Northwest Fishing Reports

This is the first time I have tried to smoke Salmon. I found a basic recipe that calls for ½ cup salt, ½ cup brown sugar to one quart of water. I soaked the salmon for 24 hours as suggested. When I pulled the salmon from the brine there was slime hanging on the pieces of salmon. Is this normal? The recipe did say to remove the bones which I did not do.

Yes, that is normal with that brine, at least with Pinks. Pinks or Coho? I did some Pinks with that recipe, only I doubled the sugar. Rinse the slime off under cold water and then set on racks to dry. Don't worry about the bones. Unless its a good sized Coho or King pulling the pinbones while raw is more work than picking them out after they're cooked. Oh, and I didn't get the slime really well washed off. It inhibits the formation of a good pellicle, but I smoked them anyway and have yet to hear a complaint out of anyone who's eaten them. I thought they turned out really good regardless.

right on, I didnt rinse them as the recipe said not to, it said to air dry. I will be smoking them tonight after work. Thanks again.

Yep, they slime up with most recipes that I've used. Rinse them off, pat dry with paper towels, and let set to form the pellicle. With a brown sugar dry brine the slime is especially slimy, and needs to be rinsed.

I typically prefer to use a dry brine with 3:1 ratio of dark brown sugar to salt with a few other spices and ingredients. I quickly rinse the pieces in cold water after curing for roughly 24 hours and air dry on oven or smoker racks with a box fan. Then I baste them with honey or teriyaki glaze with some special ingredients a few times throughout the smoking process. Recently I tried a recipe using liquid smoke and the oven to produce faux smoked salmon. It came out really good and was done in around 2 hours. Nice for smaller batches where I don't want to fire up the smoker for a whole afternoon.

One valuable lesson I have learned is to avoid salt based seasonings after curing/brining. It just makes it too salty for my taste and I have had a few others agree with me. That is also why I eventually went to a 3:1 or even 4:1 sugar to salt ratio for curing. The finished product comes out more sweet.

I use 3 parts Dark brown sugar to one part fine ground sea salt, not table salt, table salt is garbage. Mix more then you think you are gonna need and put a good coating (1/4") on each fillet, stack in a contanier and let it sit in the fridge for 24 hours. Pull out, do not rinse or wipe, let drip dry on racks, smoke for however long you want. I usaully do 10 hours with two pans of an alder/apple mix.

Other things to try-
*put a LITTLE cayanne pepper in your dry rub, gives it a kick
*Top with some fresh ground pepper before smoking
*half way thru smoking glaze with teryaki sauce for some sweetness
*If im going to use the fish for dip I like to sprinkle on some dill before smoking

I do a dry "brine" that works wonderfully. Tastes fantastic.

1 cup Morton's sugar cure
2 lb bag dark brown sugar
10 tsp garlic powder

Mix dry ingredients together. Layer fillets (probably need to cut them in halves) in a stock pot (meat to meat, skin to skin as you build the layers). Cover each layer with the dry brine as you build up, and whatever is left over after the top layer, just dump the rest of the dry brine over the top. Put the lid on the stock pot and let it sit for at least 24 hours. The dry brine will then be liquid. Rinse the meat just enough to get any clumps of sugar off, then pat dry with paper towels and let them air dry until pellicle is complete....then smoke away!

I'm pretty new to smoking fish but after a couple 'mediocre' batches, I've got it dialed in and I'm changing the recipe around.

Last round was an apple/maple brine.

Blend 2 large sweet apples (cored w/out seeds) with 6-10 pressed garlic cloves until it looks like a smoothie.
In a large bowl mix:
1.5 lbs dark sugar
1/2 cup sea salt
1 tbsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 tbsp. Grandma's molasses
1/2 tsp. fresh ground peppercorn
1/2 cup maple syrup

I use a metal mixing bowl, add the apple/garlic blend and then heat to meld the flavors and spices. Bring to a boil then remove and cool until warm. Pour into a baking pan and add your fish skin side up. Brine for 24-48 hours depending on taste (longer will make brine flavor stronger as well as making the fish firmer). Remove from brine and wash all traces of the brine - set on a cookie sheet & blot dry. Leave it sit for about an hour (I put it in the oven w/no heat just to keep any possible insects from being attracted to it).

Once you start smoking it, glaze the fish with pure maple syrup. I do it about 2 hours into the process, then about 4 hours into it, I remove the skin (it should just peel away) and then glaze again. Total smoke time is about 5-6 hours.

strider43 wrote:This is the first time I have tried to smoke Salmon. I found a basic recipe that calls for ½ cup salt, ½ cup brown sugar to one quart of water. I soaked the salmon for 24 hours as suggested. When I pulled the salmon from the brine there was slime hanging on the pieces of salmon. Is this normal? The recipe did say to remove the bones which I did not do.

Never had slime when pulling my pinks out of the brine. I just pull em out and pat-dry them with a paper towel.
Did you scale the fish?

Gringo Pescador wrote:

strider43 wrote:This is the first time I have tried to smoke Salmon. I found a basic recipe that calls for ½ cup salt, ½ cup brown sugar to one quart of water. I soaked the salmon for 24 hours as suggested. When I pulled the salmon from the brine there was slime hanging on the pieces of salmon. Is this normal? The recipe did say to remove the bones which I did not do.

Never had slime when pulling my pinks out of the brine. I just pull em out and pat-dry them with a paper towel.
Did you scale the fish?

No I did not scale the fish, The directions I found did not indicate to scale the fish.

strider43 wrote:

Gringo Pescador wrote:

strider43 wrote:This is the first time I have tried to smoke Salmon. I found a basic recipe that calls for ½ cup salt, ½ cup brown sugar to one quart of water. I soaked the salmon for 24 hours as suggested. When I pulled the salmon from the brine there was slime hanging on the pieces of salmon. Is this normal? The recipe did say to remove the bones which I did not do.

Never had slime when pulling my pinks out of the brine. I just pull em out and pat-dry them with a paper towel.
Did you scale the fish?

No I did not scale the fish, The directions I found did not indicate to scale the fish.

Next time try it, I scale all my fish. Smoker, table fare, all of it. I like the taste of the fish better and I bet it will help with the slime factor as we'll. I just lay em out in the lawn and shoot them with the jet setting on the garden hose against the grain ( tail towards you). You can always tell when I've had good luck because of my sparkly lawn.

So my first batch turned out great, my second that I smoked last night turned out more like jerky. There were two differences from the first batch; one was that I cut the Salmon up into smaller pieces and the other was that I left the Salmon in my smoker overnight. My smoker is charcoal smoker and the directions say that it will burn for 5 hours with a full load of charcoal. I checked the temperature with a meat thermometer about 1-1/2 hours into the process and found the thicker pieces were 140 to 160 degrees which from what I have read 140 degrees if good to kill all of the bacteria. That being said was my fish done 1-1/2 hours into the process? And further smoking is to add smoke flavor? Thank for your help!

After the meat gets up to about 140 or so it stops picking up smoke flavor. Most people waste their precious chips, it doesn't take very much to get all the smoke flavor that can be imparted. With a Big Chief, I never use more than two pans of chips per batch.

so once I'm up to temp its done for all intents and purposes? does it usually take longer for the fish to get up to temp, is this people smoke for 5 or more hours? thanks!

It all really depends on how hot the smoker is. If your smoker is only 160 inside, it will take a while for the meat to come up to that temp. If it's 220 and above, it'll come up real fast. All about the energy transfer. Now when commercial smoking, we would always start out with the smoker at around 110 to 125 and then if we wanted to do a "Hot Smoke" we would bring up the temp after a few hours.