Here's three fish brines I saved from earlier.......


1)     A couple two or three years ago the list got into a thread about
smoking
salmon.  I wrote-up my methodology and techniques, which were teachings
from the old man that taught me back in the mid-sixties. I kept my
replys for a long time - until my hard drive crashed one day, and I'm
not sure if any of it was archived or not.
Anyway, the ol' boy knew what he was doing, 'cause he had made his
living at it for several decades and had custom smoked and kippered a
lot of stuff for some fairly distinguished folks, nationwide -
astronauts, past presidents, senators, famous fishermen, writers and the
like.  He was a pretty simple and frugal kinda guy and didn't waste even
a spoonful of anything.  He was 90 and dying of cancer, wanted someone
to buy his business and carry-on with his ways and learn how to do the
things that he did.  I just kinda stumbled into it from a little ad in
the classifieds.  I was unemployed at the time, in between jobs and/or
career decisions, so I thought that this smoking thing would be
interesting.  We cut a deal, $2K for all of the equipment, building and
as much training that he could provide before his demise.  We worked
together for almost a year before he passed away and then his
brother-in-law helped me with some of the things that he was unable to
do.  All in all, the training was very rigorus.  He - they, taught me
from the ground up, everything from wood selection, cutting, seasoning,
fire building and tending, to sharpening knives, breaking down steam
boilers and all the how-to's for almost every kind of fish and wild game
- a lot to learn in a short time, but I've carried his wisdom with me
ever since and it's provided great joy for me.  The cannery and
smokehouses are long gone now, but his techniques - as simple as they
may appear, come from probably countless attempts at producing some of
the best smoked stuff you could ever eat.
The difference between smoked and kippered is:  "smoked" is salt-cured
before the smoking prosess begins and "kippered" is salted and cured, or
not salted at all, after the smoking cycle is completed.  In general the
term "kippered" will refer to a short hot smoke cycle, whereas "smoked"
is a longer-lower temp smoke cycle, but the addition of a salt cure
after smoking is the way I was taught - and my teacher being an ol'
Sweede, I suspect that's the way his ancestors might have taught him and
it's probably not written down or very well documented.
Firstly, the smokehouse dimentions are probably the most important
factor, besides type of wood and fire control, in producing a
consistiently sweet mellow smoke and the ability to maintain
temperatures to within a 10-20 degree increment.  I believe that volume
plays an important role in producing a high quality smoked "anything" -
not only fish.  Volume and smoke velocity is in direct porportion with a
finished product that's either too smoky - bitter - or over done and
dry, because the temps are difficult to control.  As the volume becomes
less, the control factor becomes a lot more difficult and the chances of
creosote build-up increase.  The ol' boy could have built any size
smokehouse, but he built all the houses exactly the same size, which
were and still are, out of regular and out of what would be considered
normal dimentions.  The smokehouses were 5 foot deep, 11 feet wide and
13 feet high, with a work platform across the front that was high enough
to store the racks under and stand on to service the the racks in the
smokehouse through the three doors on the front.  The service door for
the fire was on one end at the ground level.  I've built several
smokehouses since and have stuck with basically the same design - I've
scaled it down a little bit, but not by too much - there's a picture of
one on Dan Gill's survival page that you can get to through
bbqporch.org, not to detailed, but you can kinda get an idea of what it
looks like.
Secondly, the wood should be seasoned and barkless - there's a lot of
controversary about whether wood should or should not have the bark
removed, but if I put a chunk of bark-on wood in the smokehouse, I got
my ass chewed-on - bigtime.  Said, "the bark is where all the bad smoke
is" and I believe it to be true - if a fire is going to smolder, it will
usually be because it has burnt down to the bark and it just takes too
many BTU's to ignite and burn cleanly, so it just lays there and
smolders, your air flow diminishes and zap...creosote starts
condensating on your meat.  I've had a hard time convincing anyone that
that's what happens - but it does.  It takes a little more effort to
clean the wood, but it's worth it in the long run.  If you stack your
wood with the bark down when it's green, the bark will loosen and fall
off as it seasons-out and it's less hassle to deal with.
Those are probably the two most important things, plenty of volume and
good clean seasoned wood - the rest is technique, temperature and fire
control.  So, after all the BS'n, here's what you wanted to know.

