"Traditional" Smoked Salmon and Trout

[Wade]

Smoked Salmon and Trout is one of the products that I produce in reasonable quantity in the Smokery. I regularly get a text from local fishermen at the end of a weekend asking if I will smoke their catch for them.

Making "traditional" smoked trout is quite straightforward and can be easily done in a home smoker. Bullet smokers are ideal for cold smoking multiple fish however individual fish can be smoked quite easily in most kettle BBQs.

What is "traditional" smoked salmon?

It is where the salmon is preserved in times of plenty for eating later when food is scarce using of salt and smoke as the cure. Historically the resulting salmon would have been expected to last for weeks or months and would have ended up being very salty. It would probably have need to have been soaked to remove some of the salt before it was eaten. Today though the smoked salmon we are used to buying and eating is much less salty - but it does only have a chilled shelf life of about 10 days. This can obviously be extended further by freezing.

What do we mean when we say we are "curing" salmon or trout?

We are altering the fish flesh in order to slow the growth of spoilage bacteria so that it is safe to eat over a longer period of time.This is achieved by using three of the ways that bacteria growth can be controlled: