Smoking Fish

"Hot Smoking" is a several-hours-long process that can be used to fully cook meats or fish. Barbecuing is a form of hot smoking. Generally, hot-smoking involves holding the food directly above the fire, or in an enclosure that is heated by the fire. The cooking temperature in a hot-smoking environment is usually between 175 and 225 and don't exceed 250 degrees. The temperatures reached in hot smoking can kill microbes throughout the food.

For smoking on a grill, Traeger suggests that you hold the temperature at 185 degrees.

This is the process that most fish/sausage would be smoked at.

You may want to baste some of these pieces but use a basting liquid that does not contain too much sugar because sugar may burn or blacken on the grill.

"Cold Smoking" is an hours-or days-long process in which smoke is passed by food which is held in a separate area from the fire. Generally the food is held at just above room temperatures 60–80°F as it is smoked. Since no cooking takes place, the interior texture of the food generally isn't affected, neither are any microbes living within the meat or fish. For this reason, cold-smoking has traditionally frequently been combined with salt-curing in such foods as hams, bacon and cold-smoked fish like lox or smoked salmon.

A number of wood smoke compounds also act as preservatives. Phenol and other phenolic compounds in wood smoke are both antioxidants, which slow rancidification of animal fats, and antimicrobials, which then slow bacterial growth, but smoke alone is insufficient for actual preserving of food. Use a meat thermometer if you aren't sure and is a good and safe way to make sure it is cooked. The meat thermometers usually indicate the right temperatures for different types of meats.

The main problem is that the smoke compounds adhere only to the outer surfaces of the food, smoke doesn't actually penetrate far into meat or fish. In modern times, almost all smoking is carried out for its flavor, and not for it's preservative qualities anymore like in the older days before refrigeration.

COOKING TEMPERATURES from USDA
Product	Type	Internal Temperature (°F)
Beef & Veal	Ground	160
	Steak and roasts medium	160
	Steak and roasts medium rare	145
Chicken & Turkey	Breasts	165
	Ground, stuffing, and casseroles	165
	Whole bird, legs, thighs, and wings	165
Fish & Shellfish	Any type	145
Lamb	Ground	160
	Steak and roasts medium	160
	Steaks and roasts medium rare	145
Leftovers	Any type	165
Pork	Chops, fresh (raw) ham ground, ribs, and roasts	160
Pork	Fully cooked ham (to reheat)	140

Woods Used for Smoking : Common woods used for smoking that impart a flavor are hickory, mesquite, oak, alder, maple and fruit-tree woods such as apple or cherry are commonly used for smoking. However for mild flavored white meat like fish, alder is my favorite because I have found many of the others can impart a bitter taste to your finished product. And once you pull your bitter meat out, it is very hard to undo this situation.

Use Fresh Fish or Frozen : Those of us that fish probably do not have the time nor the quantity of fish to smoke our fish when it is fresh, but will freeze it and then in the winter when fishing time slows down will retrieve it from the freezer and get busy.

You need to realize that frozen will need to be treated differently in smoking than fresh, because the tiny ice crystals that form when you freeze the fish pierce thru the cells and membranes and helps it take on brine and smoke much better. Only concern is that because it takes on brine faster, be careful with the amount of salt you use or shorten the brine time (what I do) to keep from becoming too salty.

My wife recently went thru our deep freeze while cleaning it out to make room for a beef we had butchered. Wow, did she find things we did not know were there. Some, I hate to say it, but was up to 5 years old. She found some that the vacuum pack had failed and the fish was so locker burned that we used it for coyote bait.

We did put together a box of salvageable slightly locker burned salmon, sea bass and ling cod. I am amazed at what the vacuum packing can do in comparison to the old wrapping method. Some of these pieces required trimming off the edges and removing any of the dried out meat. These probably were not the best meat, but after trimming, the inner meat appeared salvageable, at least enough for me to use to learn on my new Big Chief smoker. The photos below show the differences, as on the right below, show already trimmed fish, and on the left the 2 large pieces of locker burned meat. Where the photo on the right shows the same 2 pieces but after being trimmed.

However be aware, that depending on the degradation of the meat, the end product may not be the highest quality (like being slightly bitter).

If it's bad enough to have freezer burnt meat, and it's been frozen long enough that it's gonna thaw out a bit soft/mushy... very difficult to trim/cut cleanly, even with a sharp fillet knife. Therefore I would recommend trimming this freezer burnt meat while the fish is still partially frozen as it's a lot easier if you do this when the fish was about 1/2 thawed out.

Locker burned fish on the right	Same fish after trimming off the burned meat

Another thing to consider is the quality of the fish. By this, is it ocean or freshwater caught? These fish provide the best when smoked, as compared to those that where you many have connections to a hatchery and have access to spawned out carcasses. The quality of the fish is not there, the meat may not be as firm and the color has deteriorated. Yes you can smoke it, but you will have to perform some magic, using spices, more smoke and maybe even some coloring.

With the advent of modern small smokers has about killed the old time outdoor "outhouse" smokers that were common on about all the farms in my area in the 1930s and up until about 1980. I remember cutting special wood and keeping it separate so it was not burned in the heating stove. For a while dad tried vine maple or crabapple, but finally settled on dry Alder, which he learned from a local commercial smoker. We would get up in the middle of the night at times and then early in the morning to stoke the fire in the smokehouse with new wood. You did not want a large fire but one that just smoldered, so you adjusted the air intake in the bottom.

We used to smoke hams and bacon in the fall of the year after butchering time. We even made polish sausage by the #2 wash tubs full. It took me 5 years trying to get my mother-in-law to come up with a recipe for their sausage. She always said "a couple of hand fulls of salt, some pepper, boil and squeeze a few garlic cloves". I finally after writing down what she put in each year over the years managed to compile a close resemblance of her recipe. We would mix it by hand, squeezing the meats by hand to dissipate the ingredients, then finally when your hands were so tired, fry a sample for a fried taste test. More pepper. More mixing, another test taste. We did find that the salt would later dissolve and dissipate into the meat where the end product become saltier than the fresh fried sample.

I raised sheep for a while and even some of the older ones worked out well when mixed with venison for sausage.

I can not begin to count how many smelt and salmon were smoked in the fall of the year.

Now these small smokers are usually electric, however some are propane. The Luhr Jensen "Little and Big Chief" smokers shown in this article, seem to have revolutionized the average fisherman's desires to smoke fish. We don't have to go out and cut smoking wood anymore, just buy the chips in a bag. One of these bags will fill these chip pans about 7 times. I usually prefer Alder chips which gives a milder flavor for my fish. Hickory chips would be my second choice, but probably better for sausage.

The smoker shown below is the Luhr Jensen Big Chief with a front loading door (they also make a top loader model, but it is harder to access the trays). In the left photo, the thickest pieces here may be 3/4" and are off smaller 8-10# Coho salmon. In the photo on the right, you will see it full of finished Kokanee. These fish were 14" to 16" range and the trays were lacking just one fish of being full with 14 fish in the smoker. For these thinner fish, the smoke / heat time is about half of the larger pieces.

The unsmoked meat just placed on the racks to dry for a couple of hours, with sea bass on the upper racks	Finished smoking Kokanee, ready for testing

Here the Kokanee fillets are about right	Here are results of a 11# Coho salmon

COOKING TEMPERATURES from USDA