Smoked Salmon

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.