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Smoked Hawaiian salmon

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welshrarebit

welshrarebit

Master of the Pit
Original poster
Feb 20, 2014
1,708
106
Kona, Hawaii
We have a fish here we call a Hawaiian salmon. One of our charters caught one, along with a mahi mahi, and wanted their picture taken with it but didn't want to eat it. So, I'll eat it!!! It's also called a rainbow runner.

The mahi went into the fish case but we don't sell rainbow runners...

So I filleted it and put some brown sugar and kosher salt mix to cure it for a couple of days. Then I'll put it under the walkin fan to form a peckacle, a peccipal, a pecapec,.. I'm gonna dry that sucka out!

Then I'll smoke it using pitmaster blend pellets and my amnts.

Any thoughts or suggestions...

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Edit: made the pics bigger. It's a pain to do from the phone!
 
Last edited:
Couple days sounds a bit long, if it's a mild fish for the cure. I usually do eight hours max even for salmon. That's using a 4:1 sugar to salt mix. When I do our rockfish and lingcod I go no longer then 6 hours. Gets to salty otherwise. That's just my two cents.
 
atomicsmoke said:
If cold smoking I suggest putting some weights on the fillets while it cures.
Click to expand...

Hi Atomic, the first thing I thought of when I heard there was another hurricane coming was if you where visiting again! :biggrin:

What does the extra weight do? I done gravlox like that but never smoked fish??? Gravlox means something like grave fish (grave salmon?) because they buried it for a while to cure and that's why you put the weight on to simulate the buried effect.

Yes I'm hoping to cold smoke this fish! It's very similar to a Hamachi and is great as sashimi. So, with a name of Hawaiian salmon I thought I'd try and smoke it just like a salmon...

Thanks for the input I learn something new every day here!
 
dirtsailor2003 said:
Couple days sounds a bit long, if it's a mild fish for the cure. I usually do eight hours max even for salmon. That's using a 4:1 sugar to salt mix. When I do our rockfish and lingcod I go no longer then 6 hours. Gets to salty otherwise. That's just my two cents.
Click to expand...

The first chance I'm gonna get to smoke this is Thursday because of my work schedule. If I get a good fish given to me I will call my wife to come down to pick it up. I tried to do a 4:1 sugar to salt ration but it might be closer to 3.5:1 (a bus pulled up to the fish market and I had to quickly get it done and on; that's why I didn't get a pic of that step).

I figured that if you put the sugar/salt mix on today it'll hold better until Thursday. Tomorrow I will rinse off whatever cure the fish didn't take and hold until Thursday.

Any input on what I should smoke this on? I'm leaning towards the mini with the amnts in the charcoal basket, a block of ice on the lower shelf and the fish on a Qmat on the top shelf. I also have a WSM 22.5, a Weber 22.5 kettle, a COS and a Weber gasser as other options.

P.S. I know your two cents is worth a lot more than that! I've seen your smokes and just a heads up there's a job opening here...

Thumbs Up
 
Welshrarebit said:
Hi Atomic, the first thing I thought of when I heard there was another hurricane coming was if you where visiting again! :biggrin:

What does the extra weight do? I done gravlox like that but never smoked fish??? Gravlox means something like grave fish (grave salmon?) because they buried it for a while to cure and that's why you put the weight on to simulate the buried effect.

Yes I'm hoping to cold smoke this fish! It's very similar to a Hamachi and is great as sashimi. So, with a name of Hawaiian salmon I thought I'd try and smoke it just like a salmon...

Thanks for the input I learn something new every day here!
Click to expand...
Neh...if I ain't there no real hurricane happens.

Exactly...this is how lox (gravlox too) is done. The reason for the weights is to squeeze out moisture since the fish won't be cooked. Otherwise you have to dry it a little longer - and that will change the texture of the outer layer.
 
dirtsailor2003 said:
Couple days sounds a bit long, if it's a mild fish for the cure. I usually do eight hours max even for salmon. That's using a 4:1 sugar to salt mix. When I do our rockfish and lingcod I go no longer then 6 hours. Gets to salty otherwise. That's just my two cents.
Click to expand...
Agreed 100%.  All my smoked Salmon dishes are never brined longer than 6-7 hours which would be for thick filets.  My Jerky and nuggets are brined far less.

Yes, smoked gravlax is wonderful stuff.  You simply make the gravlax as typical then cold smoke it for 2-3 hours.  Yum.
 
Thanks for the all the help and tips!

I started this while I was between jobs so I couldn't do anything anout the curing time. I went into my am job and rinsed off whatever cure wasn't absorbed and wrapped it up so that tomorrow it'll get put under the fan. Then Thursday I'll smoke it.

One of my coworkers took one of the fillets home and ate it last night and said it was incredible.

Here's what it looks like now with about 16 hours of cure...

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I'll be smoking this one soon as well...

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Welshrarebit said:
This winter weather is killing me!!! 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky... So, I have to wait for sunset to get it smoking.

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I'm using my amnts with pitmaster choice pellets and my WSM 22,5. If this doesn't turn out it costed me nothing...

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Click to expand...
We can send some of our wet weather your way, been pouring buckets here the last three days!!!!
 
I smoked it for between two and three hours. I got the amnts going and then had to pick up my daughter from the high school carpool and when I got back the tube went out. That has never happened before!!! Anyway, relit it and the next two hours were TBS heaven.

The pitmaster choice pellets smelled just like coffee wood?!? After smoking I wrapped it up to rest over night and sampled some this morning...

I cut out the blood line and it passed the dog test.

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Then I sliced some up and put on a cracker with cream cheese, some maui onions and capers...

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It passed the daughter test as well! In fact she's bugging me that she wants more...

If any flies try and get some I'm gonna whack em with my super high tech rubbah slippah fly swattah...

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