Those nasty "boogers"

[Smokeville]

Hi all;

I know the answer to not having those blobs is to not cook too hot too fast, but I wonder if there is something else to it.

Last week I smoked 15 fillets. They were all brined and then dried overnight in the fridge and fan dried on the counter. I let the temperature slowly rise to around 100F for the first hour, then increased it to about 120F. Over about 40 minutes, that's when the boogers started, but not on all the fillets. BTW they were all tail portions, not centre cuts.

On other occasions, some really cheap HighLiner salmon has produced so much that it looked like soup on top. My sense was that fish had a huge water content.

Any more thoughts on this?

Thanks, Rich

[watchdog56]

The only thing I can think of maybe to much moisture but you have done everyting I have doner the 2 times I did salmon and trout. Put in frig overnight and let get to room temp in am. I started mine for 2 hours at 120 then 4 hours at 140 then 2 hours at 170 and have not had any boogers yet(knock on wood).
Sounds like it should have worked to me,maybe Kummok will be around and give his opinion.

[KyNola]

Part of it around here is whether farm raised or not and if farm raised what country the farm was in and what they fed them.  I smoked some salmon filets that were farm raised and a product of Chile that produced so much "goo" that I refuse to smoke anything that comes from Chile anymore.  My Bradley racks and drip trays were totally covered in the stuff.

Edited to make sense.

[Smokeville]

That's a good point, KyNola...

Those HighLiner pieces were from China, and whoever took the pin bones out had no finesse. There were chunks of flesh attached to nothing. There were also some chemicals listed in the ingredients.

My wife said it tasted fine but it sure was an ugly fish. poor thing.