How low can you go ?

OttawaEgg

Hi all,

Well, I want to try doing some smoked salmon. Not just "any" smoked salmon, but I want to try and duplicate the smoked salmon that my wife "smuggled" back from her visit to her cousin in Texas.

Simply put, it was delicious. We like it cold (room temp), with capers and red onion. :woohoo:

The recipe is pretty basic, brine overnight, rince, pat dry - then smoke for a few hours.

Her cousin has one of those big honkin smoker thingies (the wood / fire sits at the side), and they smoked theirs at around 140-150.

Can the egg do 140-150? Almost all recipes I've seen around here say 200-220.

Any advice from the EGGsperts??

BobS

People smoke cheese, so I know the low temps can be achieved. My personal solution was to have a low fire in one grill (200 with my Guru) and then pipe the smoke over to a second grill, using aluminum, dryer vent hose.

Even at that, I find it best to do it in cold weather.

I was going for 80 degrees on the fish side and that is not possible when the weather is hotter than that.

Weekend Warrior

I make a venison bologna recipe that calls for temps starting at 120 and climbing to a max of 180 in 20 degree/one hour increments. The tricks are not to use much lump and as soon as the fire is barely established, let the DigiQII take over fire control. You barely burn any lump at all at those temperatures, even over several hours. Mark

Gator Bait

The Naked Whiz has a tutorial on cold smoking cheese here that you might be able to adapt to fish.
Thirdeye has a page "Dry Cure for Salmon, Trout or Steelhead" .
Also, if you search the forum for "smoked salmon" you will find whole bunches of information.


Gator

fishlessman

i do 145 for jerkey cooks. small preused lump about 2 inches deep. you want small pieces to help clog the grate holes. i believe on the naked whiz site there is a tutorial by scott borders using a cofee can that makes it even easier to hold 145 degrees. peeking increases temps quickly so dont peek

Ripnem

I've heard that you can also use an ice filled drip pan to keeper cool. Never tried it, but it makes sense. I do mine at 180-190 and wouldn't change a thing.

stike

you can use the egg as a source for the smoke, then pipe it off to a cardboard smoke box using metal (foil) dryer hose. keep the fire as low as you can, and stretch the dryer hose out to cool the smoke. 90 or below would be ideal for cold smoking. for shorter cold smokes, you could do the old "ice tray" trick, with a very small fire (few bits of lump of even briquettes isolated in a coffee can, for example)

stike

that's still "cooking" though, at 160 or higher. hot-smoking. i think he's looking for cold smoked methods, for cured salmon.

OttawaEgg

Well, I don't know if its cold or hot smoked.

140-150 seems "hot" (ok... warm?) to me.

Just wondering what the best method for keeping the temp around there - so far, the tray of ice below it sounds about right.

stike

if it's about 140 or above, you are changing the texture of the meat by cooking it. if what you want to achieve is the red cold salmon you see at a brunch, next to the bagels and cream cheese, capers, and all that jazz, you want to brine it and go very low. the meat is cured, and uncooked.

hot smoking isn't a no-no, it's just a different thing.

cold smoking is done around 80-100 ideally.

Weekend Warrior

Master Po, don't the cold smoked products have to be cured instead of just brined, ie. sodium nitrate/nitrite? Even though a salt/flavoring basic brine helps preserve, I don't know that I would want to eat raw, salted fish. Grasshopper

stike

you never had sushi? raw fish.

gravlax is raw and uncooked. cured, but no nitrites. just salt, sugar and herbs.

i did a duck breast in nothing but salt as part of an app tray for easter. hung for a week after a night buried in salt. you don't need nitrites to cure, salt will do. with nitrites or nitrates, it becomes a different kind of cure, that's all.

but a lot of advocates of cold smoking will say you may WANT nitrites to ward of botulism growing in low-oxygen environments and optimum growth temperatures. you don't have to worry about bacteria with all the salt and low oxygen, but botulism is a potential concern. big chunks of meat that will be cold smoked for a long time, or air dried (some sausages like chorizo) also get a dose of nitrates.

so i guess i go back to my question. what kind of "smoked saalmon" does he want to make? that smoked salmon you see hanging in the vacuum packs at the grocers, with shiny gold cardboard, are not cooked. they are raw, cured, no nitrites (often).

rest assured, though, anything over 100 degrees F is cooked salmon. if you want that stuff you enjoy on a platter, cold, at a brunch, well that's cold-smoked salmon. and it ain't cooked. may or may not have nitrites in the cure. salt and sugar curing is pretty traditional

Weekend Warrior

haha. No. No sushi. We have very simple tastes in northwest PA.(Can you say redneck?!) Right, botulism would be the main concern. I'm guessing from his post he was looking to make the(oops, edit) hot-smoked variety. I've brined and smoked Lake Erie Steelhead before, but it was alway hot-smoked. PCBs and mercury help keep the bateria count down as well. haha Mark

The Naked Whiz

I also have a smoked salmon article with photos and directions that was produced by SeeRockCity:

Smoked Salmon Tutorial

stike

that bit about cold smoked salmon seems a little "editorial". hahahaha

OttawaEgg

Thanks for all the feed back and tips!

Well, like I said the recipe they had was simple...

Brine it overnight, then rinse and dry, and smoke it around 140-150 for 3-5 hours. They ate it that night, and it was cooked (wifie smuggled some home - it was the best).

Anyways - I'm going to give it a go, just one side of a salmon though. I'll brine it friday, and smoke the lil puppy saturday.

I'll post the results (good or bad).

Cheers :cheer:

Boatman

I routinely smoke cheese at 100 using a coffee can with used lump and some "new" chips. Use a drip pan loaded with ice cubes, keep the bottom vent open wide and almost close the daisy so just a few wisps of smoke come out. about an hour should do it.

Canugghead

As mentioned by many already, used lump in bottomless coffee can...