Homemade Smoked Salmon - Tips and Tricks to Avoid Goofs

This recipe is perfect for the Christmas season, but not only. Do you know how to make smoked salmon at home? Try it by following our tips for incredible results.

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INGREDIENTS

• Portion of fresh salmon with skin

• Orange alcoholic drink

Brine:

• Coarse salt

• Mix containing nitrites

• Sugar

• Pimento

• Coriander

• Cinnamon

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In recent years, smoked salmon has been a widely discussed food, especially in relation to our health.

It is a common belief to associate this preparation with a complex process that can only be replicated on an industrial level.

In this recipe, we want to give you our tips for making it safely with normal household tools, for a controlled and absolutely healthy result.

We start by cleaning the salmon portion, removing the fattiest ventral area and finishing the flank with a sharp knife, then finishing by removing the salmon bones with the help of special tongs.

Let's set the fish aside and dedicate ourselves to preparing the dry brine.

Let's start by addressing one of the concerns most often associated with this recipe: the potential for botulism spores from the brine.

To ensure its safe preparation, mixtures containing nitrites are added to the salt. When we refer to nitrites, we're specifically referring to sodium nitrite (NaNO2), which you can find on food labels as E250.

Nitrite preserves the natural color of the preparation (such as cooked ham) and helps block the onset of Clostridium Botulinum, a deadly bacterium .

Adding nitrites to foods is still seen as artificial and harmful because this substance can bind to myoglobin in the blood, impairing oxygen transport by red blood cells. Furthermore, nitrites can bind to amines to form N-nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic.

But all this occurs only in certain excessive concentrations of nitrites in the blood, which can cause food poisoning when they reach 20 mg per kg of body weight.

The WHO guideline for nitrite use is 0.1 mg per kg of body weight, well below the limit. All commercial nitrite-containing mixes are carefully pre-measured. We won't tell you how much nitrite mix to add to the brine, as you'll need to follow the manufacturer's instructions and dosage.

Returning to the dry brine, we combine in a bowl the mix containing nitrites, the coarse salt and the sugar (calculated at 30% of the weight of the salt).

Depending on your tastes, you can play with different spices and add them to the fish: we flavor with allspice, coriander, and cinnamon.

Take a container large enough to hold the salmon, sprinkle the bottom with salt, and place the salmon fillet on top. Sprinkle the spice mix evenly over the fish, then completely cover the salmon with the dry brine.

We put everything in the refrigerator for 24/36 hours.

Once the brine has elapsed, we can evaluate the effect of the salt on the fish: by touching it with a finger, we can determine whether it has reached the appropriate firm consistency; otherwise, we will need to leave it in brine for another 12 hours or so.

Once satisfied with the result, we can remove the brine from the salmon and discard it. We continue by rinsing each fish fillet with cold water and then carefully drying it, including the skin side.

We are ready for cold smoking.

We use Monolith's new smoking attachment, which allows us to smoke large portions of food.

We place the birch sawdust specifically for smoking on the bottom of the barbecue and assemble the accessory with its pins and the ring from which we will hang the salmon, which will be able to hang comfortably.

We light the sawdust with a blowtorch, igniting it in just one spot. Since it's cold smoking, it will be very slow and steady, so it can penetrate the meat.

It is called "cold" smoking because it must be done below 30°C, which is why winter is the ideal period.

We hang each whisker on the ring using the hooks and close the lid.

Set the smoking time according to your tastes and the essence of the sawdust you are using: if you smoke the salmon with a delicate essence, we will calculate about 6 hours.

Once the smoking process is complete, after removing the salmon fillets from the barbecue, you need to wait: every cold-smoked preparation must be left to rest because its freshly smoked flavor is extremely strong and bitter. We need to wait for the most volatile smoke particles that have settled on the surface to evaporate: the phenols , alcohols , and aldehydes.

Once evaporated, they will leave only the particles that give the food the sweet, mellow flavor of smoking.

To aid this evaporation process, we sprinkle an alcoholic substance over the salmon: the ease with which the alcohol evaporates will also speed up the elimination of volatile particles. Choose your favorite alcoholic beverage: we use either a sweetish orange liqueur or a drier rum. Repeat this process several times over a 12-hour period.

The salmon is finally ready: fragrant, nicely pink, and firm yet soft to the touch.

We can slice it and taste it.

If you leave it whole for up to a week, the flavors will penetrate the meat even better. If vacuum-packed, smoked salmon can last up to a month in the refrigerator.

Get ready because once you try it you will never want to buy it again!

After seeing how to make smoked salmon at home, all you have to do is try it.