Smoked Salmon:

The taste and texture of smoked salmon will vary greatly as to the type
of fish it is.  Silver salmon or Coho will be a dryer, but more colorful
product.  The Chinook or King salmon will produce a much more moist and
"buttery" product, but the reddish color will not be as bright.  My
preference is Chinook, hands down, but a lot of people prefer the Coho
and like it drier.  Basically, the two will smoke-up about the same, but
the Chinook is usually a bigger fish and will require a bit longer in
the heat cycle because of the thickness.
Start with fresh fish if possible, frozen fish does not perform nearly
as well and is almost always drier.  The pellicle is harder to form, the
skin is difficult to remove after smoking, it doesn't take the salt as
well and it's just harder to handle all together.
Remove the head and fins, scale and filet, removing the backbone and rib
bones.  Lay the filet skin-side down and hand salt with a medium
kiln-dried or coarse kosher salt.  Try to control the amount of salt in
porportion to the thickness of the filets - salt heavier down the middle
and towards the head, with less salt on the thinner belly and tail areas
where the filet is not as thick....it may take a little practice, but
salt it as about three times what you would salt to eat - the
accumulation of salt over the thickest areas will start to turn white as
it builds-up - that's OK, on the thinner areas the salt will almost
disappear and become transparent.  Dry salting will give you much more
control than wet brining, the salt will be a lot more evenly distributed
and the thinner areas of the filet will not be too salty - and the
thicker areas will have enough salt.  Stack the salted filets - pick-up
the filet by the belly, straight up, trying  not to bend the filet
backwards - on top of each other, skin down in a box or container that
has holes in it or a way for the salted liquid to be drained off.  A
rack in the bottom of the pan will work, or  an old wooden apple box
with a piece of plastic in the bottom - that's what ol' Fred used.  The
moisture will start to draw almost immediately - I'll usually lay-out
all of the filets and salt them all at one time - it's easier and your
hands should be dry when handling the salt, or it gobs-up around your
fingers and you can't get an even salt.  Cover the box with a piece of
plastic or something to keep the critters out and refrigerate for a day
- if I salt in the morning, I'll let it go until the next morning - if
it's in the Winter, refrigeration isn't really necessary, unless it's
below freezing - about 35-40 degrees is about right.
First thing the next morning, get your fire started in the smokehouse
and try to get the temps to stablize at around 110F - with a nice bed of
coals and the fire BURNING.  While you're doin' this, lay the filets out
skin side down and gently spray the surface clean with frsh cold water.
Squeegee the excess water from the filets with the palm of your hand -
pressing fairly firm - until most of the moisture is gone.  To smoke a
whole filet is a little more tedious than smoking cut sections and in my
opinion, the whole smoked filet becomes a waste - unless you can eat it
in one setting...you'll get a lot better piece of smoked salmon if you
cut the filet into sections.  I usually cut across the filet in about
2-3" pieces, that seems to be about the right size for people to eat and
the pieces will take more smoke and be easier to deal with.  Lay the
pieces on the rack with space between each piece - run your finger
between the pieces to make sure that they don't touch each other.  Put
the racks in the smokehouse and leave the doors open for a couple of
hours, maintaining the 110F with the fire burning.  During this time the
surface of the fish will begin to get dry and the "pellicle" will start
forming - this is the most important step, the pellicle will "seal" the
moisture in the fish - if the temperature is too high and there is
moisture trapped in the smokehouse, the fish will sweat and the pellicle
will not form - as the temperature increases the sweating increases and
at the end of the cycle, you have dry crumbly funk with ugly yellow
slime all over it.  Sometimes it takes a little longer to form,
sometimes a little less - depending on the humidity and temps, but when
it forms, the surface will be dry to the touch and starting to take-on a
little color.  At this point bring the temp up to about 125-130 and
close the doors.  Maintain this temp for 3-4 hours depending on the
thickness - this is the temp range that the fish will be taking smoke
and you can leave it in this temp longer if you like more smoke, but I
wouldn't leave it there for longer than 5-6 hours.  It will be getting a
good color by now and the surface pellicle should look as if it's been
coated with schallac - shiny and still dry to the touch.  Now, the
pellicle is firm and you have the smoke, so the cooking cycle is all
that's left  - raise the temps to 140-150 and hold it there for the next
3-4 hours.  Usually, if I start a smoke at 8 in the morning, I'll finish
sometime around 8-10 that night - unless the fish is real thick or in a
whole filet, then I might bank the fire and let it smoke overnight and
check it the next morning - you have to be careful doing the overnight
thing though, if your fire goes out or it goes into a smoldering mode,
you can ruin a load of what was once some pretty good stuff.
This method will produce a smoked salmon that keeps for about a month in
the refer, vacuum sealed it will keep for a couple of months - the best
way to keep it fresh, is to put it in glass mason jars with a tight lid
and stick it in the freezer - then just thaw-out what you need.
Sturgeon is done the same way, with the exception that the filets will
be about twice as thick - so the times in the temps will be lengthened
somewhat, but it will finish about the same.
Other whitefish, saltwater or fresh, don't do very good.  The fat
content isn't high enough and they seem to dry-out too much for my taste
- halibut, striped bass, bottom fish, snapper and cod are better
grill-smoked - hot and fast, so the moisture stays in the fish.  Trout
and eel smoke-up pretty good, but you got to cut the cycles in half -
I'll leave trout in the round and lightly salt the rib cavity, let stand
overnight, rinse and smoke the next day.  Eel, I filet, rinse, salt and
smoke about the same as trout.
As far as a kipper is concerned, it's kinda the same process but the
salt is left out.  The pellicke forming cycle is the same, but I'll jump
to 130-140 for about 3 hours and finish near 160 for just a couple
hours.  The product will not be cured, so the processing after the smoke
should be done quickly - within a few hours.  I typically can all of the
kippers, adding a mixture of salt and brown sugar to the can and canning
for 100 minutes at 10-15 lbs.  Fresh-to-eat kippered salmon is good
right out of the smokehouse.  Serve it with a little dill hollandase or
just lemon, salt and pepper.

