New to smoking and need some help

[sisiphunter]

Hello All,
   I am new to smoking and so far have made some jerky from Deer.  that turned out great but now I want to try some fish.  There are lots of great recipies here, but I have a couple questions......

First I have some Pike and Whitefish, it is already frozen skin on, of course gutted and scaled and heads and all knocked off.  They are not boneless.  Do I have to remove the bones or can I just split down the back and brine then smoke????

I have a hot smoker, electric.  After smoking the specified time, do I have to cook the fish???? I see that folks make chowders and soups and such after smoking, just to add the flavor to the fish, but especially with bone on, can the flesh just be picked off the bones and skin and eaten kinda like a flaky jerky???

And lastly, can I soak in brine while frozen and thawing, or do I have to thaw then soak?????   I just got the smoker or otherwise I would've done it fresh...


Great site ya'll have here and I'm looking forward to trying out lots of great recipies and maybe putting a few on myself someday.

Thank you, Matt.

[mybad]

Welcome Matt I am sure the pro's will weigh in here but I have never had such great fish as this recipe http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=107.0

[manxman]

Hi sisiphunter and welcome to the forum.  :)

I have hot and cold smoked a lot of whitefish and would suggest the following:

Fillet the fish to remove the bones, I now always remove the skin as well but perhaps that is down to personnal choice.

A hot smoker will smoke and cook the fish, obviously dependent on the time and temperature that it is left in the smoker!

I would thaw then brine, the brine will not work as well on frozen / defrosting fish.


Hope this helps, I am sure others will chip in.  ;)

[josbocc]

Si,

Welcome to the forum, lot's of good advice here.  I agree with the previous advice, but also know that getting all of the bones out of a pike can be quite a chore, if not dang near impossible.  Don't know about whitefish, but I can sympathize with the pike.

I recently did some salmon (believe they were Kings) usig Kummok's recipe.  He suggests removing all bones for excellence, but as I prepared for brining, and got the needle-nose pliers out to remove the few remaining bones, I found that I was tearing the fish to shreds.  I left the bones where they were, and just cautioned my fans to watch out for them.  No complaints yet.

In regards to thawed vs. frozen..., definitley thawed.  Good Luck with your fish, and let us know how it turns out.

Jeff

[La Quinta]

I persoanally do use the needle nose pliers for the pin bones (on salmon)...never really had the problem that josbcc had...but I can imagine that if you attempted to not pull the bones with the "grain" (so to speak) it could be an issue.

[Tenpoint5]

Just treat the bone the same as with ribs. Wait until you finish the smoke and can see them real clear then pluck em out with the pliers. Thats what I do with the ones I miss.