Wow...I didn't know this past weekend was fishing weekend for anyone other than me! I just spent 4 glorious days fishing in Tulsa Ok (got a good bud there, with a primo 19 ft Bass boat) and we caught almost 40lbs of Bass. I didn't catch the most fish but did manage to catch the biggest of the trip...a 6 pound beauty and wow did these fish give ya a fight, have never seen fish so unwilling to get into the boat!

And on Monday evening with a little lemon, a sweet red onion, and a little garlic butter, I baked them and we had a great evening devouring some of Ft Gibson lakes finest!

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.

Not quite clear if this is the seafood thread, or simply the cooking thread - or just show-and-tell. But anyhow, here's what I did this weekend.



Here's a nice piece of very fresh salmon. Frankly, you can get a bit bored with salmon, but there's stuff we can do to liven it up. Dry curing is the name of this game.

We'll need plenty of salt, such as this Cornish Sea Salt. Cornish is obviously the best, anyone knows that:



Using goodly quantities we can mix about one part salt to two parts sugar. Or equal amounts. Or replacing the sugar with maple syrup can be nice. Experimentation is the whole point of doing it yourself - but ample amounts is important. Then add plenty of fresh ground pepper and mix it all up:



Now get the fish well and truly coated:



Cover it and pop it in the fridge at least overnight. 24 hours is not too much. Give it a good stir two or three times during that curing period.

Meanwhile, we can do exactly the same process with meat too. Here's some nice free-range duck breasts - genuine free-range is just so visibly much better I can't imagine why anyone bothers with anything else:



We often find that with red meat it is good to cut it into chunks or slices to really let the cure get at it and do its work:



We can smother it with exactly the same dry cure as the fish, or we can find fun things to add, such as a hefty handful of mixed herbs, as I've done here:



Again, cover and refrigerate for 12-24 hours, stirring occasionally.

This is also a very good way of doing chicken. Here I have a couple fine quality chicken supremes, and this time instead of herbs I've added Caribbean jerk seasoning and olive oil to the cure. I just can't tell you how taste bud-ripping this is to eat:



Oo look, Greek olive oil. There ya go, I've done my bit to help with current difficulties:



Cover and cure in the fridge for 24 hours.

Now then. This process is called dry curing, because we didn't add any liquid. That's a whole other way of working, and people like to add wine, vinegar, whisky or a load of other things as the mood grabs 'em. Nuttin' wrong with it, but what we're doing here is the classic dry cure.

Yet when we look the next day we find the salt has drawn plenty of moisture out of the meat - remember, I've added no liquid, this is just what was in the chicken:



A similar effect with the duck:



And the salmon:





You might think having lost all that liquid the meat and fish will now be very dry, but it doesn't work out that way. I promise, what we'll end up with is amazingly succulent and juicy, but what the salt and sugar have done in addition to drawing moisture out is to drag their own flavour as well as any herbs and spices into the meat. And that means dry curing is amazingly more flavoursome than merely soaking the produce in a marinade. Which is the idea.

However, that fish and meat will currently be just too salty, so now we need to give them a thorough wash, and then dry well with kitchen paper:



Now we're ready to rock. We're going to smoke that produce.

I have a natty little stove top smoker which is great for a meal's worth of food. But today we'll use the bigger outdoor jobbie. This gizmo breaks down into a series of “storeys”, and you can add more middle sections if you have more fish to smoke. As you see, the base contains a fire tray:



As you see in the background, I have plenty of fruit trees, including apple, pear and cherry. Almost any hardwood timber is good for smoking, but fruit wood is especially favoured, and since I have heaps of it that's what I use. This time I'm firing up with cherry:



We want that to get good and hot and then die down a bit so that it's throwing up a steady smoke rather than raging flames.

