lox recipes

[j brown]

i am looking for the best lox recipe out there, please send one if you have one thanks jack

[BigSmoker]

J. Brown,
I have not fixed lox but have been thinking about it since I read the post on the link I will put at the bottom.  This chef knows how to cook and is very creative.  Hope this helps.  I have a friend that goes to Alaska pretty often and I might beg him up for some fresh next time he goes or maybe he has some in the freezer from last trip.  Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
http://biggreenegg.proboards33.com/index.cgi?board=how&action=display&num=1093349844

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

[tsquared]

The following recipe is one I have used many times with great success. It comes from an excellent book called "Smoking Salmon and Trout" by Jack Whelan, published by Aerie Press here in British Columbia.(I think Jack is on his second  edition which has been updated.) He calls it Scotch smoked salmon, although being a wise man he applies the scotch internally and uses rum as part of the curing process![:)] Dry salt your salmon, injecting brine into very thick pieces. Times for dry salting vary according to the fattiness of your salmon and thickness. Put very little salt on the tail of the fillet(I don't even smoke tails anymore, as it is tricky not to oversalt them.)Make sure you drain your fillet during this process.
1.Salt a 1 in. fillet of a fatty fish 12 hours and lean (chum) 7 hours. Fillet should spring back when pressed with your finger if it is done enough.
2. Rinse your fillet off, and dry for 6 hours. I do this by putting it uncovered in my beer fridge.
3. Rub it with vegetable oil and then back in the fridge for 6 hours.
4. Rub off oil with a rum soaked cloth. (Scotch may be applied internally at any time during this process.)
5. Cover the fillet with brown sugar just as you did with the dry salt, then back in the fridge for 6 hours.
6. Wipe off the oil again with a rum soaked cloth and salmon is ready to smoke.
<b>Smoking</b>
1.Smoke the fish AT NO MORE THAN 85f for between 2-4 hours depending on your smoker, how much smoke taste you like, and whether your smoker is forced air or not. Having said this, I have had lots of experience smoking fish, but not with the Bradley. I am just about to buy one so if you are going to do this with your BS then beware the temp rise and look at the thread that talks about putting the smoke generator in a remote firebox to keep the temp down.  
2. Continue to dry fish for several more hours until the fish is firm enough for slicing. (Use the Mark 1 finger to test this)
3. Give the fish a polish by bringing the temp up to 100 F for 15 minutes. This has the effect of bringing some oil to the surface, giving it an attractive look.
4. Let fish cool, unwrapped in the fridge for several hours.
5. Enjoy!
In his book, Jack has much more detail than I give here. I can attest that I have used this recipe again and again with superb results.You can play around with different spices like fresh dill or juniper berries or diffent booze. The key is getting the fish to a good firmness for slicing. I know at first glance this recipe seems complicated but most of these steps take 2 minutes and then you stick the salmon back in the fridge and forget about it. I look forward to trying it out using a Bradley with the remote firebox and a wireless temp gauge and alarm, which I think will cut down on the babysitting aspect of my previous setup.
Hope this helps.
Tom

[Richard Pearce]

<font face="Comic Sans MS">Thanks TSquared! That's exactly what I was looking for for my 22 lbs of Rainbow Trout that I actually have to pay attention to as thay have been in the freezer since Spring and Christmas is approaching! (Regards from Toronto)</font id="Comic Sans MS">

Stouffville, Ontario, Canada.

[Ian]

Hey tsquared your absolutely right!!! outstanding book, even though it was first published in 82, Id almost say it's a must read for those who want to work with seafood. tell me what did you think about the chapter on fish sausages?[lol] I just might get around to trying those this winter.[8D]

[bsolomon]

Spyguy posted a great recipe for lox:

http://www.bradleysmoker.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=141

I have made this recipe twice and it is fabulous.  It is complex only because of the timing for the two curing steps.  It is also designed for the Bradley, so you get all of the particualr tips and tricks without having to experiment yourself.

tsquared, your curing process looks fine, but I'm pretty sure that if you smoked anything in a Bradley for 12-24 hours, you would end up with a very expensive piece of charcoal where your perfectly good fish used to be.  For hot smoking, most foods take no more that 4 hours of smoke with brisket or pork shoulder sometimes going as high as 6-8 hours of smoke.  For cold-smoking salmon using spyguy's recipe, I did two hours of alder and thought the results were almost too smoky (although the smoke flavor "settles" if you let it sit in the fridge for a day or two before eating).

[Chez Bubba]

To my somewhat limited knowledge, lox is a cold smoke process, so I moved it here. Please let me know if I'm wrong.[:)]

Kirk

http://www.chezbubba.com
Ya think next time I check into a hotel & they ask "Smoking or Non?" they would mind?

[tsquared]

I didn't see my original post when Chez moved this thread so I am just replying now, sorry about the delay.
bsolomon- You are absolutely right about my post re the time for cold smoking salmon in the BS. Now that I have a little experience with the smoker I was going to repost re cold smoked salmon and reccomend an hour with smoke and then just dry it after that. I hope no one actually smoked their fish for the original time I posted. If you did, my apologies and I'll extend an invitation to come out here to Vancouver Island and we'll quickly catch fresh winter spring salmon  replacements for those burnt offerings. Everybody is getting their limits in 8-14lb salmon right now.
Ian- It is a very good book, but some of his ideas (like the fish sausages) don't appeal to me that much.
Tom

[Ian]

tsquared: Good evening Tom I agree the sausage would certainly be a little diferent, but I tell you I lent the book to a buddy who's brother concocted a sea food spread from it, and now uses it in a variety of ABT'S and actually it's quite good!!

Ian{GO STEELERS}[8D]

[bsolomon]

I dide another batch of lox using spyguy's recipe, and again it was outstanding.  This time I did 1 hour 20 minutes of alder and 40 minutes of cherry, and I liked the results even bettr than before.  By the way, the lox also freeze and defrost quite well for those who want to make a bigger batch next time.

[SMOKEHOUSE ROB]

i also use spyguys recipe for lox,  about evrey 2 weeks i do a batch for a local restruant about 20 lbs, they pay for the fish, in return i use there account to buy meat at there prices, plus a few pepole have raved in the local newspaper about the house smoked salmon they serve.[:D]

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[JJC]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by j brown</i>
<br />i am looking for the best lox recipe out there, please send one if you have one thanks jack
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Hi Jack--welcome to the Forum.  Don't be a stranger, now . . . [8D]

John
Newton MA

[tsquared]

Smokehouse Rob- How long do you dry your salmon after brining it. I usually use a dry salt routine but I want to use Spyguy's method just to compare.
Tom

[SMOKEHOUSE ROB]

if the skin is on will dry it 4 hr after refreshing, some times i get salmon with no skin and it will dry 1 hour , i have found that making lox remove the skin first, just makes a nicer product and cuts down on the time,

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[gotbbq]

Unreal - Just wanted to say that I followed your detailed recipe for lox, dry rub then brine followed by 2 hrs of cold smoke.  It was great.  The taste the best I ever had.  I used ice in the metal tray, temp stayed at 65 for the full 2 hrs. Easy and great.  After the lox, I made 4 racks of ribs.  5 hrs later- great ribs.  Question- the last puck only burns slightly, can I use next it the time I smoke? Also, it seems to take about an hour for the smoker to reach temperature, about 200 degrees once filled with meat at room temp.  Is this about average?  Thanks for any help-