This is my second attempt at smoked salmon. Used wild Alaskan sockeye from Costco again. This time I brined them longer (14 hrs) and put more ingredients in the brine (peppercorns, garlic powder, bay leaf, in addition to the salt and sugar). I stuck them in front of a fan for 2 hours to help for the pellicle and they were in the fridge for 22 hours before smoking. Much better pellicle this time. My only complaint is the pellicle isn't forming deep down in the center of the fillets, as you can see in the pics. Not sure what I can do about that other than to give them even more time in the fridge. These fillets ended up being much more moist and flavorful than my first batch. The fillets were from the same bag of frozen fillets so it had to have been the longer better brine and better pellicle. Smoked them with alder and small small piece of cherry in my Smokin in #1 electric smoker.
Sadly, your salmon started out at a disadvantage. Those breaks down into the flesh are from abuse that happened early in the catching/processing of the salmon, likely in the net-picking.
When animals die the muscles stiffen as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) depletes. ATP you may remember from biology is how the body does almost everything from storing energy, to moving molecules against concentration gradients, to powering metabolic reactions. It is pretty powerful stuff at many different levels.
As ATP depletes the muscles contract and flesh becomes "hard", joints stiffen.
It takes a while for fish to stiffen but when they do they must be left alone until they relax. When fishing is slow on a set-net site the salmon may remain in the net long enough to stiffen before the net is tended and fish removed. When those stiff fish are bent in the net it oftens creates problems "shaking them" out of the net. That bending that happens breaks the muscle connections in the flesh. The worse the abuse the worse the breaks.
Of course this is only one example of the many ways the fish could have been abused, but abused it was, and during the rigor mortis phase. I would have a discussion with the Costco fish monger about it... and I would be shocked if they did not replace the fish...
Brining for 14 hours is WAY out there by commercial standards... It is nearly impossible to have standard strength brines and end up with anything much short of a saltlick after 14 hours. I use 90 minutes and that is very common in commercial operations, brine salinity dependent... Extra flavorings seldom make a difference the average taster can even find. I guarantee longer brine times are NOT an advantage in making better smoked fish.
Dry brines are not magic. They work but they are far less controlable and erratic. When they are at their best they are EXACTLY like a wet brine. At their worst they are great at ruining batches of fish. I used dry brines exclusively for years and smoked literally tons of fish that way. It has been at least 15 years since I used a dry rub and I will likely never do it again as there is absolutely no advantage.
There is no way you can form a proper pellicle if the broken sides are flopping against one another down inside the flesh. The pellicle is a seal on the outside of the fish and impossible to make continuous if the fish is kept in discrete units. The breaks also created strange thickness units, and increased surface area. Compounding this by enclosing in a refrigerator with miniimal air movement/exchange is counterproductive to good pellicle formation. Get lots of dry air moving past your fish and watch the pellicle form. More refrigerator time is exactly the opposite of where you want to go, IMO&E.
There is nothing in pellicle formation about "drawing proteins to the surface" because the proteins are already there... It is about evaporating a little surface moisture to form a seal or "crust" to help reduce moisture loss. It is not about making the smoke stick to the flesh, either, but rather, it is about not having the moisture running out of the fish and washing the smoke away.
Then there is the obvious... your fish got too hot, too soon and you cooked off some fats and proteins. With sockeye that takes hotter than 145F IT. That moisture lost is not extracelluar water either, but rather water that was part of structural units holding the fish together. Your temperature probe calibration is suspect...
We like jerky because we can chew on it for a while and the stuff will slowly rehydrate and make a good textural experience possible. If you make jerky from dried meat the chewing will only make for a more "cardboardy" texture because the basic chemistry will have changed in the cooking process. If you break open smoked fish and find white freckles between the flakes of meat the moisture has been lost in the meat itself, not just from around the cells.
You do not make better jerky by increasing the temperature. You do not make better jerky by cooking the water out of it, or getting it hotter.
The same goes with salmon. This is NOT about preserving the salmon, just cooking it. If you want to keep it you need to freeze it.
Alder and cherry is a great choice for smoking salmon and my usual starting point with sockeye.
I also strongly disagree with the notion of resting smoked salmon and the math is extremely easy to show it is absurd to think you will get an appreciable rise in IT from resting when reasonable smoker temps are used.
