DOG: We Smoke Everything!

Yesterday was a beautiful day at my house... for smoking fish! I got ahold of 3 real nice trout from my boss and picked up a pound of prime salmon at Wegmans. So I decided it would be a wonderful day to smoke some fish.

First of all smoking meat of any sort is a good excuse for not doing anything on the "Honey-do" list cause you are making dinner. But yesterday I did my smoking of fish primarily because my wife is working on another continent for a few weeks and since she hardly eats any seafood and complains when I make it, well, you get the picture.

Smoking involves relatively low temperatures for long periods of time. I like to smoke fish at just over 200 degrees F. Anywhere from around 185-225 will work but absolutely no more than 225. Therefore, an accuate thermometer on your smoker is imperative.

For the trout, all I did was filet them and remove as many of the tiny bones as possible. For the salmon, I removed the skin and brined it for 10 hours in a solution of water, brown sugar, and kosher salt. The ratio for one pound of salmon is: 1 quart of water, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, and 2/3 cup of kosher salt. Multiply that ratio by however many pounds of salmon you are smoking. One way to know if you've got enough salt in the water is to float an egg in it. If it floats you're good. Once the salmon had been placed in the brine, I put that in the beer fridge (where there is space for them) for 10 hours. 12 hours is probably optimum but after 10 hours I was hungry! After removing the salmon from the brine I pat them dry with paper towels and add just a tiny pinch of McCormick Hickory Salt to each piece.

Next is to prep the smoker. And get the temperature up to around 200. I put my fish on the grates when the temp hit 185. Usually it takes a couple hours to smoke this much fish. But yesterday I struggled to keep the temperature below 225. You must constantly monitor your smoker for temperature control. Too hot, open the smokestack and close off the firebox intake. Too cold, close off the smokestack and open up the firebox intake and/or add more hot charcoal. Use charcoal to create your heat, use wood chips to create your smoke. Yesterday I used hickory chips. And as always, I use Cowboy brand charcoal.