Cold Smoke Trout

[Marcus]

Here's my cold smoking video from my CountryWoodSmoke Channel, best practice for cold smoking freshwater fish such as trout is to freeze, this was a saltwater loch reared trout so I didn't need to freeze before.

Cold Smoked Trout

[Smokin Monkey]

Great video, but I am an "Anichytyophagism" (Research that one!)

 

 

[Marcus]

Here's the official guidelines on freezing fish for raw consumption such as cold smoked trout and salmon...https://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/fish-shellfish/freezing-requirements-guidance

[Wade]

Thanks Marcus 

The important things to note from the FSA guidelines is that:

• Freezing certain fish and cephalopod molluscs is only required if they are to be eaten raw or lightly cooked. Fish that is brought to a temperature of 60 C or above for at least 1 minute is considered safe.
• Farmed fish that are raided from embryo and fed on parasite free food are considered to be parasite free and do not need freezing - this includes commercially farmed salmon. This does not necessarily apply though to most fish caught from inland stocked fisheries.
• The freezing time required is dependent on the temperature of the freezer
  It requires:
  - 15 hours at -35 C 
  - at least 24 hours at -20 C (most commercial freezers)
  - at least 4 weeks at -18 (most home freezers of *** or **** rating)
  - Fridge top freezing compartments or freezers of * or **  rating are insufficient as they do not reach sufficiently low temperatures.

When relying on freezing to control potential parasites in fish it is important to check the actual temperature in your freezer (not just rely on the thermostat setting). If you have a "fast freeze" setting on your freezer then this is a good to use as "fast freeze" will take the freezer down to ~-21 C. It is important to check this though before relying on it. 

[valve90210]

Never having done any cold smoking of fish, nor having looked it up, am I right in thinking that what 's being said is that the fish should be frozen (for the lengths of time mentioned above) before defrosting, curing, cold smoking and then consuming?

[Wade]

You do not need to freeze the fish before cold smoking if it is bought from a commercial fish farm where they raise fish from embryo and feed them parasite free food. This includes farmed salmon from the supermarket.
Any whole wild fish (e.g. "line caught Atlantic salmon") would be best frozen before using. Also any locally caught fish from sports fisheries.

An added benefit of freezing before curing is that during the thawing process it will already lose ~3% of its water.