Some people just use charcoal, like on a regular barbeque, and that's fine. However, then you need a way of producing wood smoke, so these types of smokers usually come supplied with a little smoke box like this one which you load with wood chips (which the maker is also happy to supply for silly money). You place that in the burning charcoal, the wood chips start to smoulder inside and the smoke comes out the holes in the top. Very handy - but since I'm already running my smoker on cherry wood we don't need this device:



An optional extra is a water bath. This adds moisture to the smoke and then it's known as "water smoking". Again, some people get all busy adding wine or herbs or a multitude of other things to this bath. I'm just using boiling water and a sprig of bay for luck (everything tastes better with bay):



We add the first middle "storey" on top of the fire tray and pop the water bath in there, so it's right above the heat:



That's a mixture of smoke and steam you see being produced. Now we can put in a rack and spread the meat out ready to be smoked:



Some people think it's a bad idea to do meat and fish together, but I find that so long as we put the meat downstairs so it doesn't drip on the fish then the result is absolutely fine. I have left a bit of a space to one side of the meat rack so that if the fish drips a bit it doesn't go on the meat, but it doesn't really matter:



And now we just slap the lid on top and away we go. We can kid ourselves this is manly work, if it makes us feel good:



What we're doing here is hot-smoking, which is quick, easy and tasty. Cold-smoking takes much longer (many hours or even days) and you have to keep a low-ish temperature very carefully regulated. You can do it at home, but it requires fancier equipment. Hot-smoking is fool-proof and speedy.



We want the temperature somewhere between 100-120 C / 200-250 F. This machine has a thermometer and maintaining that heat is easy. We don't need to touch the fire again so simply leave everything closed up for an hour. Time for a bit of guitar strumming...



An hour later, open up the smoker and see what we've got. On the top floor, the salmon:



Downstairs, the duck and spicy chicken:



That smoked jerk chicken never lasts more than a few minutes out of the smoker because greedy hands grab it fast. It is flippin' mouth-watering, and the curing process has taken the flavour all the way through the meat:



The duck is also fabulous hot, and somehow even better cold a day or two later.

As for the salmon, I can honestly say that this tastes better than anything I have ever had from a shop or restaurant anywhere in the world. There is just nothing on the planet to beat freshly home-smoked salmon, as I believe Tony Huston will confirm:



Bon appetit - C

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My honey requested one of the first meals I ever cooked for her, for dinner tonight; chicken in mushroom sauce with pan roasted broccoli.

This meal is also my grandson's favorite and I had created a three part video lesson for him when he went off to school.

Chicken in mushroom sauce with pan roasted broccoli pt-1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m5J_FCwKes&feature=g-upl

pt-2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvJwODEWK1o&feature=context-gau

pt-3:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tSnfm90YYs&feature=context-gau

Right now I have the chicken simmering in the mushroom sauce. I wish you could smell the aroma that is going thru our beautiful home.

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Tony Houston

I've been doing a lot of grilling lately also... My diet has changed quite a bit over the past year... I lost 50 lbs and I am trying to keep it off... went from 250 to 200 lbs

So when it comes to meat I try to eat only wild game or grass fed beef.... Its my belief that its the only way I can eat meat and still stay thin...

Friend of mine gave me 30 lbs of pronghorned antelope meat and I was able to round up 20 lbs of cottontail rabbit this past spring... I order my grass fed beef from this farm...
http://www.cprmeats.com/cprmeats/Welcome.html

I have been grilling up those with pecan wood.... Ill admit wild game isn't for everyones taste... but I do enjoy it and its a hell of a lot better for you than that feed lot grain fed beef...

Grass fed beef (or at least the beef I get) is more tough and gamey just as it would figure to be...

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In Reference to Blues Legend RL Burnside:
After a heart attack in 2001, Burnside's doctor advised him to stop drinking; Burnside did, but he reported that change left him unable to play.

Yo Ceri: Darn it, those pictures made me hungry, again! Yeah, my honey has been telling everyone about the salmon I smoked. We gave some to one of her daughters, and to her son. He doesn't like salmon, but his girlfriend does, she called me to me that she's never had salmon to taste like mine.

We just finished dinner, she had her annual doctor's checkup today, and needed to have a 18hr fast for blood work, so she was hungry.



