Hot Oak Smoked Salmon

Being a half-pescatarian (or as a friend of mine once put it: “Occasionally I’m a bit naughty with fish”…), half-meatarian household, fish, especially salmon, is a fairly common feature and that is especially the case around the Christmas holidays. Today we are venturing into the brave new worlds of fish cooking and wet brining by brining and then cooking some oak smoked salmon. (Note that this is hot smoking not the cold smoking process that produces the smoked salmon you see in packets in stores and (if you are smart) you put on bagels with cream cheese. Cold smoking is a much more difficult process which needs very careful control over lots of things to avoid ending up with dodgy microbes in your food – the FDA has lots of scary information on this but if Meathead at Amazing Ribs says it’s not a good idea to try, that’s more than good enough for me to steer well clear…).  Read on to see how our (hot-) smoked salmon turned out.

Smoked salmon cooking on the grill

• Setup: Weber Kettle with Smokenator and internal water pan. Setup for indirect 2-zone cooking with a Weber water pan on the bottom grate.
• Meat: Not meat, fish ! Atlantic Salmon from Kanaloa Seafood Market in this case a whole side, skin-on cut into two pieces.
• Fuel: Kingsford Blue Bag briquettes with oak and peach wood chunks.
• Prep:
  1. Made up brining solution per recipe below and put fish into two large gallon Ziploc bags and poured in brining solution.
  2. Left fish to brine in the solution in the refrigerator for 45 minutes (Allow about an hour per inch of fish thickness)
• Brining solution recipe:

Salmon fillets after being removed from the brine, washed and dried.

Cooking Diary

• 2:55pm: Made up brining solution as per the recipe above.
• 3:05pm: Put fish in their brining bags into fridge.
• 3:50pm: Drained fish, washed excess salt off the surface and patted dry.
• 3:50pm: Lit 25 Kingsford briquettes in a Weber chimney (used a little more than the normal/recommended 20 as the weather was on the cold side; well cold for California, it was in the low to mid 50s…) with Pam-sprayed newspaper (Still getting a lot of left-over ash).
• 4:00pm: Transferred to kettle. Filled the internal water pan in the Smokenator and the Weber tray under the meat fish area. Tried to add a chunk of peach wood, only to find that it’s too big to fit through the holes in the ends of the Smokenator and the large space is now being occupied by the water pan. Had to carefully fish out the water pan with gloves on as it was now full of boiling water and above the hot coals.
• 4:05pm : Added six more briquettes and chunk of red oak. Added the grate level temperature probe of the Maverick.
• 4:15pm: Discovered a leak in the re-used Weber pan – I swear this will be the last time I try to save money by reusing any pan that has been scrubbed. Replaced the pan with a new one and refilled it with hot water.
• 4:25pm: All this fiddling around with the lid off causes a big temperature spike to over 300F (the extra fuel added earlier likely didn’t help either). Spritzed the coals with water and closed both vents to try to bring the temperature down.
• 4:45pm: Temperature now in the 250F range (it will drop a bit more once the cold fish goes on). Finally put salmon on the grill on top of two sheets of the Reynolds Heavy Duty Foil with the thickest part of the fillets towards the coals. Added another chunk of red oak and 6 more briquettes.
• 5:15pm: Added some more briquettes.
• 5:30pm: Checking internal temperatures with handheld probe. We’re at 125F which is getting close to our target temperature of 140F.
• 5:45pm: Now at 142F internal temperature in our thickest parts of the fish as measured with our handheld probe so pulled the fish off the grill.

Results

Smoked salmon after coming off the grill

I am just going to come right out and say that this oak smoked salmon came out really, really well. It had just the right amount of oak smoke (not sure if the earlier peach chunk which was pretty much gone by the time the fish went on had any effect on the overall flavour) and the texture was good and flaky without falling apart. It really tasted good and it’s quite a quick cook once you get the brining out of the way.

This was the first time I had really done a full wet brine (the Pork Tenderloin cook was more of a marinade and used much less liquid) and although it can be a bit of a hassle trying to find something big enough and non-reactive to mix up and take 1/2 gallon of not very attractive looking liquid and then ladle into ziploc bags, the time taken and effort involved isn’t any different to the dry brine plus dry rub construction I would normally use for meat.

The only other potential problem is that fish oils can be quite smelly so hopefully I won’t have a set of inquisitive cats (or bears…) around my Weber kettle or any future meat products on the next cook don’t coming out smelling of smoked salmon..

Verdict: A

This one hit a very good sweet spot of being easy and quick to cook while tasting really great. Definitely one to try again, possibly with a different type of lighter wood such as apple or alder, this one also gets the Mrs AdventuresInBBQ seal of approval also.