Rose salmon

Did some cold smoking couple of days ago and thought I'd share. There was this very nice looking rose pepper covered cold smoked salmon in the nearby market. Naturally I decided to make some myself instead of buying...

This fish managed to cause me problems on about every step. First, I failed at scheduling the smoking so it was curing full three days and then spent one day in the after I had washed the cure off. Then when I finally got to smoking the weather decided to be surprisingly sunny instead of rainy so my smoker temps rose above 40C and I had to take the salmon back to the fridge and wait for the night. In the end it ended up getting about 2 hours plus a full CSG load of smoke. (The last time I did 8 and thought I'd give it a bit more this time.)

I also learned that if you want a pretty rose pepper covering on the salmon, you can't wrap it in foil and stick to the fridge. It will not look nice and rosy after a day in fridge. But despite the slightly excessive saltiness, the taste is excellent. Rose comes subtly through and there is just about perfect amount of smoke to my liking.

The moral of the story: even when cold smoking salmon is trouble, it's still easily worth the trouble!




The first target for cold smoked salmon is nice slice of bread with some cream cheese and fresh onion! But this will end up in a pizza as well. What one would really need after salmon smoking is the vacuum packer. Guess I just need to freeze some.



--Jari