I would grill everyday, if I had the choice, she doesn't like everything grilled. I feel like Steven Raichlen http://primalgrill.org/; "If it tastes good cooked with a stove, it's even better tasting grilled/smoked".



I grew up eating wild game, my paternal grandfather was from Alabama and he hunted all the time. We had rabbit, quail, pheasants and even $@!& on a regular basis. I brought some 'farm-raised' frozen rabbit once at the store, and it didn't even taste close to what I remember my granddad stewing in a kettle.

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Tony Houston

Much enjoyed Mr. Ceri, that looks a top notch meal.

I'm trying to guess what $@!& is. I won't list my guesses.

You guys are so mean! I'm trying to lose weight. All that grub looks delicious!

If I may ad-lib The Beatles here for a moment:

"Got to be a smoker 'cause he's so hard to see!"

Ah well. I'll get my coat.

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Ceri, that looks so fantastic, I have put this together in your honour:



It's chicken bits with sea salt, sugar, bashed fennel seeds, black pepper, and pimenton pepper powder. Since I don't have a smoker, I have to use the pimenton to get the smokiness I like so much!

Sir C, do you recommend adding olive oil to this mix, or will the dry stuff suffice? I put it in the fridge just now so no pressure in replying...

Many thanks in advance -

Nutter

P.S.: Mmmmmmmmmmmhhh, duck! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmhhhhh, salmon! aiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiiii!!

Nutter, that looks pretty tolerable!

Far as the olive oil or not question is concerned, I guess it depends whether you are treating this as a cure or a marinade. The point of a cure is that the salt draws moisture out and simultaneously carries the flavour into the meat. I don't know if you have enough salt in there for that: perhaps you'll want to add more? But only if you then plan to rinse it off later, otherwise it will be unbearably salty and also contribute to you dying early from heart disease.

Otherwise, treat it as a marinade. And in that case some oil or other carrier liquid (wine, vinegar, etc) would be a nice idea.

BTW: you can smoke food without a smoker - for example, do you know how to do tea smoking in a wok with a lid, or similar? Very nice stove-top results to be had that way, and it's quicker, easier and requires less cleaning up after than my outdoor gizmo. More photo-journalism available if required...

Cheers - C

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BTW: credit is due. I have a vested interest in food smoking: family legend claims that back in the 1950s my maternal grandfather set up the first commercial smoked food factory south of the Scottish border, of which I have hazy childhood memories. However, I'd never tried smoking food myself and was kinda nervous of it, because the books I read concentrated on the Scandinavian cold-smoking method, which seemed off-puttingly technical and challenging.

But Forum user Big Jay encouraged me to try it for myself and spent a lot of time telling me how to go about it. He also gave me lots of advice about buying home-smokers and led me to the one in the photos above. It is entirely down to his generous enthusiasm that I gave it a go and have been doing it for a couple of years now, getting steadily better and better.

Many appreciative stomachs over here say: thanks, Jay!

Cheers - C

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Rats - more choices.

I was planning to keep it curing for 24h and then to rinse and brown them off in some pimento-seasoned flower. The whole think will be married up with some green and yellow peppers, a glug of white wine, and that's more or less it.
So more salt, you think? I guess I could wack some more on there, yeah. Cheers!

As for the smoking: I think with an electro-hob it would be risky, besides, I don't have a wok. Wok'n'woll!

Cheers -

Nutter

Nah, it's easy. There's sometimes a particular problem with ceramic type electric hob tops, but even then it's possible. All other types are a cinch. And any pan with a lid can be used for tea smoking.

I'm not out to persuade you, you understand. Just throwing out options. I think what you described sounds excellent - especially the pimento-seasoned flowers. That's a new one on me. Can you grow them from seed...?

Cheers - C

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Yes, but you might have a severe allergic reaction...

Cheers!

Alexander

Scary. I wonder if there is a seed that is guaranteed not to produce an allergic reaction. Hemp perhaps? Who knows? Who can say...?

(An in Forum joke, for those as are wondering.)

Cheers - C

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