Introduction...

[SoupGuy]

Hi all... am impressed at what I have read here and am sure I have the ability to contribute.

I've been smoking fish and meats for more than 13 years. I make a point of making friends with restaurant owners, sausage makers, fishermen and meat distributors and pick their brains (and wholesale prices) in my quest to produce a saleable product or two, or more.

I presently am using my fourth-generation custom smokehouse. It cost a fortune to make and am sure I would have done better buying a commercial smoker... but thats another story.

There are a lot of good recipes here for smoking salmon. I hope to be able to contribute by offering FRUGAL advice (cut your costs) and SAFETY advice (there is a lack of mention of proper safety here).

I use a very BASIC brine recipe that many of you can use as a starter. I am not a big believer in adding a whole lot of spices and flavorings to the brine. These cost a BUNDLE and in many cases leave little or nothing to the resulting flavor of your finished product.

If you want to make a great smoked salmon, you do NOT need a complicated brine recipe! If you would like to create YOUR OWN special offering, start with the basic product and add your own variations.

BASIC SMOKED SALMON: (we sell a lot of this 'as is' to restaurants)

Using whole boneless fillets: (if they have skin on, we suggest removing it for a lot of reasons)

BRINE:

4 Gallons fresh water
5 LBS Kosher Salt (don't want iodine!)
2 LBS Pure Cane Brown Sugar (beware the molassis crap!) Use C&H brand
(MIX WELL)

Make sure you're brine is between 34 and 38 degrees if you want to avoid botulism poisoning. We do NOT add sodium nitrite (another important thing you should educate yourself on!!! Will explain if you ask). Use a coleman (or other) cooler that fits in your fridge).

Place fillets into chilled brine. Brine time depends upon the size and thickness of your fillets. We'll assume you are using store-bought (probably farm raised) Salmon which weigh approximately 1.75 to 2.6 LBS each. SAMS club fillets work WONDERFULLY.

Brine the above for 8 to 10 hours (thicker=10). Remove from brine and rinse well using fresh cold water. You SHOULD pat-dry the fillets using paper towels after rinsing to move this along quicker. Lay onto racks and allow to dry until a shiny coating appears (the all-important "pellicle"). Do this in the fridge NOT at room-temperature (about 3 hours).

Pre-heat your smoker to 100-110 degrees. Place fish into smoker and add heavy smoke for about 1.5 hours. Gradually increase smoker temperature over the next 3 or 4 hours (thicker/longer) and reduce smoke as you go. You should never have a smoker temperature above @ 180 degrees)

When the internal temperature of the fish exceeds 145 degrees, you're done.

Many of you pouring expensive wines and spices into your brine will be amazed how little they contribute to your final product and how good a Salmon can taste without them!

Good luck!

** If you have specific questions we can be reached at: [email protected]












Best know not for soup, but rather smoked meats...

[BigSmoker]

Soup Nazi,
Welcome aboard.  I believe over time most safety issues have been covered.  If someone asks we have several members that are throughly educated in food safety.  If you have any tips we should be aware of let us have them.  We're always learning.  Thanks for the brine recipe. Simple is good.  Although I haven't smoked much salmon I don't recall anyone using the nitrates.  Do tell what you know, as I do use cures with nitrates for bacon.  Again welcome and look forward to your posts.


P.S.  For the Olds team.  Maybe we should include a safety awarness section in a permanant sticky[?]

Jeff



Some say BBQ is in your blood, if thats true my blood must be BBQ sauce.

[Kummok]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by BigSmoker</i>
<br />Soup Nazi,
Welcome aboard.  I believe over time most safety issues have been covered.  If someone asks we have several members that are throughly educated in food safety......
.....P.S.  For the Olds team.  Maybe we should include a safety awarness section in a permanant sticky[?]
Jeff
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Welcome SoupNazi....appreciate the good advice and experience. Exploring further on this forum, you'll see that Forum members always appreciate "new and improved", we have a lot to offer in certain areas and a lot to learn in others. The majority of your suggestions are covered on other threads on this forum, but alas, buried amongst the entire 1231 threads. That's the reason for past and current organization efforts by the forum mgr, Chez Bubba, and the "Olds Team" via links on this site....Hope you stick around, explore, learn, share, and help teach the wonderfully aromatic, tasty, and gastronomically pleasing art and science of smoking "stuff" via this forum![:p][:p][:)][8D]

Jeff:
GREAT suggestion....safety deserves it's place of recognition so that it's EASY to find and review....I'd hate to lose any forum members THAT way.......Hmmmm, maybe we should also have a category for "well used Bradleys for sale CHEAP by survivors of previous unsafe smoking practices" [:D][;)][xx(][}:)][;)][:D]   Naw....wouldn't get ANY postings![:D]

35 years of extinguishing smoking stuff and now I'm wondering WHY!
Kummok @ Homer, AK USA

[SmokinMoe]

A big welcome to the forum.
Thanks for taking the time to post!! It was well thought out and must have taken some time to type in, so I appreciate the effort.
I will reread this in the summer when I tackle Salmon for the first time.
Welcome aboard, and keep on posting.

"If you have to cook, you might as well watch it all go up in smoke!"

[SoupGuy]

Thanks for the Welcome!!!

Still trying to manuever the formum and have read lots of things I didn't see my first time here... the excitement of some is refreshing and reminds me of when I got started. (Clways had something getting ready before the current batch was done!)

On the topic of safety, I think more should be included here. Smoking meat can be very dangerous to those uninformed! Imagine creating a delicious batch of jerky, sharing it with a dozen family members and friends and they all get sick! Aaaaaaaaaaaarggggg!!!!

I am sure there are lots of folks than know more than I, but I'll try to include some general guidelines for those who might (should) be interested when I get more time.

There is a pretty good discussion on the topic of avoiding BOTULISM in the "Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing" book by Rytek Kutas (bow, bow).

For anyone new to smoking meats, this should be required reading!

Only a couple more months to Lake Michigan COHO!!!!

 ** NO SOUP FOR YOU!


Best know not for soup, but rather smoked meats...

[manxman]

Hi SoupNazi,

Welcome to the forum.

There will be a couple of article relating to Food Poisoning and Food Hygiene appearing at:

http://www.susanminor.org/index2.html

in the near future. You will also find various postings on this forum that prompted the forthcoming articles in the first place.

Part 1, Food Poisoning is all but finished and should be available in the next few days. Part 2, Food Hygiene will follow on in the next couple of weeks.

Obviously people need to have information and be aware of the potential dangers of (slow) cooking, but to put botulism into context, there appear currently to be around 110 cases per annum in the US, of which around 25% are associated with food poisoning. (there are 3 distinct types of botulism: adult, infant and wound although some sources say 4 types)This figure varies year on year and some years food poisoning cases appear more predominant, however between 1975 - 1992 there were 543 cases of food poisoning botulism in the US and Puerto Rico.

www.chclibrary.org/micromed/00040460.html

The toxin is destroyed by temperatures normally associated with cooking, unlike some other bacterial toxins.

Of the 7 toxins associated with botulism (A-G) four are associated with poisoning. (A,B,E,F)

The (big!!) downside is obviously that it is a killer, as many people on this forum will already be aware!

However, by the early 1990's the death rate from individuals suffering from botulism had dropped to around 2%.

Hope this info. puts botulism into context, it is also worth remembering that 80% cases of food poisoning occur in restaurants and institutions, only around 20% occur in the home.(US Center for Disease Control and Prevention)

However, I would say that this figure is likely to be skewed, to me people would be far more likely to report the former than the latter!!


Manxman.