"The daily (italics mine) limit for coho salmon is 20 fish per household. Only dipnets, spears, gaffs, handlines, and rod and reel may be used in the directed coho fishery of southeast Alaska."
- Federal Subsistence Fishing Permit
In late July, the Mad Fishisist and I headed to a remote stream, dipnet in hand to take advantage of a tremendous coho run. It didn't take long to bag our daily limit.
I decided this was the weekend to transform those fish into a smoked salmon delicacy. Fullcurl's "Full"proof smoked salmon recipe:
3 cups brown sugar for every cup of salt.
1 tablespoon lemon pepper
1 tablespoon garlic
(This is the ratio, obviously the amount of mixture will depend on the amount of fish you are smoking).
Mix well and sift together. Cover the bottom of a container with the mixture a quarter inch thick or so. Put in a layer of fish, skin side down. Cover with mixture and and add another layer of salmon, this time skin side up. Add another layer skin to skin with the previous layer and cover with mixture. Keep layering in this manner, layering the fish skin to skin and covering with the mixture on the flesh side.
Leave fish in brine for 2 hours. Much longer and the fish will be too salty. By this time the salt should have leached the moisture out of the fish to the point that it is getting stiff. Your container will be filled with brown slimy goo. Rinse the fish in cold water and pat dry. Put on smoking racks to air dry. Air dry up to 24 hours (a fan helps). A glaze should form. After air-drying, smoke at approx. 120 degrees until it is to your liking, usually about 8 hours. Remember to soak your chips or wood so you'll get a good smoke. I recommend alder.
For this batch I smoked approximately 35 fillets and a few halibut chunks (They come out good this way too). I used 25 lbs of brown sugar and 8 pounds of salt. It also helps if your neighbor has a totally custom, kick-butt, cedar smokehouse. Though I've had good luck in the past with my Big Chief Smoker.
Here's the final product. Try not to eat it all before it's packaged. Yum. And remember the wisdom of Ray Troll:
1 comment:
It is a beautiful sight indeed. And I'm sure you would know the regs being the regs guy and all... but 20 a DAY? Seriously? What on earth would anyone need with that many fish? I suppose it would be handy not to have to stop fishing when the fishing is good... but for Pete's sake that's a lot of fish to handle. Although, not more than I have filleted in a day. :)
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