Today we will smoke fish without foil and without a smokehouse, using only smoke and heat from the fire and available materials. There is no need to peel the scales; you can put garlic and salt inside. Even if these ingredients are missing, the fish turns out delicious. Since there is no foil, we will smoke on leaves. Pear and alder grow here. Accordingly, we will cook on the leaves of these trees.
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You need quite a lot of leaves. First we put the pear in so that the aroma of the fruit leaves permeates the fish. Let's throw in some alder. When laying fish, you need to take into account the direction of the wind. Larger fish should be placed where it is hot, smaller fish, respectively, where the temperature is lower. Cover the top of the fish with a layer of alder leaves. It always grows on the pond where you fished. Willow leaves are also suitable, but they will be slightly bitter. With fruit leaves you will get a particularly aromatic smoked fish.
You need to wait 15-20 minutes. Make sure the leaves don't catch fire. To prevent this from happening, it is advisable to have an armful of leaves in stock.
After 10 minutes the foliage began to burn. You need to add fresh material to block access to oxygen.
DIY electronics in a Chinese store.
How to smoke fish
If you have paid attention to smoked meat counters in stores, then you probably know that there is hot and cold smoked fish. Each of them has its own unique taste. In addition, these varieties differ in terms of shelf life. For example, a cold smoked product is stored much longer and deteriorates more slowly than a hot smoked product. Each taste has its fans, so it is impossible to say for sure that one of them is worse or better than the other.
We smoke fish at home
Hot smoked fish is prepared quite quickly - it is processed with hot smoke (the temperature of which can start from 45 degrees Celsius and reach 150 degrees) for a maximum of a couple of hours. This method can be called the least expensive and much easier. It’s easy to repeat even on your own—buying the necessary equipment won’t be difficult. Cold smoked fish, as a rule, costs much more. And this is justified - there is much more hassle in the process of preparing it. Thus, the smoke temperature during smoking should not exceed 50 degrees Celsius, and this requires special culinary equipment. In this case, the cooking time can stretch even for several days. In short, if you are a beginner and don’t know how to smoke fish at home, then this option is definitely not suitable for you.
How to salt and prepare fish for smoking
First, the fish must be caught yourself (just kidding...). If we are talking about fresh fish, of course it should be gutted and washed. If we buy fish in a supermarket, it will already be a finished product and we won’t have to bother with gutting it. Be sure to buy only chilled fish, not frozen.
Rules for determining fish freshness
- The fish's eyes should be clear (like those of a teetotaler...), and not cloudy.
- The gills have a bright red tint.
- The scales fit tightly to the body.
- When you press on the pulp, it quickly recovers.
- And of course, the smell. It should be pleasant (although the smell of fish...).
All! Caught or bought, prepared. Let's begin the smoking process itself.
There is such a nuance here. I will talk about smoking recipes with pre-salting. Of course, when fishing, when in the evening you already want to try smoked “fresh” food, everything is prepared without prior salting. Although if you spend two or three days fishing with bait, and enough fish are caught, of course you can’t do without processing. And when the fish is well salted, it turns out much tastier.
What types are suitable
Of course, before smoking it is important to choose the right fish. It's not difficult at all. Almost any one will do - it all depends on your preferences and the “richness” of the catch. The only criterion you should pay attention to is the density of the meat and scales. Otherwise, you risk getting unimpressive porridge instead of a delicious dish. Of course, how long to cook the fish will also differ depending on what raw materials you use.
Baked pike perch
What specific types are definitely suitable? For example, if you caught fauna such as perch, pike perch, eel, bream, burbot or ide, feel free to harvest them in this way. Want to cook sea creatures? Don't hesitate to buy mackerel, capelin, cod, halibut or sea bass.
Allcafe recommends. Frozen fish is also quite suitable for smoking. Remove it from the freezer and place it in a cup of hot water. As soon as the fluid temperature drops below 20 degrees, change it. You can also defrost in air, at room temperature.
Smoking preparation and ingredients
Everyone who has one probably understands how to smoke perch in a smokehouse. Therefore, I would like to tell you in more detail how to smoke perch on a grill, because almost no picnic is complete without it. And in a private home, this device is definitely available, unlike a smokehouse. And in order for the dish to be tasty and have an appetizing crust, you need to know how much to smoke the perch.
- 2 medium fish.
- 3 teaspoons soy sauce.
- a teaspoon of lemon juice.
- a teaspoon of olive oil.
- grill
- grate.
- firewood.
- chips of fruit trees (you can prepare it yourself or purchase it in a store).
- container (pan, bowl).
