# First time Smoked Salmon



## deersmoker58 (Jan 11, 2012)

Went fishing at Sam's and picked up a couple of salmon fillets.  Put one in the freezer for cold smoking later but hot smoked this one.

Soaked in a brine solution for 2 hours.  Removed, rinsed and dried then placed in the fridge overnight before smoking.

Seasoned it up and placed in the smoker (MES 40) with the  AMNPS and some maple pellets.  Let it smoke for 3 hrs and you end up with outstanding smoked salmon!  I cannot get over how sweet maple smoke is!








Here they are in the smoker..You can see some smoke comming up from the botter from Todds product.  I pull the tray out about 1.5 inchs and remove the chip loader.  I might try leaving the chip loader in next time as it seems my pellets are burning up pretty quick....a whole row in less than 3 hrs.







TBS and my high tech chimney!  It works, but long term i want to get a piece of 3 1/2 in stainless exhaust pipe.  I am think of rigging it some way with magnets to hold it in place and so that it is removeable.  I also want to look into putting an adjustable vent where the chip loader goes and just leave the loader out.







The final product!  (minus 1 piece as it got snatch off before i could get a pic!)


----------



## chef jimmyj (Jan 11, 2012)

Looks great!...JJ


----------



## big andy a (Jan 11, 2012)

Nice looking salmon, good job.

Curt.


----------



## adiochiro3 (Jan 12, 2012)

A really nice smoke, for sure!  Congrats!  Love that fancy chimney, BTW!


----------



## sprky (Jan 12, 2012)

mind sharing the recipe for your brine, and rub


----------



## mballi3011 (Jan 12, 2012)

Looks great to me.


----------



## SmokinAl (Jan 12, 2012)

Looks delicious!

3 hours sounds like an awfully long time for salmon, was it nice & juicy?


----------



## deersmoker58 (Jan 12, 2012)

SPRKY,

The brine was just 1/2 cup salt; 1/2 cup of sugar in about 1/2 gallon of water.  Used a bowl and dissolved in the some warm water..cooled the water then added the fish.

The rub was 1 part McCormick's Rotisserie Chicken Rub mixed with 2 parts dark brown sugar....nothing fancy.  I get the McCormicks seasoning at Sam's in the larger container size.  I have found that is a good base to start with.

Al,

It took that long for the bigger pieces to come up to 160.  Smoke temp was 185. A couple of the thinner pieces were a little tough on the outside but inside they were all nice and juicy. The next, time since it's winter I would like to try to cold smoke it for like 2 hrs then hot smoke it at 225 till done.  We really liked the sweet smokey taste.


----------

