Smoked Salmon

This smoked salmon method is really what most people know as kippered salmon. There is no liquid added, it is a dry brine, very sweet.

Work with salmon fillets. Cut the fillets across into strips about 1” wide.

In a large bowl, mix together 6 cups brown sugar and 1 cup salt. You can adjust the total amounts as long as you remember it’s 5 or 6 parts of brown sugar to 1 part salt. I use canning and pickling salt.
In a bucket or other container, layer sugar-salt mix with salmon.

One layer at a time until all your fish is used up. Make sure sugar-salt is the top layer. Loosely cover and place in a cool spot for 24 hours or so. I put the bucket on the floor of my basement.

The salt draws out the moisture in the fish so that when you remove the lid the next day, the fish is submerged in liquid. Take the bucket to your work area (my kitchen table).

Draw a bowl of cool water and dip each piece of salmon into it, then place onto baking sheets covered with absorbent towels. Once all the fish is laid out, pat the tops dry with absorbent cloths.

Let the fish sit, under a fan is best, for several hours while a skin develops. Beads of moisture should emerge from the fish, but don’t worry about it if it doesn’t.

Put the fish onto racks in your smoker and smoke as manufacturer suggests. We like mesquite chips. This part takes us about 3 hours or so.

Our smoker runs hot and it’s easy to burn it, so keep a close eye.

The finished product. Now we will vacuum seal some and can some. We did about 15 sockeye salmon in this batch. There were a lot of small ones.

NOTE: 7/16/2022 Last summer I purchase a Traeger smoker. I smoked my fish on the “Smoke” setting for about 2 to 2.5 hours. Perfect. Oh, and I used 3 Bristol Bay sockeye filets (they average around 8# compared to Kenai/Kasilof/Copper) and about 10 bellies — that filled my Traeger. The brown sugar was 3 cups and the salt was 1/2 cup.

Canning instructions to myself: use the pressure canner. Add water to the level marked over many, many years in the canner. Bring the water to a boil. Load pint jars with smoked salmon chunks and put them into the canner while you’re waiting for the full boil. Once boiling and pints are in, set the lid, but keep the stopcock open. Let the canner boil. Once steam exhausts from the stopcock in a steady stream for ten minutes, shut the stopcock. Let the pressure build to 10. Adjust the stovetop flame to keep a steady 10 pressure for 110 minutes (1 hour and fifty minutes). Remove from heat. Let it cool down for at least an hour before opening the stopcock to release the pressure. Then another hour or so before opening the lid and removing the jars. Wild fluctuations in pressure or overfilled jars will result in the jars exhausting liquid into the canning water. It doesn’t hurt anything, it’s just messy.

Use canned smoked salmon to make dip for crackers by combining 8oz. cream cheese with one pint of flaked canned smoked salmon. You may have to heat the smoked salmon first in order to get it to flake, and then maybe heat the cream cheese to get it to stir properly. I use the microwave for both tasks. This is simply the BEST smoked salmon dip known to creation. Seriously. I kid you not. –Paula