Lake Trout - tasty, and a lot less work per pound

[pmmpete]

After smoking large numbers of little tiny Kokanee salmon Christmas weekend, I decided to smoke something which provides a better ratio of pounds of smoked fish to effort.  So I went Lake Trout fishing last weekend.  I caught five lake trout, the smallest 27.5 inches, but had to return one of the fish to the lake because it was between 30 and 36 inches.  Here is one of the Macs:



The guy I was with caught a 37 inch, 19 pound lake trout.  He claimed he was going to butterfly it and smoke it in one piece, but I don't think it would fit in his Big Chief smoker.



I whacked up the fish and smoked them in two batches with different brines.  I'm trying different brines from a couple of different recipe books.  Here is one of the batches:



And here is that batch in the vacuum packaging, ready for freezing.  Both batches came out very tasty.

[Mr Walleye]

pmmpete

Man, you got beautiful color on that lake trout! Looks fantastic!   8)

Congrats!

Mike

[Keymaster]

Very nice job , thats a big fish :)

[iceman]

Very nice job! The color looks perfect for trout. I'd like to know what brines you tried.
Thanks for posting this.

[jjmoney]

Nice pictures.

Nice fish too, but the smaller ones taste better...the big ones get fat and stinky. I can't wait to smoke some lakers this summer.

[pmmpete]

Very nice job! The color looks perfect for trout. I'd like to know what brines you tried.

The vacuum-packed fish in the picture was prepared with the paprika brine from Scott and Tiffany Haugen's book "Smoking Salmon & Steelhead," and three hours of apple smoke.  I also prepared some of the lake trout with a modified Kummok brine, which looked about the same.

[pikeman_95]

Looks good Pete. So which batch taste the best. Did you work out you salt measurements like you were working on.
I like the color. Looks like you got plenty of smoke.

[pmmpete]

What Pikeman_95 is talking about is that I adjust brine recipes so that the water and salt components of the recipe will produce a brine with a concentration of 60 degrees SAL.  I do this so I will know how long to soak the fish in the brine. 

The problem is that different brine recipes produce a wide range of salt concentrations, and it's easy to screw up a couple of batches of fish when trying out a new brine recipe by leaving it in the brine for too long or too short a time.   The lower the salt concentration in the brine, the longer you need to leave the fish in the brine in order to produce the flavor you prefer.  Through trial and error I have learned how long I like to leave different kinds and thicknesses of fish in a 60 degree SAL brine.  By adjusting the salt and water concentration of a new brine recipe to 60 degrees SAL, I can avoid that trial and error process.

For example, Kummok's brine recipe at the beginning of the "Fish" forum calls for one cup of pickling salt in a gallon of water.  Using a conversion factor of 10 ounces (.625 lb) per cup of salt, the water and salt components of Kummok's brine recipe will produce a brine with a salinity of 26.5 degrees SAL, which is not a very concentrated brine.  There is a good article on making brines and salinity with a salinity table at http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/sausage-making/curing/making-brine .  See also "Preparation of Salt Brines for the Fishing Industry," Oregon Sea Grant Publication ORESU-H-99-002, which is available at http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/h99002.pdf .  To adjust Kummok's recipe to 60 degrees SAL, I use 1.568 pounds (25.088 ounces) of salt in a gallon of water, which produces a shorter soaking time than Kummok's recipe.  If you prefer brines with a lower salt concentration and a longer soaking time, you could standardize your brine recipes at a lower salt concentration. 

My adjustment is based only on the amounts of water and salt in the brine.  The adjustment ignores the effect of the soy sauce or teriaki sauce which is called for in some recipes on the total salinity of the brine, because different brands of soy or teriaki sauce will have different salinities, and due to the variety of ingredients in soy or teriaki sauce, a salinometer may not provide an accurate reading of the salinity of the sauce.

Another way of dealing with the trial and error problem when trying out a new brine recipe is by calculating the salinity which will be produced by the salt and water components of the recipe, using a salinity table, and then adjusting the length of time you soak the fish based on the salinity of the brine and your experience with using brines of about that salinity.  But I find it easier to adjust the salinity of the brine to a standard salinity.