Method using a smokehouse
If you are sure that you will resort to this method of preparing your catch more than once, the editors of Allcafe advise you to purchase a special device - a smokehouse. Typically, this is a stainless steel device with grates and a tight-fitting lid that is placed on top of the fuel. The latter uses natural wood chips. Alder, juniper or branches of fruit trees are best suited.
Smokehouse for fish
How to smoke fish in a smokehouse? In fact, there is nothing tricky about this. You should start by preparing the raw materials: thoroughly rinse and gut the carcasses. This process can be neglected, but then be prepared for the fact that fish cooked with giblets will become bitter. Then you need to carefully salt the product. It is best to soak large specimens in a concentrated salt solution for about two hours; for very small ones, an hour will be enough. By the way, at this same stage you can add spices to taste. But do not overdo it with them, so as not to “clog” the already rich taste.
There is nothing more banal and elementary than how to smoke fish in a smokehouse. Coat the grill of the smoking device with sunflower oil and place the fish on it in one layer. The pieces should not touch each other or overlap one another. Close the smoker tightly and place it over a fire or grill. How long to cook fish depends on the size and quantity of raw materials. As a rule, 40-60 minutes are enough. Then remove the equipment from the heat and cool without opening. It is advisable to eat the finished dish within three days, and it should be stored exclusively in the refrigerator. But don’t worry - this delicious delicacy won’t stay in your house for long.
How long to keep fish on the fire when smoking?
First, the smokehouse needs to warm up. When this happens, the wood chips will begin to smoke and you will see white smoke that will certainly appear from the smokehouse. This kind of smoke comes from alder chips.
After warming up the smokehouse, all wood that is still burning is removed.
Further, it is best to smoke fish only on coals. If the fish in your smokehouse is medium, then it needs 30 or 40 minutes to cook. But here the time is determined by the strength of the fire itself, the size of the smokehouse and how many fish are in it.
Be sure to ensure that the smokehouse heats up moderately, that is, without overheating. The temperature inside the smokehouse should not be too high. This is especially important when starting the smoking process. This process consists of 2 stages.
The first of them is drying (about 1/4 of the time), and the second is the direct effect of smoke on the fish, that is, smoking, which takes the remaining time.
It is quite possible to determine what temperature is inside the smokehouse itself. This is done very simply.
When you drop water onto the lid and it completely evaporates without hissing, it means that your fish is smoked according to the rules and will not be cooked. So regulate the temperature by turning down or turning up the heat on your fire pit or grill.
Open the smokehouse only after it has completely cooled down and when no more smoke comes out of it. Now you need to inspect the fish. Well-smoked fish should be dark golden in color, sometimes even with a reddish tint. But a very light fish is most likely still damp.
How to smoke fish on the grill
Anyone can cook fish on the grill - it won't be difficult. This dish will be an excellent alternative to the meat kebabs that are boring during the long May holidays. And to prepare it you will not need to buy any additional units. The most delicious option is to smoke the fish on the grill in foil. By the way, it is also considered the most useful.
Trout cooked on the grill
Clean the carcass from scales and entrails, rub thoroughly with a mixture of coarse salt and lemon juice. Place each fish on a separate piece of foil, if desired, sprinkle with chopped herbs for flavor (thyme, parsley, basil or dill are great). Wrap the product tightly, secure so that the packages do not unwind. Arrange the pieces on the grill and place over the smoldering coals. Cooking fish on the grill in foil should take no longer than half an hour.
Allcafe knows the secret. Try to choose carcasses of the same size for smoking - then they will cook evenly. And do not place the product over an open flame, otherwise it will simply burn.
How much and how to salt fish?
Fish must be salted before smoking. It's best to do this 2 or 3 hours before you put it in the smoker. But, if you don’t plan to store it after smoking, but eat it right away, then you can salt it right there. That is, they rubbed it with salt, and then sent it to the smokehouse. There is no need to keep it in salt.
If you want to eat it later, then it’s better to salt the fish, because you can always rinse it to remove excess salt. This is exactly what they do before the very process of smoking it.
In addition to salt (this is a mandatory component), before storing the fish, they usually pepper it, and also add various spices and some herbs that go well with fish.
Try not to overwhelm the taste of the fish with spices.
Smoked fish with marinade
If you want to make the taste even more refined, prepare a fish marinade. This way the finished dish will be much more tender and juicy. In addition, the product prepared in this way will be stored slightly longer. For soaking, instead of a saline solution, a special mixture is taken with the addition of herbs and spices. Alcohol, kefir or even natural fragrant honey are also often used.
