Smoked fish is a wonderful cold snack, which can be dutifully served on a festive table or simply feast on it with beer on the nature or at home. Today we will tell you how to properly salt the fish before smoking, how to smoke it in a hot and cold way, and how and how much you can store the product in the refrigerator.
Smoked red fish hot smoked at home - recipe
Ingredients:
- red fish (pink salmon, trout or any other) - 3.5-4 kg;
- salt of stone not iodized - 140 g;
- granulated sugar - 25 g;
- ground black and red hot pepper, dried basil and mustard seeds - for ½ tsp;
- paprika sweet ground - 25 g;
- garlic teeth - 4 pcs .;
- sawdust and chips of alder, apple and cherry;
- leaves are laurel .
Preparation
The process of making smoked fish at home is quite troublesome, but the result is beyond any doubt worth the time and effort.
Initially, the red fish are gutted and thoroughly washed under cool running water. Now we are gently rubbing the carcasses from all sides with large, non-iodized salt, not missing the gills and abdomen. If the back is thick, we make several cross cuts on it, which we also add to the salt.
Now the spice turns. We clean garlic cloves, squeeze them through the press and mix with sugar, ground black and red pepper, dried basil, mustard seeds and paprika. Sprinkle a generously received spicy mixture of carcass fish from the outside and inside, into the gills we put on the laurel leaf. We place the fish in a plastic bag and leave it for salting and marinating. For small carcasses, twenty hours will suffice, and a larger fish will be salted for about two days.
How to smoke fish?
Directly before smoking, we take the fish out of the package, wipe them with napkins and dry it with a little paper towels. At the bottom of the smokehouse we pour alder sawdust and apple and cherry chips. Sawdust is only slightly sprinkled with water, and a large chip is pre-soaked in it for three to five minutes. From above, we set the tray for collecting juices and fat, pouring a little water into it, and then the grate, on which we have the prepared fish in one layer.
For the first fifteen minutes, the fire under the smokehouse should be as strong as possible so that the fish can dry off and cook, as it were. The temperature in the smokehouse should be at 110 degrees. After that, the heat is reduced to the temperature inside the device to 90 degrees, pour the wet chips and smoke the red fish on average for an hour. For large individuals, the time required will be twice as large, and the fish will be ready in only two hours.
The cover of the smoker in the process of smoking is not recommended to avoid the ignition of chips from the access of oxygen. You can only briefly open a little smokehouse to look and visually assess the readiness of the product. The carcass on readiness should get a yellowish-tea shade and become dry outside.
Salted according to this prescription, the fish can also be cooked in a smoker of cold smoking, focusing on recommendations in the instructions to your device. In this case the carcass must be rinsed under a stream of water, and then dried for several hours in a suspended state. Instead of red fish, you can take any other, for example, mackerel, pike perch or carp.
How to store smoked fish?
As a rule, a smoked fish prepared at home is not stored for a long time and is instantly eaten. But if you still need to keep it fresh for some time, the ideal option for this is beyond any doubt vacuum packing. If there is no possibility of evacuation
Carcasses of hot smoking in any case can be stored for no more than three days.
The product of cold smoking is stored much longer. Just in the refrigerator compartment the fish will remain fresh for up to two weeks, and if you wrap it with a pre-cloth dipped in saline solution for up to one month. Cold-smoked fish in a vacuum package is perfectly preserved in the freezer for up to three months.