# Smoked salmon way too salty ... what can i do?



## whitvt

a friend gave me 2 fillets and i bought 1 for myself. i did a yoshidas brine recipe on mine and one of his fillets, He had already doctored up 1 fillet. When  i opened up the bag the salmon was covered with salt. Anyhow, i smoked the 3 fillets and mine came out awesome but his had a wicked salt taste to it and you can't even taste the smoke cause all u get is salt. is there anything i can do to cut the salt? i thought about just throwing it in the smoker and use hickory to possibly get some smoke flavor into it. thoughts


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## dirtsailor2003

Since it's already been smoked there's not much you can do. Here's a method you can try that is simple and makes great smoked salmon.

I use a dry brine when I smoke salmon. 4:1 brown sugar to kosher salt. You pack the fish in the dry mixture. Layer of brine in non-reactive container, then fish, cover with brine, repeat as needed. It only takes 4-6 hours to cure. Then you rinse it off,  air dry to form the pellicle, then smoke.


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## whitvt

i believe this is the recipe he used but cured it for 2 days.


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## whitvt

could u get more smoke flavor  in it by smoking it longer? i have an external smoke generator so the salmon should not really cook any longer.


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## dirtsailor2003

whitvt said:


> i believe this is the recipe he used but cured it for 2 days.



Two days is way too long. That is why his fish is too salty. Also if he didn't rinse the cure off that would make it too salty. 4-8 hours is all the fish needs to cure properly. 



whitvt said:


> could u get more smoke flavor  in it by smoking it longer? i have an external smoke generator so the salmon should not really cook any longer.



Yes you could get more smoke by cold smoking. However you would need to make sure that the smoke chamber and the fish remained at or below 40 degrees. 

Adding more smoke is not going to do anything about the overly salty fish. It's still going to be too salty.


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## cmayna

whitvt said:


> i believe this is the recipe he used but cured it for 2 days.


I don't see a recipe, but agree with Case that brining it for two days is way too long unless you were doing lox but that's a whole different animal.


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## whitvt

When I pulled the fish out of the bag it must have had 1/2 inch of salt on it. I did rinse the fish prior to smoking ithe. I'll see tomorrow what he thinks about them.


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## cmayna

Keep us posted.


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## smokethefish

whitvt said:


> a friend gave me 2 fillets and i bought 1 for myself. i did a yoshidas brine recipe on mine and one of his fillets, He had already doctored up 1 fillet. When  i opened up the bag the salmon was covered with salt. Anyhow, i smoked the 3 fillets and mine came out awesome but his had a wicked salt taste to it and you can't even taste the smoke cause all u get is salt. is there anything i can do to cut the salt? i thought about just throwing it in the smoker and use hickory to possibly get some smoke flavor into it. thoughts


Next time this happens what you should do is throw it in a liquid brine of 10* salometer over night and then dry it again, after it dries up, slice it and enjoy! :)


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