Thread: Smoking Fish

Smoked trout is a food fit for the gods, it's fanbloodytastic. I've have a smoker in the garage it's the next thing on my list to do, bought it several years ago and never got around to using it yet.

YUMBO!
nothing beats smoked fish straight out of the ocean, and the little tin smokers work fine.

Very easy to do with a small stainless steel smoker. Takes about 20 minutes. Tastes much better than normal cooked trout.
Better still, smoke the trout then break it up and put in a blender with dill and creme fresh and horseradish and a few herbs and make SMOKED TROUT PATE. YUM !!

Bon apetite.

I rekon I will buy a small smoker to get into it.
Have always had a want to build a wood fired pizza oven,perhaps a dual purpose unit???
Andrew

Originally Posted by TasD90

Very easy to do with a small stainless steel smoker. Takes about 20 minutes. Tastes much better than normal cooked trout.
Better still, smoke the trout then break it up and put in a blender with dill and creme fresh and horseradish and a few herbs and make SMOKED TROUT PATE. YUM !!

Bon apetite.

Very little chance of trout for me.BUT,I seem to catch some decent herring that I use for bait or the cats get them.An underated fish I guess that should cook really well like this.Dont like them fried/grilled,love the tinned ones in tomatoe sauce or mango/green pepper sauce.
Andrew

I have smoked trout before - and used the same method for smoking meat as well. The taste is amazing.

I don't have a proper smoker, I have just used whatever is to hand - either one of the old-style kettle-shaped weber bbqs, or the chimney of a wood fired bbq.

The steps I have used:

+Let the fire burn down so the coals are just ticking over.
+use skewers or a wire rack to hang the fish or meat as far away from the coals as possible (0.5m to 1m is good).
+put some green herbs/leaves on the coals to make the smoke. IME Rosemary, Apple, Rose, Orange/Citrus and Norfolk Is pine all give a good flavour.
+keep fanning the coals and adding more green leaves until done.

Many years ago back in NZ I used to catch quite a few Kahawai (Australian Salmon). They weren't very good for general eating, but one of the old Maori guys at work taught me how to cold smoke them.

I made a smoker from an old electric oven with the element removed and a couple of small vents added in the back of the oven box to allow air in. We'd spread about 25mm of tea tree sawdust/shavings on the bottom of the oven, light it in one area and just leave it smouldering with the fish in for around 6-8hrs. No noticeable heat from the burning sawdust - just enough air to keep it smouldering slowly.
Preparation was to bleed, then gut/head and scale the fish, split them (cant recall if we actually removed the backbone or just split along one side), open out and coat the the flesh side heavily with salt and a bit of brown sugar. Leave overnight and smoke them in a horizontal position the following day. Once smoked they were very soft in texture and had a very rich smoked flavour. Great by itself, with crackers/toast, or in smoked fish pie etc.

As a teenager I'd made one of the common style smoker boxes as a metalwork project at school and we smoked lots of different fish. While they certainly give a smoked flavour its mostly cooked not smoked, and in my opinion they are not a patch on the flavour and texture of fish that have been cold smoked .

Steve

I think that cold smoke is also a means to preserve the meat however with hot smoking you more or less have to eat it as you cook/smoke it.

You can also use a mix of pickle and brine in which you soak the fillets and then cook them or freeze. The mix I think you can get from sports stores and contains brown sugar and other stuff which provides an orange yellow colour to the meat.