My first attempt at smoked salmon

[farmerman]

So I tried my hand at smoked salmon on the ole uds. I just posted my first few cooks in the pork section, now for the fish. I started with about 15 lbs of salmon from last season's runs, mostly reds (sockeye) and two filets of silver (coho).

I made a dry brine with three cups sugar (2 brown and 1 white) and one cup kosher salt. I cut the fillets in half and sliced into 2" strips just through the meat. I put a layer of the brine down first then rubbed a couple fillets and put them in the container skin up. I alternated so that they were meat to meat and skin to skin.



I put them in the fridge overnight and rinsed them first thing in the am. I patted Derry and put them on racks to dry. After 8 hours they had formed a nice pellicle.


(Ignore that shriveled little fella on the left there )

I tossed them on the uds and tried to keep the temp as low as possible but I struggled to keep it below 200 like I would have preferred. They cooked a bit faster than I would have liked, (done in3 hours), but they still had great flavor.



I wanted to try some sweeter ones too, so I basted one fillet of red and a half fillet of silver with agave syrup before and during smoking. It turned out delicious and its my kids favorite!



As always thanks for looking and feel free to criticize or ask questions!

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[tomshoots]

Really nice lookin' chow there!!

What wood did you use?

[kingkoch42]

Nothing to criticize there.

I could do some real damage to that !

[farmerman]

I used Apple, it ended up being a really good compliment to the sweetness from the brine and the glaze

Thanks guys!

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[chester]

looks like you nailed it to me.... 3 hrs seems about right for the thickness of that fish, this isn't cold smoking, which would take a lot longer. i try and keep the temp down as long as possible but ineveuitably in a UDS it will spike.

what you need is an Arctic vortex and subzero temps, i can hold my UDS at 145 for hours on end

IMG_0977.jpgIMG_0976.jpg



nice job!!

[farmerman]

Yeah Chester, I wish I had an arctic vortex. I didn't set a trap line this year thankfully because I probably wouldn't be able to get the snowmobile out to it. Heavy rains wiped out a lot of snow yesterday

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[BYBBQ]

Looks good.

We use the same brine with the addition of a little ginger to the mix. Most of the time we grill them @ 450° instead of low temp.

[PigCicles]

Looks delicious ... I'm ready for some salmon

No chickens were harmed in this statement. But it doesn't mean I didn't want to.

[Bbqdude]

Looks like they turned out great!

Thanks for posting the brine recipe and tips as well.
The last batch I did with a dry brine and this time I'm trying out a wet brine.

I'm getting ready to put a batch of silvers on the UDS today.

Like you, I usually try keep the UDS at 150 degrees or lower.
If the white stuff starts cooking out of the fish it is cooking too fast and/or too hot. About three hours or so seems to do it.