Smoked Fish

Total Time: 24 hrs Preparation Time: 12 hrs Cook Time: 12 hrs

Ingredients

• 10 lbs fairly oily fish fillets, scaled,pin-bones pulled,and rinsed (salmon, tuna, or swordfish, or other oily fish)
• 1 cup kosher salt or 1 cup uniodized table salt (kosher salt works best!)
• 1 cup sugar or 1 cup brown sugar, packed,dissolved in
• 1 quart warm water
• 1/2 ounce coarse fresh ground black pepper
• 3 -4 bay leaves, crushed or finely crumbled,not powdered
• wood chips, of choice soaked in water overnight (alder, apple, cherry, maple, oak; not hickory or mesquite)

Recipe

• 1 mix all brine ingredients thoroughly.
• 2 cut fish in 1-2" pieces, leaving skin on.
• 3 if fish is fresh, soak for 1-1/2 hours; if it has been frozen, soak for 45-60 minutes.
• 4 remove fish from marinade and place on smoker-racks skin-side down.
• 5 allow to glaze at room temperature for at least 4 hours, and preferably overnight.
• 6 i usually set a fan to blow across the fish and help them get dry to the touch and look very glazed.
• 7 cold-smoke (at 120-140 degrees f) for 8-12 hours to obtain desired flavor.
• 8 then hot smoke (at 180-200 degrees f) for 1-2 hours or finish in a 300 degree f oven for 30-45 minutes to get desired texture.
• 9 i do not like a mushy fish, so i cook it until it firms up, though it's hard to tell, though, until after it has cooled down.
• 10 cool to room temperature, freeze on cookie sheets, package, and store in freezer.
• 11 best with stronger flavored, oily fish such as salmon, tuna, or swordfish; in general, mild fish smoke poorly.
• 12 notes: i use a brinkmann smok’n pit water-smoker.
• 13 the water helps to keep the temperature low, and the steam in the smoke keeps meat more moist during long cooking.
• 14 my smoker is intended for charcoal smoking, but for fish, i place soaked wood chips in a metal (not foil, foil will burn through, use real metal) sitting on top of a cheap hot plate (with a rheostat control, not just an on-off switch), which sits on a brick so the pan is up under the bottom of the smoker, where the charcoal pan normally sets.
• 15 adjust temperature by adjusting hot plate up or down (usually somewhere between low and medium), and throw another handful of wet wood chips into the pie plate every 30-40 minutes, when the smoke stops generating.
• 16 depending on my mood, and what kind of wood chips are available, i usually smoke fish with alder, cherry, oak, maple, orange or lemon wood (on the rare occasion i can find orange or lemon) alder and cherry are usually the easiest to find, and they both work beautifully for fish.
• 17 do not use hickory or mesquite; they are just too strong and completely overwhelm fish!
• 18 i usually double or triple this recipe; i have rigged my double-size smoker to take up to 4 racks to handle the larger amounts.
• 19 since this whole process takes a lot of time, the little extra effort is worth while, and the smoked fish freezes well, lasting a couple years with only a little deterioration in flavor or texture.
• 20 safety note: needless to say, do this outdoors!
• 21 cabon monoxide kills!