The other day, when the weekly sales circular for Sprout's Market arrived, I noticed that sockeye salmon was on special. That got me thinking about how hard it might be to make my own gravlax. And since we recently were gifted with a smoker, smoked salmon, too.
One of my favorite food and recipe websites is Cooking for Engineers. Their tag line is, "Have an analytical mind? Like to cook? This is the site to read!" It's a wonderfully quirky site that melds science and cooking.
The site had a recipe for gravlax which looked so easy I was skeptical. All it takes is a piece of salmon, some kosher salt, sugar, black pepper, dill and a little bit of time. Interestingly, it takes virtually the same ingredients for hot smoked salmon.
The recipe for smoked salmon comes from the recipe booklet that was included with the Bradley smoker. (See the January 6, 2013 post for details on the smoker I'm using.)
Before you dive right in and buy a big ol' slab of salmon from the market, you need to understand that certain parasites like roundworms can live in salmon. Cooking salmon will kill them. But if you are curing them for gravlax, there's no application of high heat to kill the parasites. The way to ensure that you have safe salmon for gravlax is to either buy previously frozen salmon or freeze it yourself first. You must freeze it at 10 degrees below zero for a minimum of a week. Please take the time to educate yourself on safe processes before you attempt this (or any recipe) that you find here at Crossed Sabers.
The salmon I got was previously commercially frozen, so it is now completely safe.
First, you cure the salmon. The cure ingredients for 1 1/2 pounds of salmon are 3 Tbsp kosher salt, 3 Tbsp white sugar and 3 tsp. ground black pepper. You also need fresh dill. The same cure works for both the gravlax and the smoked salmon. The only difference in preparation is that the salmon for smoking gets a rub down with some vegetable oil before the cure is applied.
Both get wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap.
The salmon for smoking needs to cure for 14-20 hours. The salmon for gravlax needs two to three days.
Here's the one for smoking after 20 hours. You can see how much liquid has come out. The texture of the fish is much firmer than when I put it in the cure.
Remove the dill and rinse off the cure. Pat the flesh side dry with paper towels.
I preheated the smoker to 100 degrees and dropped some Bradley's "Special Blend" Bisquettes into the smoker's hopper.
Of course the day I pick to do this little project brings nasty weather. It's 9 degrees and snowing hard. Ugh! I've got the smoker on the patio under the deck. It's only slightly sheltered from the weather. Good thing the Bradley doesn't need lots of attention and fussing!
Grease the smoker rack, put the salmon in skin-side down and let it go for one hour at 100 degrees.
Then, according to the recipe, raise the temperature to 140 degrees for one hour, then 175 degrees for one hour.
Here's what it looked like right out of the smoker. It's cooked all the way through, but the thin ends look dried out.
I flaked off a little bit to taste and it was pretty good. Yes, it's just a tad on the dry side, unfortunately. It had a smoky flavor that wasn't unpleasant, but a little strong. My experiment with smoked salmon wasn't a huge success, but it wasn't a flop either...it IS edible! I'm kicking myself for not remembering to buy some bagels.
Here's what I learned from the experiment:
1) Smoking fish is easy.
2) Trim the pieces of fish before they go into the smoker so that they are of even thickness. (No dried out ends!)
3) Experiment with different woods for smoking to see if a more subtle, complex flavor is possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment