1st cold smoke fail

[the butcher]

I love the store bought smoked LOX that you buy frozen with individual pieces that are separated by parchment paper. So I decided to give it a go with the one and only chinook I caught this september from 3 outings at sandheads..

Looked up a bunch of youtube videos.... man, there is huge variations on how people do it... from a few hour brines to 24 hours to 48 hours.... I mixed half parts kosher salt and brown sugar. Grated zests from a lemon and orange along with chopped up dill... it was mixed up with the salt and brown sugar.. Put a large plastic tupperware container large enough for the half sized filets... layed saran wrap on the bottom of tupperware... put a light layer of the brine onto the saran wrap. Laid filet onto brine... then added more brine on the top layer.. folded saran wrap together and left the filet in the brine in the tupperware container with lid on for 24 hrs... Rotated once at the 12 hr mark...

at 24 hrs removed from fridge, rinsed off the brine and pat the salmon dry with paper towels.. Left on a rack in fridge overnight to dry and develop pellicule... Then put on my smoker with smoke generator smoking for approx 3 hrs... Internal cabinet temperature never rose above 70F.

When it was done, I vacuum sealed it and left in fridge overnight to allow smoke to settle.

When I pulled it out of the vacuum seal the next day to try it, firstly, seemed like the smoke did not fully penetrate as there was very little smokiness when I did a smell test. 2nd issue was the meat felt very dry... When I thin sliced it, it was similar in texture to cutting into a light wax. No where close to what I am used to buying at the store bought version where it was light and flexible and looked raw and has tons of smoky flavor.

Could it be due to it being a white chinook? I used apple pellets in a pellet tube as the smoke generator. Seems like I've done everything correctly but I must have messed up big time somewhere... It taste over salty and rubbery. Does not taste at all like what I am used to eating when store bought.

If someone could tell me where I messed up on it would be appreciated. Hopefully I can understand what I did wrong and give it another go.

thanks

 

[fishin solo]

Smoked Lox recipe

Not mine, but the best I've ever had, followed directions to a tee and only change was to add a clump of fresh chopped dill to the wet brine, also used the scaled down version at the bottom as I was only doing 1 fillet and I had more then enough dry and wet to do half a 15lb marble Credit goes...

www.sportfishingbc.com

Use this recipe it’s the best I’ve ever had by far. Better then any store bought or St jeans

 

[tinboatrobb]

I don't see where you put it under a fan to form the pelicule for the smoke to stick to. Also too much salt. I like a 8 to 1 brown sugar to salt ratio. If if has not been frozen, smoke it again. Not a fail, a learning experience. Good luck.

 

[scott craven]

In my opinion a white spring is too oily for a cold smoke.
Reds are a better option.
In fact sockeye are probably the best.

 

[Dogbreath]

In my opinion a white spring is too oily for a cold smoke.

Quite disagree IMNSHO they're just about perfect and there's nothing like chunks of White Spring Lox dipped in Tempura batter & flash fried.

As to the original recipe here there's too much salt, too many stupid ingredients and Alder is the only wood suitable.

Also leave the fish in the fridge for a few days before trying it some Dutchmen of my acquaintance won't touch it before a week is up and their product is excellent.

 

[ChilliSpoons]

Following along for a future trial batch.

 

[cracked_ribs]

Following along for a future trial batch.

X2

 

[Rain City]

Can you do frozen salmon? I do candied with frozen all the time but I feel like that's a little less nitpicky.
I have soooooo much salmon from this season.

 

[the butcher]

I don't see where you put it under a fan to form the pelicule for the smoke to stick to. Also too much salt. I like a 8 to 1 brown sugar to salt ratio. If if has not been frozen, smoke it again. Not a fail, a learning experience. Good luck.

Forming a pellicule can be done in front of fans on racks or in a fridge overnight like I did. The fridge dries out the salmon and does the same thing that fans do.. at least this is what I've learned and been lead to believe..

As for too much salt, yes it was definately too much salt... With my hot smoked salmon I typically do 5 or 6 to 1 ratio of brown sugar to salt but most of the videos that I saw on youtube on cold smoking salmon typically had a 1 to 1 ratio... some kept it in the brine for 48 hrs and one person actually rinsed off the brine at 24 hrs and then reapplied dry brine and put it back in fridge for another 24 hours before he rinsed it off so in effect he did 2 x 24hr dry brines on the same piece of fish.... So I went what I had thought was conservative at 24 hrs... It was too salty and the salt pulled away too much moisture since the filet sliced like I was slicing through cheese or wax.