Smoked fish with marinade
A classic fish marinade is a win-win option for every taste. To prepare it, add 70 grams of table salt, 30 grams of granulated sugar, 10 black and allspice peas and several bay leaves to two liters of water. It is also worth adding aromatic dried herbs - dill, parsley and basil. Boil the mixture for five minutes. Soak the carcasses in the resulting solution, and then cook in any convenient and pleasant way. Marinated fish will pleasantly surprise you and allow you to “take a break” from the boring taste for a while.
Choosing a smokehouse for smoking fish
A smokehouse is a metal box with a tray, grate and lid.
The place of preparation plays an important role. For outdoor recreation (fishing, picnic), compact camping (field) smokehouses are provided, which take up little space during transportation. As an option, a smokehouse is dug in the ground: a niche is dug in the coastal cliff, and sticks with fish are attached above it. Near your dacha or home, it is convenient to use a portable smokehouse mounted on a grill. If smoked delicacies are prepared frequently, a stationary smokehouse is built on the site. The fixed structure on the foundation is suitable for preparing smoked products in large quantities. At home, apartments use smokehouses with a water seal to prevent smoke from entering the room.
Grilling option
Are you the proud owner of a special device for your home barbecue? Then you definitely need to try grilling fish! There are a lot of recipes for this dish. To begin with, the editors advise choosing the simplest (but no less tasty) traditional option.
Grilled fish
Soak the grill wood chips for about an hour. Preheat the grill to 135 degrees, install a special grill. Clean the fish and rub it well with a mixture of pepper and salt. Place the prepared wood chips on the hot coals and place the fish. Place a sprig of fresh rosemary on top of each carcass. Close the device lid tightly. The dish will be ready in about 30-40 minutes. But you should not leave the device unattended - every 8-10 minutes you need to add a little more wood chips.
Serve immediately, while the deliciousness is still warm. Now you see that there is nothing easier than grilling fish. There are many recipes, but almost all of them are based on this classic method.
Advice from Allcafe. To soak the wood chips, you can use beer or wine instead of water (exclusively dry wine, both white and red, is suitable). This will give the dish additional piquancy and seductive aroma.
Which fish to choose for smoking
Fish smoked at home has an appetizing aroma and improved taste.
When processed by incomplete combustion of wood, the entire composition of beneficial vitamins and minerals is preserved. The choice of smoked fish depends on its size, “production volume” and density. Culinary experts advise choosing fish products depending on the recipe and smoking method:
Cold
: salmon, chum salmon, mullet, omul.
Hot
: pike perch, perch, pink salmon, hake, pollock.
All methods:
herring, mackerel, sturgeon, pink salmon.
For cooking at home, fresh and frozen carcasses of relatively the same size are used.
About smoked fish recipes
Bitter taste, unpleasant odor, soot are the consequences of improper selection of fuel with a high tar content.
Firewood, sawdust and wood chips are prepared. Deciduous (alder, poplar, willow, oak) and fruit (apple, plum, cherry) trees are suitable. They can be combined. When preparing smoked fatty species (halibut, mackerel, mullet), it is recommended to use acacia branches for a sharp taste. There are two types of salting: Dry
.
According to the recipe, the carcasses are sprinkled with coarse salt and stacked in rows (for better soaking, head to tail). A pressure is placed on top to remove excess liquid. If the fish is too large, a cut is made on the back. Wet
(marinating). Fill with brine (water, salt, spices - according to the recipe) for several days. Becomes hard and dense. Next it is soaked.
What fish is ideal for smoking?
Since the smoking process itself is very complicated, it is necessary to prepare for it. To do this, first of all, you need to decide on the fish. In this case, no special restrictions are expected.
Professionals boldly claim that even pike, especially large-sized catfish and burbot are suitable for this process. Whereas beginners should choose something simpler, for example, small carcasses of pike perch, herring, sterlet, cod or flounder.
Moreover, even perch and crucian carp can be smoked. But you should still give preference to fatty types. They turn out much tastier. Remember! If you are not a pro in this matter, you should not smoke eel. Because improper preparation of this product can make it dangerous to human life.
Smoking process
The cleanliness of the smokehouse also deserves attention. In this case, it must be absolutely clean so that the fish has a pleasant aroma of wood chips and herbs, and not soot.
During the hot smoking process, chips of the same size are placed on the bottom of the structure. Otherwise, the thinnest elements will quickly burn and ignite, causing thicker ones to burn. Therefore, the fish will not be smoked, but will simply burn.
With the help of special coals and wood chips you can seriously simplify the process. To do this, the smokehouse is heated up for half an hour and a grate with meat is placed on it. After which everything is hermetically sealed with a lid. The start of smoking is the time when the first smoke appears.
If you plan to cook quite fatty fish, the fat will flow to the bottom of the smokehouse and dry out. It will have to be scraped off with a scraper later. To avoid the last moment, you can place foil on the surface of the bottom of the smokehouse. And then just remove it, and the bottom will be clean.
