Smoky Sockeye Memories

 Back in 2019, we had the adventure of our lives, fishing for Sockey Salmon on the Kenai River in Alaska.  We feasted on those six salmon for the next few weeks -- and additional canned salmon, that we bought from the processor who froze our fish for us, for months beyond that.  Over the last two years, the closest we've come to those memories is to have cold-smoked Nova Lox for Sunday breakfasts.  Somehow, that just didn't quite bring back all the memories.

Our son Matt has made a study of smoking meats and fish over the last several years, and it occurred to us to see if we could get a smoker small enough to carry with us on our full-time RV travels.  It didn't take us long to find Smokehouse Products' Mini-Chief Electric Smoker, which comes in a compact 12"x12"x14" size -- just small enough to fit in the available space in our camping compartment in the RV.  We did a little research and decided that it would fit our needs.

TYPES OF SMOKED SALMON

As we researched technique, we found that there are more types of smoked salmon than we realized.  Here are the main types:

Lox - is a cured salmon preparation ideally made with the belly of the fish (called belly lox) which has a higher fat content. Lox is salt-cured, using a combination of salt, sugar, spices, herbs, and citrus zest.  After curing, the salmon is often fully cooked with heated wood smoke. The fish will take on the salty flavor of the cure or wood smoke and is used to top bagels with a combination of cream cheese and capers.

Gravlax - is cured only in a mix of salt, sugar, and dill. It is generally served whole, sliced, with dill and mustard sauce and crackers. Additional spices such as citrus, coriander, juniper berries, or fennel are sometimes added to the cure mixture as well as spirits like vodka.

Nova - is cold smoked. This means that it is smoked over a very low heat which gives it its smoky flavor. As the low smoking temperature does not cook the salmon but only imparts flavor, the fish has to be cured or brined before smoking.  Nova and other smoked salmons are generally served on platters, sliced thin, with a spread including capers, hard-boiled eggs, cucumbers, red onions, soft cheeses, and crackers.

Hot-smoked Salmon - is what we aim to produce.  It refers to salmon smoked at high temperatures which cook the fish as well as imparting a smoky flavor. When ordering smoked salmon at your favorite restaurant this is most likely the type you will be served.

WHAT WE DID

We set the smoker up outside on the barbeque grill and got ready to plug it in!  Other than the smoker, all you need are pellets, chips or flakes of your favorite species of hardwood.  We picked alder:

To smoke salmon, many people recommend a salty brine.  It really is not necessary unless you are curing the fish to preserve it, but many people recommend the brine as a medium to carry the other flavors you want to add to the smoked fish -- such as maple, brown sugar, garlic-dill, or some other spicy or herby thing you prefer.  In addition, we understand that the chloride in sodium chloride caused the meat proteins to take up more water, which, in turn, make the meat more moist and tender when smoked. It is also possible to brine the salmon with generic salt brine (or not), and then dry-rub the other flavors on it before smoking.  We may try that approach next time.

At this point, we knew that we needed to consult with some experienced meat smokers, so we tapped some good friends from Out West:  Jim Nachtsheim, from Wyoming, and Dee Dee Sparks, from Nomadland.  We also picked the brain of our son Matt, from Arlington, to give us the scientific and technical details.  We finally decided that, for this first smoking effort, we would try five different flavors of brine.  We are concerned about sodium intake, but it really is not possible to brine without any salt, so we chose to use half the amount of recommended salt in our brine.  We learned from several low-sodium research sources that cutting the salt by half does not affect the flavor result.  An alternative is to use potassium chloride rather than salt, but we read reports that many people felt the result added a bitter taste to what was smoked.  So, we chose half-portions of salt.  

And so, fare forward, salmon adventurers!

Here are the recipes we used (in each case to brine two 4-oz. portions) (we found the special spice mixes at our local supermarket):

PLAIN SALT BRINE:

1 cup cold water

1 tablespoon kosher salt

CITRUS BRINE:

1 cup cold water

1/2 cup Lee Kum Kee Triple Citrus Brine

SPICY SZECHUAN BRINE:

1 cup cold water

3/4 cup Tsang Szechuan Spicy Sauce

MAPLE APPLE BRINE:

1 cup cold water

34 grams of Spice Hut Maple Apple Spice Mix

BROWN SUGAR BRINE:

1 cup cold water

1 tbsp kosher (i.e., non-iodized, non-table) salt

1 tbsp brown sugar

1/8 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

We brined the salmon portions overnight.  Here they are, rinsed and patted down and ready to dry in the refrigerator for 4 hours to form the pellicle:

As the time approached to bring the dried salmon out to start the smoking process, Kathy readied our tools, including a meat thermometer (the salmon must reach 140F-145F to be cooked) and oven mitts:

A smoker is no good without the smoke, so, 15 minutes before putting the salmon in the smoker, we readied a pan full of Alder chips --

-- and inserted them into the bottom of the smoker, on top of the electrical element:

After 15 minutes, smoke was billowing out of the smoker, so we brought out the triple rack of salmon and lowered into the smoker from the top:

After four to five hours -- and three panfuls of alder chips at about 45-60 minutes each -- we removed the smoked salmon to test its doneness:

We decided to actively smoke the fish for almost three hours, and then finish for a little over another hour, because we read that the salmon will not really absorb any more smoke flavor after about 2 hours.

The salmon certainly LOOKED done.  But probes with a meat thermometer revealed two things.  First, during the active smoking, the thickest portions of the salmon only reached about 120F.  Second, after we quit smoking but just used the heating element to cook the salmon, the temperature of the thickest portions fell to just under 110F.  

This was disappointing.  So we took those beautiful pieces of salmon --

-- and finished them in the oven!  No one wants to get sick from undercooked fish.  Everything we read has said that the internal temperature of the salmon should reach at least 145F in the thickest portions.

We had two 5 oz. portions of salmon brined in each of five types of brine.  This let us take little 1 oz. cuts of each type of brined salmon and taste it, for a total of 5 oz. for each cook/diner, leaving us with a full 4 oz. portion of each type.

OUR CONCLUSIONS

Surprisingly, our two favorite brines were the plan salt brine (no added flavor) and the Triple Citrus, which had a very pleasant citrus flavor on top of the normal smoky flavor.  The other three did not seem to "pop" with any special flavor.  They were all good, but not much different than the plain brine version.  After some thought, we realized that this shortfall in flavor was probably due to our efforts to reduce sodium.  Each of those other brine mixes was based on a specific commercial sauce.  In order to halve the sodium, we had to halve the entire mixture, which also halved the flavor.  Duh.

So what do we do to reduce the salt but ramp up the flavor?  Our solution, which we'll test next time, will be to brine each portion with the generic salt brine, and then add the favor with homemade rub.  In this way, we can amp up, for example, the spicy Szichuan flavor without adding any salt.  So stay tuned to our next experiment to see how that goes.

FINAL STEPS

Because we did not do a full cure of our salmon, we couldn't just throw it in the refrigerator for some indeterminate time.  Checking on recommendations, we wrapped each portion tightly in its own plastic wrap, and put each pair of portions into a marked zippy bag to keep track of its flavor.

We decided to use the plain brined salmon as the main ingredient of our own homemade nonfat yogurt "cream cheese," complete with olives and/or sundried tomatoes.  We also plan to use a plain portion for Katie's Special Birthday Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese!

OH, YES, WE FORGOT TO MENTION . . .

. . . the extra secret ingredients.  No outdoor barbeque is complete unless the smoking chef wears a comfy uniform and sips his or her favorite beer!

A votre santé!