Smoked Salmon when the fishing is smoking hot!

The ocean fishing has been awesome this year. Buoy 10 is firing up. This means one thing: Smoked Salmon time! We now have two people consistently bringing home limits, and the fridge was getting full. It was time to mix up some brine and start up the smoker. With the freezers already near bursting, I designated this batch for the canner. Bobby assisted me as we put away 5 coho and a small Chinook. It’s been a great season so far.

I taught Bobby the recipe that I grew up with. A lot of people have their favorite smoked salmon brine and do air drying. For salmon being eaten right away these methods make sense. For the canner especially, I keep it simple:

• Dissolve one cup of salt and one cup of brown sugar into 1 gallon of water.
• Put the fish in and soak over night
• Rinse and pat dry
• Load the smoker up with alder chips and set it as low as it will go
• If I’m canning it, then it only stays in for an hour. If I’m freezing it or eating it right away, I will usually run for an hour or two in order to get it good and firm.
• If canning, check with the USDA Food Center for Home Food Preservation for detailed instructions. I canned this batch at 10lbs of pressure for 110 minutes.

We canned this batch and put away 28 pints of smoked Chinook and coho for later. I love it on crackers when I’m out on the boat fishing for springers. Today after an afternoon of boat maintenance, it made an easy meal with some salad greens. No more shrimp salads for us, it’s smoked salmon all the way!