- Aug 27, 2008
- 5,170
- 409
This is my first time for smoked fish, so I thought I’d share this with everyone. My wife told the meat/fish dude last week that she wanted something not-so-fishy for tonight’s dinner. He said he had just the thing: Tilapia.
Have a 4# box of 19 separately wrapped and frozen Tilapia Fillets (3.36oz average weight) finish their thaw in large bowls of water while they waited for some TLC. I kept the seasoning fairly light flavored and simple, with fine ground black pepper, parsley flakes, powdered red bell pepper, kosher salt, powdered light brown sugar and onion powder.
The un-packaged fish had a very mild odor, so I wasn’t concerned about a brine for these little fellas. I heavily dusted one side only with the seasoning, as I was pushing to get these into the Smoke Vault so dinner wouldn’t be excessively late…this is another after work smoke. It should give a nice contrast between the top side and the grate side anyway.
I decided I’d use a jerky grate to reduce the risk of the fish falling apart and dropping through the grate, if I don’t catch it in time when it’s finished cooking.
Just onto my Smoke Vault 24 Jerky Grate…I had to crowd them quite a bit to fit it all on one grate, so I tried to overlap the thinner belly-flap portions as much as possible…this should help even-out the cooking of the thinner pieces with the heavier portions, and reduce the risk of drying it out, I would think:
Some relatively light fat layering...this should be fairly light and flaky:
Seasoned and into the Vault with a small handful of cherry (lightest smoke wood I have on hand), and 1/2" of water in the pan:
I started out cold and cranked the vault on high with the door open for a few minutes, then closed it up and dialed the temps in to ~200* after I started smelling that sweet cherry smoke, then, bumped it to 250* after 40 minutes……..aaaaaaah, this is gonna be a gooooooooood smoke!
More to follow!
Thanks for lookin’ @ my 1st fish burn! (no relation to Lawrence...lol!!!)
Eric
Have a 4# box of 19 separately wrapped and frozen Tilapia Fillets (3.36oz average weight) finish their thaw in large bowls of water while they waited for some TLC. I kept the seasoning fairly light flavored and simple, with fine ground black pepper, parsley flakes, powdered red bell pepper, kosher salt, powdered light brown sugar and onion powder.
The un-packaged fish had a very mild odor, so I wasn’t concerned about a brine for these little fellas. I heavily dusted one side only with the seasoning, as I was pushing to get these into the Smoke Vault so dinner wouldn’t be excessively late…this is another after work smoke. It should give a nice contrast between the top side and the grate side anyway.
I decided I’d use a jerky grate to reduce the risk of the fish falling apart and dropping through the grate, if I don’t catch it in time when it’s finished cooking.
Just onto my Smoke Vault 24 Jerky Grate…I had to crowd them quite a bit to fit it all on one grate, so I tried to overlap the thinner belly-flap portions as much as possible…this should help even-out the cooking of the thinner pieces with the heavier portions, and reduce the risk of drying it out, I would think:
Some relatively light fat layering...this should be fairly light and flaky:
Seasoned and into the Vault with a small handful of cherry (lightest smoke wood I have on hand), and 1/2" of water in the pan:
I started out cold and cranked the vault on high with the door open for a few minutes, then closed it up and dialed the temps in to ~200* after I started smelling that sweet cherry smoke, then, bumped it to 250* after 40 minutes……..aaaaaaah, this is gonna be a gooooooooood smoke!
More to follow!
Thanks for lookin’ @ my 1st fish burn! (no relation to Lawrence...lol!!!)
Eric