Published: 26-Sep-2012 (16:07); Viewed: 3991; Difficulty: 4 out of 10
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Smoked salmon is a very delicious but unfortunately expensive food. The price of smoked salmon can be 10 times more expensive in compare with raw fish fillet. This "how to" will shows you, how to cook smoked salmon at home. The result will be compatible, or even better than in any high class shops. This recipe, but with more proper smoker can be used in any restaurants.
step-by-step instructions
Preparation of smoked salmon can be splitted into two major steps. Salting and smoking. Ingredients for salting:
Salmon fillet. Remove all bones from the fillet.
Salt. 5-6% of the salmon fillet weight
Sugar. 2-3% of the salmon fillet weight
Mix salt and sugar. Sprinkle salt and sugar over the salmon fillet.
Store salted fillet into a food bag or in a container. Keep at least 24 hours, or ven 48 hours in the fridge.
Ingredients for smoking:
Salted salmon fillet
Tea for smoking. Use green or black loosed tea, but not teabags.
Sugar for smoking.
Use wok and bamboo steamers for smoking. Place foil trays with tea and sugar into the wok.
Place salted salmon fillet on the steamer tray.
Use portable cooker for smoking. It is better to place salmon as far as possible from the heat (on this picture, tray with salmon fillet is on the top) and use medium heat. Remove sugar tray when the sugar burns out. Change tea tray when the tea is burned out. Ususally, it it enough to smoke for 40-60 minutes.
Slice and serve. Because, the smoking in this case was performed at 30-40 ° C, the salmon fillet became very fragile. It is impossible to slice it into a very thin slices.
tips and tricks
By changing the temperature of smoking, you can change the texture of the fish. If you smoke at room temperature, the fish will be cols smoked, and the the texture will be similar to raw fish. If the smoking temperature is about 65 deg; C and above, then the salmon will be hot smoked. I do prefer to smoke at medium temperature, about 30 ° C. At this temperature, salmon fillet turns into a very fragile substance, but keeps the colour of the raw fish.
For more proper smoking, or for the large scale smoking, you should have more professional equipment.
For long cols smoking it is much better to use wooden chips, rather that tea leaves.
Smoked food have very delicious taste. Unfortunately, many smoked food, available for sale, made with liquid smoke, rather than with read wood smoke. ...