Please note that at this moment the carcasses are located separately from each other on the grill. Because otherwise they will stick together. Closing the lid tightly will eliminate the possibility of oxygen getting inside. And this guarantees that the wood will not catch fire. Naturally, ideal tightness cannot be achieved in this case. But minimal air ingress can be avoided.
The smoking process itself is divided into two stages:
- The first involves drying the carcasses and takes about a quarter of the total time. In this case, the temperature in the smokehouse is between +80–90 °C.
- While the second, the direct smoking process, takes all the remaining time at a temperature not lower than +120 °C.
There is a little secret to determine the cooking temperature of meat using this method at home. If you drop some water on the lid and it doesn’t boil, but just hisses, then everything is going correctly. Otherwise, the product will simply cook.
To adjust the temperature you need to increase or decrease the number of wood chips or branches in the fire. The duration of this process is directly dependent on the size of the smokehouse, the strength of the fire and the amount of meat. Medium-sized fish is smoked for about half an hour.
Such a product, after a properly carried out smoking process, has a golden-bronze hue without traces of soot. Its pulp is easily separated from the skin and bones, being well baked and crumbly. If the smoking process was incorrect, the meat of such fish will be bitter and viscous. When the fish just falls apart in your hands and fat runs out of it, it means that the carcass was overexposed in the smokehouse.
Preparing the fish
The preparation of carcasses for smoking is as follows:
- First you need to get rid of the insides of the fish.
- Next, the carcasses are salted.
- And at the final stage of preparation, the fish is washed from salt in clean water and hung to dry. Only then can you grease it with sunflower oil on top.
Gutting
Naturally, you can greatly simplify your life and purchase a ready-made butchered carcass in the store, but it is better to do it yourself. Because it is in this case that you can be absolutely sure that there are no entrails or large seeds in it.
Although some fishermen do not cut fish at all, claiming that this is the only way to leave a bitter aftertaste to the product. Namely, this is how it suits a foamy drink. But if you decide to do everything right, then cutting is mandatory.
If the carcass is small, around 0.5-0.7 kg, you may not need to gut it. Since there will be no special taste differences. Larger specimens are cut up, removing all large bones except the spine, entrails and brown hymen. The head and scales always remain. Because they are the ones who will prevent soot from getting on the meat. If desired, the gutted carcass is sewn together. For the same purpose - to prevent dirt from getting in.
Trophy specimens of particularly large sizes are cut in half along the ridge so that part of the head and tail remain. If you can’t fit everything into the smokehouse, then you can divide the half into two more parts.
Salting
Salting is used to preliminary eliminate all dangerous and harmful microorganisms from carcasses before smoking. In the case when this is done in pieces, you can simply rub the meat with salt and herbs and leave for several hours.
When it is intended to salt whole carcasses, it is necessary to approach the issue more thoroughly. First, it is recommended to start preparing the saline solution. To do this, you need to pour 0.08 kg of salt into one liter of water.
Practice shows that for every kilogram of product you need about 1.5 liters of salting. This method is ideal for pickling at home. Moreover, the meat is infused in this case for twelve hours.
If necessary, when you want to smoke meat directly while fishing, it is recommended to create a solution according to a different recipe. So, for one liter of water, preferably slightly heated, you are recommended to use 0.3 kg of salt.
The meat is infused for about three hours. Before placing the fish, it is recommended to rub it with coarse black pepper, spices and herbs at your discretion.
During the hot smoking process, it is strictly prohibited to do the following:
- leave a large flame for a long time;
- lay out carcasses of different sizes;
- lift the lid before the smoke starts;
- open the structure until the meat is completely cooked;
- spray the smokehouse with water.
If you don’t do all this, you will definitely succeed!
Cold smoking
If you want to cook smoked fish that will be stored for a long time, you should give preference to the cold cooking method. Plus, you can get rid of high concentrations of carcinogens and various harmful impurities.
But in this case, it is necessary to prepare a special place, for example, a bathhouse, a barn or another room. The smoking process itself is not much different from the hot method. But the carcasses are not placed on the grilles, but are hung upside down by their tails.
Small fish are treated with smoke for two days. Whereas larger specimens last a whole week. After this time, the fish continues to hang in the room for a couple of days. Then the meat becomes dense and slightly tart.
Hot smoking
This is the most common option because it takes the least time. For example, about half an hour or a little more. It all depends on the size of the carcasses. When the fish has acquired a golden brown hue, it can be safely eaten.
Moreover, it is worth remembering that the beginning of smoking is considered from the appearance of the first haze. Fish prepared by hot smoking cannot be stored outside the refrigerator for three days.
