# First cold smoke: Salmon w/ a cheese afterthought.



## mattsican (Jun 25, 2013)

I've never had cold smoked salmon in my life. I was looking up different things about cold smoking and saw a bunch of people talking about cold smoking salmon and it looked tasty so i went for it. Bought a 1lb chunk of fresh Sockeye salmon. I regularly go fishing and whatnot and living in Washington i've access to plenty of fresh fish. I soaked the chunk in ive water for about 30 mins after removing the pin bones. After patting dry with some paper towels i mixed a bunch of kosher salt with some brown sugar (maybe 4:1 salt:sugar) and some fresh cracked black pepper. I didn't really measure i just figured as long as i had enough kosher salt i'd be good. I then basically buried the chunk in the mixture, but some plastic wrap over the dish, put the dish on some ice, took a small plate and set it on top of the salmon over the dish with an ice bag for about 10 hours. I then rinsed it off with some cold water and it was pretty rigid. I added some more ground black pepper, orange and lemon zest on top and set it to dry overnight. This AM i started cold smoking it with a mixture of alder and apple pellets (60/40 alder/apple). After a couple of hours at 75-85 degrees i randomly threw some cheap mild cheddar on with it. Smoked the cheddar for about three hours, let it rest at room temp for an hour and wrapped it up with some plastic wrap and stuck it in a ziploc bag and buried it in the fridge for later. Im about 8 hours into my planned 10 hour cold smoke and the salmon is looking legit so far.... pics below. I'm going to let it finish smoking and let it refrigerate a bit before slicing it up for some onion bagels, cream cheese and red onions. I'm just hoping it's edible and i dont get food poisoning haha.... my wife seems horrified by all my weird soaking fish in salts and smoking for hours on end :p.













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__ mattsican
__ Jun 25, 2013






About half way thru i decided to randomly throw some cheese on...













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__ mattsican
__ Jun 25, 2013






seems to be holding steady below 85..













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__ mattsican
__ Jun 25, 2013






2 hours left... seems legit.


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## daveomak (Jun 27, 2013)

Looks good to me.....  temps holding...  no problems......   Dave


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## woodcutter (Jun 27, 2013)

How did things turn out?


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## mattsican (Jun 30, 2013)

Turned out well! Turn out I'm not much of a fan of the texture, but mixed in with cream cheese it was tasty!


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