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Lessons Learned - Salmon Smoking

Teefus
Teefus Posts: 1,204
I smoke a big salmon filet every few weeks, as it's one of my favorite snack foods. Low temp smokes can be tough and it's taken me a few attempts to get things dialed in. I thought I'd share a couple things learned along the way.

1) Eliminate "off flavors" from White Smoke"

One of the problems I'd have with a low temp (sub 200*) smoke is that the lump never got hot enough to burn off the volatiles and prevent off flavors. If it did, throttling the fire back to the desired low temp was all but impossible. It just took forever. This last time I loaded the firebox with fresh lump and got a blazing fire going....the night before. I did a quick cook of some flatirons and shut the egg down. The next day I still had a big load of lump in the firebox that was already cleansed of any volatiles. I just stirred it up, lit a small section with my propane torch, dropped in a couple fist size chunks of apple wood, and installed the plate setter and grate. It burned like a candle. With the vents throttled back I had sweet apple smoke for two hours before it even approached 200* at the dome, and it never exceeded 210*. It took 4 hours to get the fish to 160*. Perfect.

2) Eliminate dripping condensate from the daisy wheel.

One of the problems I've had with low temp smokes (especially in cool or cold weather) is that moisture condenses on the daisy wheel and drips creosote flavored droplets on my food. It looks unsightly on Salmon and tastes like crap on anything. It stops after the daisy wheel gets heated up well. This time I pre-heated the daisy wheel with my propane torch just prior to adding the Salmon. I hit it from both the inside and outside and got it smoking hot. No condensate at all this time.

Maybe I'm behind the curve on this stuff but if not I wanted to share. It made for a better cook. It's hard not to like a better cook.
Michiana, South of the border.

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