smoked alaska sockeye salmon

It all started with my craving for a big sweet watermelon. I love watermelon. There is nothing better to crunch a summer thirst than a few big slices of cold and sweet seedless watermelon. I have been shopping at different places for good watermelons. Usually the best deal are ones that price by the whole instead of by weight. Trader Joe's usually have them for $3.99. I have seen them also at Costco for $6.99. At first glance you would think it is no-brainer to get the one from Trader Joe's. I then start paying attention at the difference in size. it turns out the ones at Costco is about twice as big, and is more consistently sweet. This year I have been having pretty good luck with the ones at Costco. The key is not to buy them too early in the season. life is no joy being stuck with a twenty-pounder that is too dense and bland.


(jun 8 update - having tasted the delicious home made smoked salmon, i went back to get another salmon today and realize these are sockeye, not coho; Cantonese has a saying "食過返尋味" - meaning you go back for more after tasted how delicious something is. I don't buy salmon much now as the price of wild salmon has been driven up by the demand. I want to make a good batch to keep for a while.)

While at Costco, as usual I check the fresh food section to see what seasonal thing they have. The Alaska Copper River coho sockeye salmon just arrived. Over the years I have noted that Costco have a supply of Alaska Copper River sockeye salmons about this time of the year. I don't know how many shipments they get but my guess is one or two only so you have to grab some when you see them. I usually try to buy some when they have them. This is the only time of the year you can buy the headless "whole" ones there. It cost a lot less than the fillets if you are willing to do the work yourself. I have tried to fillet myself but my skill just plain sucks as you can see below. It is a skill that I want to improve. Filleting fish is like doing drywall. In theory the work is rather simple but in practice it is very hard to do well. Practice, practice.

Buying the salmon at Costco, like other places is not without risk unless you can and know how to check it. I know it now as I learnt my lesson. You want to be able to smell the fish.

I am getting wiser now having been burnt before. I check the packed date and the sell by date. it was packed that morning. However the packed date is not fool proof, because the fish can be either stored for too long somewhere between Alaska and Costco. I wanted to be able to smell the fish but there is a problem. The salmon fillets are all packed with shrink wrap and the whole ones are in sealed plastic bags. I pondered for a long time and then I notice there is traces of the liquid and blood on the opening of plastic bag outside the seal left from when they place the fish in the bag. I can smell this trace of liquid which will give the indication if the fish was fresh when they slip it into the bag and seal it shut. It passed my smell test! I pick a smaller one planning to try my hand on hot smoking it. It is just under 4 pounds.

There is one reason for buying the whole fish. It stands a better chance of less spoilage (any fish starts to spoil the moment it dies) than ones that has been fillet as the filleted flesh exposed to oxygen.

for me filleting a fish is hard but i am getting better; it is easier on one side for a novice like me

 not too bad if you judge by the bone - i save the bone for making a broth

however you can see on the fillet there is too many small cuts because I could not have the skill to do a decisive slice

Next I need to figure out how to prepare smoked salmon. I only had a basic idea but need the details. I went onto the web and search. My first pick from the google results happened to be one by Hang Shaw of honest-food blog  I have followed Hang's "hunter, angler, gardener, cook" blog on and off over the years and I am so envy the wild ingredients he cooks with. As soon as I saw it I knew there is no need to look further. Strangely the internet is so vast and yet some of the best on certain subject are so few.

I roughly follow Hang's recipe but adjust to my preference of less sweetness.

brine overnight in the refrigerator in a mixture of salt, sugar, and (real) maple syrup

you can see my water melon

 drain off the brine liquid

 then return to the fridge to dry, this develop a shiny skin called pellicle

 here you can see the shiny pellicle

 i use a combination of charcoal briquets and plum tree wood as fuel

Hang said it best, smoking food is more an art than science. You can instrument all you want to monitor the temperature but you would find the temperature vary vastly inside the chamber. By paying attention and with experience I leant to judge the temperature and progress with just this simple gauge. I think of smoking as a integration of temperature over time. Keeping a mental log of the two variables really help judging the progress without excessive checking the good by opening the chamber door.

I am really happy that I bought this offset smoker. It is so easy to control the heat and replenish fuel, and has so much surface area in the smoke chamber. I am also glad that I withstood the temptation of getting ahead of myself to buy a wireless thermometer.

Not wanting the smoked fish to be too sweet I use just a small amount of maple syrup and water solution to bast the salmon three times about once every hour.

I smoked the fish for 4 hours and I only move them once to even out the exposure to the heat based on their thickness and relative sizes.

 once they are smoked you don't see my messy fillet cuts; i sprinkled some freshly ground pepper and salt

it tasted better than any smoke salmon that I had ever purchased; it has so much more umami and is dryer as it should

With store bought smoke salmon I often find them to be too sweet and lack of umami. The lacking of umami usually cause by use of less than fresh fish, or the smoked product been in storage too long. Also as the product is sold by weight, it is the interest of the business to avoid weight loss due to dehydration of the brining and smoking process. A piece of good smoke fish gains the rich flavors from concentrating the flavors through dehydration.

in addition to the great umami, it also tastes nutty from the good fat and the skin; Chinese describe this taste as 甘香; here you can see the somewhat flaky texture of the cross section

While it is quite a bit of work, I really enjoy the process and learning another culinary repertoire adding to my belt.
the sections by the belly is very buttery, it goes very well with a glass of dry French wine; my holding back on the sweetness was a wise move