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If from the title your perception was that I, the innocent one had begun smoking cigarettes then you are absolutely wrong! I’ve actually just started smoking meats and am kinda getting the hang of it with fish as the lazy Sunday began with me and WK prepping the smoker for the earlier cured fillet of Norwegian Salmon. Exquisite!
I’ve always been a curious cat in the kitchen. From discovering Espumas, to the use of different acids to coagulate soy milk, to simply trying to replicate a simple cendol recipe. But I never mentioned that they all worked. Even so, today we took on a challenge that was going to prove harder to replicate than it is to talk about.
We began with the coal box and smoke pouch. The coal thankfully was of high grade and started with no problems, you can get it for RM10 a kilo at BBQ King in Ikano. Figuring out the science to ensuring smoke, and not heat is what the salmon will get took us a good 10 minutes. After setting up the box with the strategic holes (you like wan) to ensure the heat isn’t too intense, we made the smoke pouch. For this fish, we chose a simple bag of Mesquite wood chips available from Ace Hardware for only RM10.90 a bag and should get you smoking for a good half a year if you’re even that active. It is important that you soak some wood chips 30 minutes prior to the smoking process to give the smoking procedure some momentum. Wet wood chips smoke more and give more flavour.
After a good 2 hours, we were greeted with a meaty smoke scent that was already filling up the air until upstairs. A good sign that the fish is done.
Certainly was! The flavour of smoke would have been more obvious if we had controlled the coal more and let it sit for an extra hour or two, but I can’t be more satisfied for a first attempt. The meaty aroma and salty flavour gave the salmon so much more body. Even though it’s rather flaky it was very succulent, perfect timing for this amount of heat. My overall opinion? Not going to be my last time smoking meats!
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