt cover fish for 6-12 hours.
I basically cut the salt in half and use pink rock salt ran thru an old coffee grinder. Since you are using a lot less salt you need to brine in the fridge for a longer time to remove excess water. A full 24 hours or until the meat is firm and basically one color. Let me find a picture.
So this meat is just been brined for 24 hours it is raw.
If you can control your smoker temp, I like to use a low heat like 165F
Depending on the thickness start checking if it is done after 4 hours. These were about 3/4" thick and took 6 hours.
I hope that helped. If you have any recipes I’d love to hear them I enjoy talking fish and smoking. Thanks for asking.
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Nice! Have you ever tried cold-smoking salmon? I want to tackle that this summer. Although maybe 165° is low enough that’s essentially the same
I have not that sounds interesting. How does one do that?
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I tried a ghetto version on some cured trout and it worked quite well (sry no pics)
I got a large bow and put some smoking chips in it, covered it in foil and made a hole for a plastic tube (used tape to seal the hole). Put the fish in a ziplock and connected the other end of the tube to the bag and made that air tight. Then lit the chips on fire and smoked away!
Turned out great
It is not. 165 will cook the fish.
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My understanding is it’s basically half the temperature for twice the time. So 80° for 10 hours kinda thing
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I’m not quite sure.
I’ve never used any proper equipment. I did leave the fish in the bag overnight though. Had a nice, strong smokey flavour and definitely wasn’t cooked
I did try smoking in a wok with rice. That kind of worked but overcooked the fish
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anna were you trying to make smoked sushi or did you want the fish smoked and cooked?
Basically smoked sushi, like the sliced lox they serve with bagels
I cured the fish (8oz) w/ 3tbsp salt and 1tbsp sugar for 36hrs, dried it for 3-4, then did the “smoking” thing above. I prefer cold smoke to hot smoke
It is very easy to over cook fish. I found the low heat of 165F in my smoker takes a bit longer but you can check it once an hour then pull it out just at the right time. For me it is also important to try and make the pieces the same size and thickness this also helps so you don’t dry out the thin ones.
Fish jerky is never a good thing.
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Yeah… THat’s what happened when I tried wok smoking. Temperature too high, fish too thin
Your fish looks beyond beautiful. I could probably put down at least 2 filets in a sitting and still want more
Your brining time seems quite short. Is that standard?
Although, I was curing, not brining
I did not know there was a difference between brine and cure. haha learn something new everyday.
To be honest I let the fish fillets tell me when they are ready. Raw de-boned fish is very floppy for lack of a proper term. When they are cured they will be some what stiff and have a uniform color. I have brine/cured for longer if it was a bad time to start the smoker. I did not notice a difference in taste. I do cure in the frig.
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From what I understand, brining typically involves soaking meats in liquids. Could be wrong though.
@TrainForPain This is my set up.
I cured steelhead trout with bbq seasoning for 36hrs. This will probably take between 15-20hrs . The tube this time isn’t great → inefficient. I miss my HS science lab…
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I love it!
You just light the chips and let it go right away, right? You don’t wait for them to burn out or anything?
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THe smoking chips I used would not light, so I lined the silver pot with foil, put the chips in and turned the stove on
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I like it! We’re like an episode of Breaking Bad - Alaska!
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I have always been told if the fish has ever been frozen you should brine with just brown sugar and salt so the brine is dry.
If the fish is fresh and never frozen you add some water to the brine mix. However no one ever told me why.
All of the salmon I buy comes from alaska and is frozen so I always use a dry brine.
For the fresh trout I catch here in Colorado I always pan fry in coconut oil.
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Improvising kitchen equipment that I don’t have is kind of my thing 
I’ve also smoked tomatoes with a two beakers, a bunsen burner and a wire rack in a chem class a couple of years ago… now that’s Breaking Bad stuff 
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Nice rod. Did you build that yourself?
And great catch. Beautiful browns!
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