 

[the butcher]

Can you do frozen salmon? I do candied with frozen all the time but I feel like that's a little less nitpicky.
I have soooooo much salmon from this season.

I didn't do fresh salmon because I thought you should always freeze first, especially if you cold smoke, since you aren't getting the temps high enough to kill off worms and parasites... But some of the videos I saw showed fresh salmon so I don't know the answer to whether it should be fresh or frozen.

 

[Brian Reiber]

Maybe reach out to Chasin' Dreams. That guy is next level. I know he has posted up some beauty lox before.

 

[Bugs]

In my opinion a white spring is too oily for a cold smoke.
Reds are a better option.
In fact sockeye are probably the best.

Perhaps a matter of taste Scott. Myself/family/fishing friends love white spring cold smoke. I actively select my whites for cold smoking (which I get done commercially).

 

[scott craven]

Yup, each to their own.
JMHO

 

[Chasin' Dreams]

Thank you for the shout out @Brian Reiber There have been so many great hot and cold smoked recipes on this forum from a lot of members over the years. When I want to experiment with recipes a lot of times I'll do searches on the forum to see what guys have done with their recipes and go from there. We all have our own likes and dislikes with different ingredients so sometimes looking at several recipes can help with coming up new ones or just tweaking one a bit to make it more suited to my own flavors I like or my family likes.


I've tried so many different ways to do lox and there are lot's of good ways that have produced a great product in my opinion. I've done just dry brine, dry and wet, all kinds of different ratio's of salt to sugar etc and I myself no longer wet brine mine. I only dry brine but the ratio of sugar to salt, length of time brining, amount of rinsing/soaking after etc all come into play big time with how good of a product it will produce. And that all depends too on how thick/big of a fish you are doing cause a thicker fillet will need more time brining and rinsing/soaking than a thin fillet will. If you are going to only dry brine I suggest you use more sugar than salt and in some cases a lot more sugar than salt or you will get too dry of a product if you use too much salt in relation to the sugar. And if you got it too salty you can soak some of that overly salty flavor out. Personally I like mine to be a touch sweet/citrus flavor with some smoke.

Too much smoke in my opinion can quickly ruin Lox too. You want the taste of the fish to stand out more than anything with the other ingredients to just compliment the fish but not over power it and same with the smoke. I have never really got as good a pelicle on my fish by only putting it in a fridge. I always put it out in open air with oscillating fans on it from a distance. Not too powerful of air movement though or you will get an uneven crusty type of pelicle. If you got too dry and too firm of fish you used too much salt and brined for too long without soaking afterwards. Soaking isn't always necessary though but after you do a bunch of runs at lox you will be able to tell what's going on with the fish's meat/texture during the brine and after the brine to see if things went correctly. And always good to try some of it to sample your flavors. You can even adjust flavors after a brine by re brining (way less salt second time) with corrective flavors. A quick wet brine after a dry brine to enhance flavors can kick things up too. So much of it depends on what flavor you are after.

I also use white and brown sugar together. I think it gives a real nice texture and glossiness to the meat over straight brown, or straight white sugar. If you think you didn't get enough smoke flavor then use a more smokey flavored wood than apple.

I've done white springs as well and it can turn out super delicious if the fish isn't too huge and fatty. A 10 to 15 lb ocean fresh white is killer for lox in my opinion. Some of the best I've ever had was from an old commercial fisherman friend of our family's that made a smaller white with his lox recipe. He never gave up the recipe unfortunately and honestly It's still better than any I've made yet but the things that stood out the most to me about it was the fresh natural fish flavor with only very slight addition of complementary flavors from other ingredients.

 

[carpeweekend]

Smoked Lox recipe

Not mine, but the best I've ever had, followed directions to a tee and only change was to add a clump of fresh chopped dill to the wet brine, also used the scaled down version at the bottom as I was only doing 1 fillet and I had more then enough dry and wet to do half a 15lb marble Credit goes...

www.sportfishingbc.com

Use this recipe it’s the best I’ve ever had by far. Better then any store bought or St jeans

X2. I followed this recipe closely and the results were incredible.