My favorite maple smoked salmon recipe so far

Thanks for posting this detailed recipe. I'm trying it today. Will let you know the results.

Okay, I used this recipe for my first smoked salmon today - second smoked anything. It came out great - my son, who doesn't like salmon, loved it, so that's saying a lot! Thanks for the great recipe.

For the brine I substituted Sucranat for the sugar. Sucranat is a low-refined sugar that retains the molasses along with the various minerals, vitamins and enzymes that are in the crushed cane liquid which is then slowly dehydrated. The molasses gives it that deeper, richer taste than refined white sugar and I could definitely pick that up in the salmon. I didn't have birch syrup, but my maple syrup worked just fine.

I think in my next batch I will use less salt and not brine it as long as I did, which was 24 hours. Probably 8-12 hours with just 1/4 cup salt to the quarter of water would do it. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't so salty we couldn't eat it, it's just that I could do with less saltiness.

I fan dried it on the dining room table for 2.5 hours to get the magic pellicle. After reading all the comments about pellicle, I figured I'd need a miracle. But it was pretty simple.

I have a Masterbuilt 30 electric smoker and smoked it at 150 for 3 hours, using apple chips along the way. Basted it with half and half of water and maple syrup once every hour. It was 135 when I took it out and I wrapped it in foil and finished it in the oven at 300 for maybe 20 minutes, took it right up to 150 degrees. Came out very moist, just absolutely delicious!

So here are the pictures:

Salmon filets drying via fan


And here's the pellicle.


Ready to eat (you can see where I sampled the bottom one). That was fun!