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I can’t believe I ate the whole thing…
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Okay, I didn’t. But I must have just chowed down on four ounces of wild-caught, locally-packed smoked salmon. If not four ounces, then nearly so. I just couldn’t stop. Okay, I did stop. But you know what I mean.
It got me to thinking. The absoulte best smoked salmon I’ve had comes from Brady’s Oysters down in Westport. I haven’t been there in four years, but my friend stopped there on her way up and brought a nice fillet. (She admits Brady’s is good, but not as good as the free stuff friends gave her when she lived in Hoquiam.) The stuff I’ve just had wasn’t up to Brady’s standards, but it was pretty darned good.
When I was in L.A. I never found excellent smoked salmon. The fillets they had in stores tended to be brick-hard without enough oil, and often covered with pepper to disguise the fact that it didn’t have much flavour of its own. My friend said she couldn’t even find that when she lived in Tennessee.
So how about it? How’s the store-bought smoked salmon in your area?
It’s that time of year where the catch out of Lake Michigan has reverted back to the boats instead of we shore fishermen, but the spring run fish are just getting to the peak of awesome smokiness out of some top secret home smokers scattered around the area. Catching them in the spring and fall isn’t hard, and according to some friends who are capital “S” Smokers, smoking it isn’t all that hard either as long as you’re single or have a really cool wife.
However it is a terribly dangerous habit that will have you smoking all sorts of food in no time. Next thing you know you’re up in Wisconsin trading your home smoked salmon for smoked gouda cheese, with traces of hickory all over you.
So, when’s dinner, and should I bring wine or beer?
I just wanted to chime in and say that I haven’t found any really great smoked salmon in SoCal except for, oddly enough, the breakfast buffet at The Storyteller Cafe in Disneyland. So I’d love if it someone would give me any suggestions!
Envy? Nah. I smoked a couple nice Copper River filets yesterday along with some fresh tuna. My wife, notorious for her disdain for salmon, even ate some and liked it. I have one filet left, I’m debating taking it to work to share with some co-workers or to be a hog and save it all for myself. The tuna turned out mighty tasty too. I used apple wood soaked in pineapple juice for the smoke.
Pathetic. I live in Ontario and all I can get is limp, rubbery paper-thin barely-waved-over-a-smouldering-newspaper farmed Atlantic salmon.
I grew up on the West Coast and with my mother’s home-smoked wild-caught (by me, my sibs and our father). It would be filleted, brined, coated in a mixture of brown sugar and spices, several arcane incantations were invoked, and then the fish was smoked over alder in our smokehouse.
Food for the gods.
If that’s not available, then the First Nations-style smoked salmon from the Granville Market or Lonsdale Quay will do nicely thank you.
Bourbon, water, sea salt, white pepper, Sugar in The Raw, whatever decent hardwood one can get one’s hands on, low temps, and time. I prefer hickory or mesquite, but apple can be good too. I can’t do oak, too…oaky for me.
This idea can smoke anything, but it came to me via a diehard vension guy.
edit - I will find a reason and purpose to work pineapple into this.
Bright pink vacuum-packed supermarket stuff is all that’s on offer…
However, there’s a couple of smokehouses not too far away which do a huge range, with a strong emphasis on local fish & other produce. I’d never tried smoke eel until a few months ago, and my god is it good. Duck breast, stilton, just about anything that won’t catch fire seems to find its way into these places.
I can’t say much about “local” smoked salmon. But I had some in Juneau where the fish made a direct, non-stop trip from boat to smoker to table, that was to die for. Yum!