Well, that's about it for now - m' fingers are gettin' cranky.  I'll
write more another time, ya just gotta bear with me, 'cause I get a
little long winded sometimes.



2)    Here's a fish smokin' recipe:

Brine the fish in a 24-4-2 solution   (24 parts water - 4 parts salt - 2
parts sugar) for  48 -72 hours ( 2-3 days )
then rinse the fish off and place it whole and unwrapped on a plate/pan in
the refrigerator.  Let it sit in the fridge for 24 - 48 hours or until it
gets a sticky gelatinous coating over the whole skin of the fish.  Then
smoke it how you regularly would ...
This will help the skin adhere to the meat of the fish and will produce a
product more like the way smoked trout/salmon look in the grocery store.


Also for doing Ducks:

Parboil the whole duckling in a large pot of hot water  (along with spices &
honey & soy sauce) after cutting some slits in the skin of the duck.  Then
let the duck sit whole and unwrapped on a plate/pan in the refrigerator.
Let it sit in the fridge for 24 - 48 hours or until the skins shrinks up
around the flesh of the duck.   This will allow the skin to adhere and crisp
up much better then a non-parboiled duck would.    Then smoke it how you
regularly would ...


3)      First I make a brine of 1/2 cup salt 1/4 cup light brown sugar, to
this I add 3
bay leaves, 10 whole cloves, ground up. and about 1 tblspn white pepper.
    I allow to "soak" for 8 hours, or overnight, remove and drain.
    Then as draining is complete, I spread a thin coat of cane syrup/water
mixture
(about 75% syrup/25% water), then I lightly sprinkle dill then heavily
sprinkle black
pepper, then allow it to form the pellicule (sp?).
Then I place in a 160 degree smoker and use one of my 2 quart cast iron pots
full of
alder to smoke.
    Then after about 5 to 6 hours, I check it, and as soon as it starts to
look dry
around the edges, I remove and allow to cool to room temperature.. I then
use a fork
and "shred" it into strips as I can get, then spread all on a cookie sheet
as place
in the freezer for 1 to 2 hours.
    When frozen, I transfer to the dehydrator and then dry until it still
bends but
is almost brittle (4 to 5 hours at 140 degrees).
I remove, put in a quart or 1/2 gallon canning jar, put the ring and lid on,
and keep
in the freezer.
    I have packaged it in 1/2 pound bags and frozen it, breaking it out as
needed for
snacks, but I can tell you that a 10 pound salmon will last only about 3
days in my
house when I do it this way.
    I have no eskimo blood and have never tasted Squaw candy... but this is
the
closet I have been able o come to making salmon jerky... and I do that by
leaving out
the step of thin coating with cane syrup/water.


