Fish cookery is one of my hobbies. I love eating poached, pan-fired, broiled, baked and marinated trout, but really my favorite is smoked trout and salmon. Smoked trout is a delicacy and is rather expensive to buy. So why not learn how to make some more cheaply yourself?
If you have a patio area or balcony suitable for a small barbecue outdoors, or even on a high rise city apartment building, you can make and enjoy home-smoked salmon or trout. Smoking gourmet fish is an interesting hobby and does ensure unending invitations to your friends' parties if you share your creations with them by bringing along delicious tapa dishes.
First catch your fish! Not everyone is an angler and has a trout stream at their doorstep. Not to worry!
I regularly frequent the local supermarket and always watch over the deli section for fish on discount sale. Now and then I can buy salmon or rainbow trout fillets for half price i.e., $15/kg instead of $30/kg, probably when they have excess supply and a new batch has come in. So I buy a couple of packets.
Fresh fillets are great to cook as is, but the smoked variety are even more delicious and better than the thinly sliced smoked salmon usually available at a high price.
It is important to prepare the fillets properly for smoking and this takes a day to do. First sprinkle them with salt (go easy on this) then cover with brown sugar. Lie the fillets on a tray with a slope so that the brown juices drain off from the fish. After 3 or 4 hours recover the fillets, give them a quick swill under the tap, pat dry, and leave over night on a wire rack to dry further.
Next assemble your fish smoker. What, you haven't got one? Not a problem.
There are on the market compact rectangular steel smokers that use a spirit burner and sawdust to hot smoke fish in about 10 minutes or so which are OK. Also a lady friend told me of using a wok on the kitchen stove. She used tea leaves on the bottom with the fish above on a rack covered by the lid! Once I tried a similar thing with a large fry pan and wood chips in a kitchen at a backpackers in Morelia, Mexico. I wasn't very popular until my companeros tasted the result.
Back home at your leisure you have the opportunity to make a good "boutique Mini-smoker" for little cost. I shall explain my set up.
The base is a mini Weber barbecue, 14 inches in diameter which I bought at a Saturday car boot sale for $8. On the wire rack I place a steel plate 11 inches in diameter on which I put two hands-full of wood chips to generate the smoke. This is covered by an aluminum lid with lots of holes. This serves as a baffle plate and prevents flames leaping up if the chips catch fire.
On top of this is placed a 20 liter drum (about 11" dm by 14" high, once used for methylated spirits), open at the bottom but with a smaller hole at the top. Finally, at the top is placed an aluminum pot with holes in the bottom and containing two racks to hold the fish fillets to be smoked, covered by a lid, ajar, to let the smoke out. Sometimes I use the same pot on top of a baby chiminea that serves as a smoke box instead of the Weber.
Modus operandi:
I start a small fire in the barbecue by laying 10 briquettes on a layer of sticks (wood), interspersed with bits of candle wax. Once set fire with some meths it will get the briquettes alight and covered with gray ash after about hour.
A word of warning about sawdust or wood chips. Avoid using any from resinous trees such as pines, or eucalypts, and never from sawed timber because this can be chemically treated and give of poisonous fumes. I live in a leafy suburb and often "Jim the Gardener" is about with his chain saw lopping off unwanted branches, so I fill up a bag of wood chips if the tree is suitable. Recently I have discovered my local hardware shop sells hickory smoking wood chips imported from the USA. Instructions are to soak a cup of chips in water or wine for 25 minutes before use.
Smoking takes about half an hour, with two lots of wood chips on the steel plate. Change the fillets around in the pot as the bottom ones smoke more quickly. After smoking the Weber can be used for normal barbecuing of meat while the coals are still hot. When cool the smoked fish is wrapped in cling wrap and stored in the fridge, awaiting for use as tapas, or snacks on crackers. Use a nice mayonnaise or sour cream and chive dotted with red caviar to fix the smoked fish portions on the crackers, or pumpernickel bread.
Buen provecho!