Hi all - so I tried cold smoking salmon for mother’s day today and it turned out... unexpected. I did roughly 24 hours of dry brine, 2 tsp of salt/sugar mix for every pound of salmon. After that did a quick rinse and popped it back in the fridge for about 10 hours for pellicle formation. After that I smoked it in my Weber charcoal grill for about 12 hours.
The end product was way too dry - wasn’t quite jerky but it felt half way there vs the good smoked salmon I’ve hard (admittedly it was from Russ and daughters...). The interior parts were a little moist but the exterior parts were not. I’m not sure whether it tasted like that because it was dry or because it was a little cooked from the smoking pellets. I should’ve taken the temp inside the smoker but i put the salmon in at around midnight and just went straight to bed.
Any thoughts on what could’ve gone wrong? I would love to learn how to smoke salmon at home as we all love it and don’t want to pay 40 bucks a lb for the good stuff!!
The end product was way too dry - wasn’t quite jerky but it felt half way there vs the good smoked salmon I’ve hard (admittedly it was from Russ and daughters...). The interior parts were a little moist but the exterior parts were not. I’m not sure whether it tasted like that because it was dry or because it was a little cooked from the smoking pellets. I should’ve taken the temp inside the smoker but i put the salmon in at around midnight and just went straight to bed.
Any thoughts on what could’ve gone wrong? I would love to learn how to smoke salmon at home as we all love it and don’t want to pay 40 bucks a lb for the good stuff!!