Smoked Pike got a little salty?

[NoobNoob]

the family and I are taking a trip for the weekend to celebrate my mother-in-laws birthday. She doesn’t really know that, but that’s what we’re doing lol. I was told to “smoke something” for the trip and decided since she’s a wine and cheese fan that maybe a good compliment would be smoked fish. I personally can not stand the flavor of salmon, I don’t know why, I’ve been a fisherman all my life, just doesn’t strike me. So instead I smoked some pike which I do enjoy. Milder, I don’t know. At any rate I did a liquid brine and really thought I hit a home run with it. It was basically 2 quarts of water, half cup of salt, half cup of brown sugar, a splash of soy, probably a tbsp if I had to guess and bout the same Worcestershire. Also added ginger, garlic, and that’s about it. I brined the fish in a gallon bag in the fridge for about 24hrs. Took it out this afternoon, rinsed good, slime all washed away and let dry on a rack in the fridge while I got the smoker going. I went old school Mr. Smoker charcoal on this one, no electric with cherry wood. It turned out great flavor wise, but it just seems to be salty. I don’t eat a lot of smoked fish, so I guess I’m not sure how salty it should be. It’s not like licking salt salty, but I definitely wouldn’t flavor my dinner with what I’m tasting out of it. Couple of pics to show the product. It really is tasty and it does taste less salty now that it’s cooled oddly enough.

 

[tallbm]

HI there and welcome!

I think you have the right approach but went too hard on the salt and too long with that brine.

On fish like that you probably want to do a 1% wet/equilibrium brine. Someone will correct me if I misstate this, but for a 1% brine add up the weight of your fish and the weight of the water. Take 1% of that weight (multiply by 0.01) and that is how much salt you dissolve into the water.
Then brine away! :)

As you can see a 1/2 cup of salt was a bit too much and higher than 1% of the water and fish weight combined. For chicken or porkchops you may want to do a 2% brine.

Here is a calculator that can help just be sure to adjust the slider to 1% and not use the 5% default it starts with.
https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/saltbrinecalculator.html

I hope this info helps! :)

 

[NoobNoob]

So a bunch of recipes online use the same salt/sugar/water ratio that I used. But they either don’t specify brine time, or they’re around 8 hours. I’d really like to keep the 24hr brine time just because it’s easier to schedule. If I just lessen the salt amount from a half to a third will that make a big enough difference? Can I keep the amount of be sugar the same in that case?

 

[daveomak]

Weigh the fish and the water you want to use.. For the water, I recommend 50% the weight of the fish.... Add ~1.5% salt and 1.5-3% sugar.. I would also add 0.25% cure#1 to take care of any botulism that may happen... The cure#1 has not affected the taste of any fish I have done... Then you can brine for 2-3 days, in the refer at <39F, no problem...

 

[tallbm]

So a bunch of recipes online use the same salt/sugar/water ratio that I used. But they either don’t specify brine time, or they’re around 8 hours. I’d really like to keep the 24hr brine time just because it’s easier to schedule. If I just lessen the salt amount from a half to a third will that make a big enough difference? Can I keep the amount of be sugar the same in that case?

Dave has you well covered, he's a pro at this stuff.

Be sure to understand what is happening with a 1% equilibrium brine (or any % for that matter).

What is happening is that you combine the weight of the meat and the water and calculate what 1% of the weight of all that material is. Then you add that much salt.
What happens next is that the salt should pretty much even out at 1% of all of that material over time. Roughly speaking, you will end up with the same amount of salt in the meat as you have in the water and it is a repeatable process over basically any extended period of time.
I think the recipe you had was trying to rush the process along. This results in saltier food the longer you brine it because of the measurements to rush things along. It's best to just get the measurements correct and take your 24hrs to brine and know u are good at 24hrs and at 36 hrs or a 100 hrs (don't do 100hrs without cure#1 lol).

The recipes you looked up online may not take any of this into consideration. A good recipe will tell you how much meat and water to use if brining and time that works with those amounts, but many recipes online are poor or lacking in info.
It's best to understand how to calculate it and then you can rock and roll from then on :)

I hope this info helps!

 

[NoobNoob]

Well, we had it on the vacation and it got pretty rave reviews. It wasn't near as salty as I thought it was straight from the smoker. Either that or it just went well with the beer I was drinking. I will, however use the 1% weight ratio from now on. I have a digital scale so it shouldn't be all that difficult. And 1% is easy to remember. Thanks everybody!