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Hi Bruce,

>>
 I usually use a wet brine for salmon.  I could use a little more of the
=
how to, how much details.
Could you explain this part a little more:
>>

My method of smoking salmon is just about as basic as you can get.  It's
not really my method - an ol' Swede taught me his "how to's" many years
ago when I bought his smoking and canning plant in Coos Bay, Oregon.  We
dealt with mainly salmon, but did a lot of other fish too and used the
same curing method for most  - with the exception of kippered fish,
which was smoked without salt and then  canned with the salt added after
smoking.
I use a kiln dried medium or fine salt.  It's similar to kosher salt in
texture and a little less potent than regular table salt.  I think the
reason the ol' boy used this particular kind of salt is because it was
cheap - about three bucks for a fifty-pound sack...they use a lot of it
for cattle feed supplements and water softening - anyway, it works real
good and we used it for just about everything, including cleaning the
cutting tables and for putting on the floor for traction when the fish
guts got up around your ankles.
I rarely smoke fish in the round, unless it's a smaller fish like trout
or small stealhead.  I will generally scale, de-fin, filet and remove as
many bones as possible and in the same stroke, so-to-speak, salt the
filet with the method I described - being, that more salt is sprinkled
over the thicker areas and less in the thinner.  It's hard to describe
just how much or what the exact ratio of salt to fish is, but as close
as I can get is, that it will be about twice to three times what it
would be if you were to eat it.  On larger filets or fish that is 1-1/2
to 2 inches thick, the salt will accumulate beyond transparent to an
appearance of fresh fallen snow at the thickest point and taper-off to
transparent as the piece gets thinner.
Dry, hand salting, is a slower process than wet brining.  After the
filets are salted, they are stacked skin-to-meat on top of each other
and let sit in the refer overnight.  The containers that hold the
stacked filets are semi-open on the bottom to let the moisture drain off
- we used wooden fruit boxes that had thin slats on the bottom and
sides,  placed a chunk of plastic on the bottom and when the box was
full, put a chunk on top to keep the critters out - the refer had a
drain in the floor for the run-off - it would be a good idea to put
something under whatever you use, 'cause there's quite a bit of moisture
that will drain from the fish as it draws salt.  When you're wet
brining, the run-off isn't noticed, but it's there.  If you re-use the
brine, the slime and scales and whatever that washes off the previous
batch is then sucked-up into your next batch...this is done a lot,
because to change the brine with every new batch is time consuming and
it could get kinda spendy.  Depending on the percent of salt in a wet
brine, the time of cure can be cut considerably and in most cases the
amount of salt absorption is very difficult to control - unless every
piece is exactly the same size and thickness.
After the dry salted fish sits overnight, the filets are laid-out and
gently sprayed with a cold water rinse and as I mentioned, squeegee with
the palm of your hand to remove as much of the surface moisture as
possible.  Whole filets are a bit more difficult to smoke. To produce a
whole, evenly intact and unbroken pellicle on a large filet, will take
some dedicated pit time - unless you can set your smokehouse on
"auto-smoke".  I will cut the filet (after it is rinsed and before it is
racked or hung) into 'servable' sized pieces and usually separate the
tail sections from the thicker pieces because they will tend to get
drier more quickly.  Unless you are going to consume an entire filet at
one setting, smaller pieces are a better way to go - the smaller pieces
are not only easier to maintain as far as storage and serving, but they
seem to take a little better smoke and they are easier to manage in the
smokehouse as well.
The most important step in producing a moist, firm-flake, buttery and
visually superb piece of smoked salmon (or other fish), is to NOT break
the pellicle or surface varnish.  The most common mistake is too much
heat - either at the beginning before the surface tacks-up, or too much
heat after the pellicle has formed.
If the membrane is not allowed to form evenly and too much heat is
applied prematurely, the filet will sweat, and continue to sweat and
ooze throughout the smoking cycle - the result is less than
premimum...if it breaks somewhere along the line, the finished product
isn't quite as bad, but it will still loose a lot of moisture and
flavor.
(Pardon my soap boxing, I get carried away sometimes) - Anyway, with a
dry salt cure you can control, very close to exactly, how much salt goes
into the fish.  There is only so much salt to go into the fish, whereas
in a wet brine there is much more salt than needed and it's easy to get
it too salty - or not salty enough, depends on your timing.
I have worked with outfits that used wet brining and there was always
the question of whether or not it was in long enough - or not long
enough...big fish and small fish, when to change the brine or add more
salt or add more water.  It was a real hassle, the finished product was
nowhere near consistent and you never really knew what was going on...it
was all kinda guesswork at best.
It may take a few runs until you are comfortable with the amounts, but
after you level the curve you'll be able to hit it on the nose every
time, with just about every kind, size and shape of fish.

Sorry for the novel.

A fellow carnivore,
Dan in WA



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