First Smoked Salmon (with qview)

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im1986

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Nov 25, 2011
85
10
Stanwood WA
Today a friend gave me a 13# chinook salmon. It was kinda spawned out, but i figure it would be a good fish to start with on the smoker. 

So i brought it home, cut it into fillets, made a brine out of water, salt, brown sugar, and soy sauce. 

My questions are:

1. how long to brine?

2. how long to hot smoke it?

3. what temps should i hot smoke it at?  

Now for the pictures. 

Here is the whole fish.

8dab1a79_IMAG0118.jpg


Cut into fillets 

151b5a17_IMAG0120.jpg


And into the brine

df115bcf_IMAG0121.jpg


Thanks guys. 
 
Well i cooked up a small slice of this salmon, and the meat on it is terrable. I have decided not use it for smoking. I think the fish was just too spawned out.

I am going to pick up some salmon from safeway tomorrow.
 
Do they just get nasty after they spawn?

I suppose they are near death, and this may be why the meat is bad

TJ
 
Al, you crack me up. 
ROTF.gif
  I think I heard somewhere that obtaining Salmon after the spawn is not a good thing due to several different changes, AND the death thing CAN't be good.  Let the bears have them.
 
Yes, they get real nasty after spawn. I knew this one was real borderline. The meat turns sour and is totally un-eatable.
 
Well, here we go. Smoked Salmon Take 2. 

I bought 2 nice salmon fillets at safeway, cut them in half, and they have been in the brine for 24 hours. I got the smoker all ready, and I am going to attempt a cold smoke. 

How long should i cold smoke them? 

Here is the qview. 

Ready for the brine

8795b530_IMAG0124.jpg


Ready for the smoker

f2a01b31_IMAG0128.jpg


In the smoker

8554fe6f_IMAG0129.jpg
 
Well here is the finished salmon, 

I hot smoked it for about 2 hours at 170, then turned the heat up to 200 for the final 10 min. Tastes great, a little on the salty side. I think 24 hours in the brine is too long for my taste, next time i'm going to try 12 hours and cold smoking it. 

da45f4c4_IMAG0130.jpg
 
Well here is the finished salmon, 

I hot smoked it for about 2 hours at 170, then turned the heat up to 200 for the final 10 min. Tastes great, a little on the salty side. I think 24 hours in the brine is too long for my taste, next time i'm going to try 12 hours and cold smoking it. 

da45f4c4_IMAG0130.jpg
The salmon looks good from here. I am the same was as Al I do all of my salmon fishing at Sam's Club
biggrin.gif
. If the salmon was to salty you might want to try cutting back on the amount of salt in your brine especially since I see you have soy sauce in there as well. If you want a good brine to try or at least to look at some of the volumes of ingredients just do a quick search and you will find quite a few. Bearcarvers salmon brine is suppose to be really good if you want to search for that.
 
 
yes I think that I am going to go brineless as well next time.

I found a recipe that calls for a 1 hour marinade soak, seems pretty yummy. I'm going to give that a shot next time.
 
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