Hot-smoked Salmon

[ayjay]

That's raw Salmon that's been hot-smoked, not heated up cold-smoked Salmon.

I made some a couple of days ago and whilst it was perfectly edible, it did taste a bit "bonfirey" (to me anyway, the wife thought it was fine).

I used an old biscuit tin, two salmon fillets of about 150gm each, 100 gm of mixed Alder/Beech wood-chips, (bought for the purpose, not carpentry leftovers ), and the salmon was on a rack an inch or more above the woodchips.

I put the whole lot on the gas hob and used low-medium heat on a medium sized burner, once the tin was emitting smoke I gave it five more minutes and then turned off the heat.

I'm thinking that maybe a couple of minutes might be better, (but that seems a bit low for cooking time), or use less woodchips, or maybe take it out of the tin after the five minutes rather than leave it in the smoke.

Has anyone else tried this, and if so, do you have any ideas/suggestions for a better end-product?

[OchAye]

I can't tell you what to do, but look for Arbroath smokies (known as just "smokies") and take the basics from there. Arbroath smokies are "hot smoked" haddock, and where I am the same smokers do smokies and hot smoked salmon but given the prices you see a lot less salmon.

Off the top of my head it takes half an hour to hot smoke a smokie (wikepedia says less then 1 hour). Salmon is smoked in half fish fillets. I guess a lot will depend how far away is the source of heat from the fish blah blah. The taste seems to vary depending on what wood they use, usually oak logs but maybe from oak to oak there is a change in taste.

Over to you Keep us posted.

[ayjay]

Over to you Keep us posted.

I've just finished scoffing my second attempt at this, (today's lunch), it was much better than the first try, and the only difference I made was to reduce the quantity of woodchips.

I used 30g this time and kept the cooking time the same. The salmon was cooked and very tasty, with very little actual smoky taste.

My next attempt will use 50g of woodchips, and I think that will prove to the winner. It could even end up as Xmas dinner along with a proper Nicoise salad.

[Rorschach]

Did you soak the chips before use?

[ayjay]

Did you soak the chips before use?

No: should I have done? Not seen it suggested anywhere.

[Rorschach]

I have always soaked the chips. It slows the burn and keep the temperature down in the pile so you get sweeter tasting smoke and less of the acrid resins etc.

[OchAye]

You need the heat to cook the fish, smoke is secondary.

[Rorschach]

You still get the heat.

[Nos]

Have been doing this a while, to clear two points up, to cold smoke anything you have to keep the temp down to about 35 C, any food smoked this way needs to be cooked before you can eat it, to hot smoke you need to keep the temp up to 65/70 C, after this has been done for the correct length of time it can be eaten without any cooking, times vary, two bits salmon, will not take as long as a full 12Kgs of leg of pork. I bought a proper smoker early this year and very pleased with it, its not the sort with a separate smoke generator. My leg of pork was wet cured for 35 days and smoked for about 17hrs over three days, some of it went into some sausages, some cubed for stir fries etc, but the main of it was for gammon steaks, the chips and sawdust was my own which had been saved over the year, it was Apple and Cherry, I didnt pre-soak them but if the temp started to creep up, then a spray with water damped them down, and produced more smoke, very pleased with the outcome.