Smoked Trout Too Salty - can it be saved?

[pmmpete]

When making a brine it's really easy if you use metric and weight. 1000g of water + 100g of salt is a 10% brine.  My typical brine is 10% salt and 5% sugar.

Brine tables measure the salinity of brine in Salometer Degrees.  Water with no salt in it is 0 Salometer degrees.  A brine with 10% salt by weight is 38 Salometer degrees.  I standardize my brine recipes at 60 Salometer degrees, which is 15.837% salt by weight.  A fully saturated brine solution, which is 100 Salometer degrees, is 23.395% salt by weight.

So, to produce fish with the amount of saltiness you like, you'd need to soak it longer in Scubadoo's typical brine than you would in my standardized brine.  Some brine recipes have a lower salt concentration than Scubadoo's typical brine, and some brine recipes have a higher salt concentration than my standardized brine.  To figure out the salt concentration in a particular brine recipe, you can use a brine table to determine the degrees Salometer of the recipe.  If the recipe specifies the amount of salt by volume rather than by weight, you'll need to convert the volume to weight.  The conversion number will depend on the kind of salt specified by the recipe.  For example, Kosher salt weights less per cup than table salt.

[scubadoo97]

Always measure  by weight. Whether you're baking or brining meat or fish weights rule. And metic is way easier.

[pmmpete]

Always measure  by weight. Whether you're baking or brining meat or fish weights rule.

Brine recipes which call for a specific volume of salt, such as 1 cup of kosher salt in half a gallon of water, are less accurate and predictable than brine recipes which call for a specific weight of salt, because different kinds and brands of salt have different densities.  If you check the volume-to-weight conversion tables for salt in various books and internet sites, you get a pretty wide range of weights for a cup of regular table salt.  10 oz./cup is about in the middle of the range of weights for table salt.  Warren Anderson's book "Mastering the Craft of Making Sausage" lists weights of 22 grams/tbsp (i.e. 12.4 oz./cup) for regular salt and 12 grams/tbsp (i.e. 6.8 oz/cup) for kosher salt.  amazingribs.com contains the following conversion table for different kinds of salt:

1 tsp Morton's tables salt equals:
1.5 tsp Morton's kosher salt
1.8 tsp Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt
1.8 tsp Morton's pickling salt
3 to 4 or more tsp sea salt

Unfortunately, many brine recipes specify a volume measurement rather than a weight for salt.  In order to convert the volume measurement to a weight, you need to figure out what kind of salt the recipe specifies, and then choose an appropriate conversion factor.

I avoid this problem by standardizing the salt concentration (i.e. the water and salt components of the recipe) at 60 degrees Salometer.  This allows me to ignore the salt volume measurement specified in the recipe and calculate the weight of salt required using a brine table.