From Candied Salmon To Salmon Jerky
My mechanic, Mike, gave me some beautiful fresh frozen BC Coho salmon fillets. I decided to return the favor by making some candied salmon and giving him half.
I started out by removing all the small bones, pulling them out one at a time with a pair of Miss Linda’s tweezers. As you can probably imagine, that was a lot of fun. The salmon was then cut into chunks, skin on.
Next came the brine. My Little Brother, who lives on Vancouver Island, smokes some killer salmon, so I asked him for his brine recipe. It’s a really simple recipe—2 pounds of demerara sugar and 5/8 cup kosher salt.
Once the dry brine was mixed up I layered the salmon in a large bowl with brine between each layer. Then it was into the fridge for the night. By the time morning came, the salt had extracted a large amount of liquid from the salmon, basically changing it from a dry brine to a wet brine.
I drained off the brine and debated rinsing the salmon chunks, but decided not to—I wanted to keep as much sugar on the pieces as possible. The salmon pieces were then laid out on two racks, each fitted with a Frog Mat to help keep all the salmon ON the racks while smoking.
After arranging the two racks on the very fashionable bright orange plastic picnic table cloth, I let the salmon sit in front of the fan for 3 hours to develop a pellicle.
Then it was into the MES 30 at 100 degrees, the AMNPS happily smoking away with a full load of orange pellets (didn’t have any alder). After one hour, I bumped the temperature up to 200 degrees for the rest of the smoke. After checking the IT of several of the larger pieces on both racks, I pulled the salmon out of the MES at 145 degrees.
Taking the candied salmon into the kitchen to cool before vac sealing, I was almost hopping around in anticipation. Finally unable to control myself any longer, I tried a piece. IT WAS DISGUSTING!!! The salmon was so salty that even I, who consider salt a food group, couldn’t eat it. I was NOT a happy camper. It was SO salty that I couldn’t even feed it to Roxy as a treat for fear of killing her.
I quickly put the salmon into the fridge for the night, before I did something rash—like throw it all in the garbage—and left it there for two days while I decided just what to do with it Finally I decided that, since I had nothing to lose, I would soak all the candied salmon in ice water for 2 hours, changing the water every 20 minutes. A taste test revealed that ALL the salt had been removed, along with the sugar. The test sample pretty much tasted like what it was—dried fish.
The salmon chunks went back on the racks, back on the orange table cloth. This time, since they were pretty wet, I left them sit in front of the fan for 4 hours to dry.
So, it was back outside to preheat the MES to 100 degrees. Same procedure as before, but this time I left the salmon pieces in the smoker for 4 ½ hours. I filled the AMNPS with orange pellets again and, since there was no sugar or spice in the salmon this time, lit both ends to make the pieces extra smoky.
When I felt it was done, I took the salmon inside and brushed each still warm piece liberally with diluted honey (2 parts honey to 1 part warm water).
I took small nibble of one piece. It was delicious, with a nice chewy texture, a hint of sweetness from the honey and lots of smoke flavor and aroma.
When I took Mike his share of the vac/sealed salmon I explained what had happened. As it turned out, thankfully both Mike and his kids loved it.
So that’s how Candied Salmon became Salmon Jerky.
Thanks for looking.
Gary
