Hot-Smoked Salmon

Name: Hot-Smoked Salmon: How to Smoke a Whole Fish
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Salmon, whole fish 2.5 kg; Salt for salting; Alder wood chips, coarse 3 handfuls

☆ Rate it

1 h 30 mins

Smoking is a way of heat-treating food. It’s a unique method that, first, preserves food (meat, fish, game and so on) and, second, makes it fragrant and delicious. Smoking is really a form of preserving, for long-term storage afterwards.

Smoking is usually divided into cold and hot. The difference is that hot smoking is very much like baking (the temperature is usually 60-120 °C), with the smoking effect coming from fragrant smoke.

Hot smoking is fast smoking, and to boost the effect, unfortunately, chemical cocktails like liquid smoke are often used. Because it’s so simple, hot smoking can be done even in a city apartment. Cold smoking is a very long treatment with fairly cool smoke (20-30 °C). Sometimes cold smoking takes several days.

Hot-smoked salmon is easy, even on a picnic or at home in the kitchen. For a picnic you need a portable smoker; for smoking in the kitchen you need a sealed smoker with a smoke outlet system in the form of a water seal.

Once, with friends, we improvised an amazing treat right on the river bank: hot-smoked salmon. Between tasting it ourselves and feeding everyone else, smoked salmon is really something, if you’re quick enough to get any. I admit, I cut off one steak to take home and make pasta with salmon.

More with salmon

Salmon in Cream Sauce

1 h

Red Fish Fillet Stewed with Vegetables in White Wine

1 h

Fish and Eggplant Casserole

1 h 10 min

Salmon with Vegetables

40 min

Oven-Baked Pink Salmon with Herbs and Lemon

2 h 30 min

More salmon recipes

Ingredients

10-12 servings

Salmon, whole fish 2.5 kg
Salt for salting
Alder wood chips, coarse 3 handfuls

Step-by-step recipe

Turn on cook modeKeeps your screen from turning off while the recipe is open

Salting and preparing the fish

Do you know how jellied pike-perch is made??? They buy hake and say it’s pike-perch. We decided not to bother with that and bought two good salmon, 2.5 kg each.
Salt the fish generously, inside and on the skin, then leave for 1 hour so the fish takes up the salt.
While the fish is salting, gather firewood and carefully build a fire.
Prepare the fish: rinse off the salt and clean off the slime (we asked someone in waders to rinse the fish in the Dnieper). Cut off the heads and tails and dry the fish well.

Smoking

Load the smoker: put in three handfuls of coarse alder chips, add the fish, close the lid and put the smoker over the fire.
Keep the fire medium or even lower, but steady. The chips will start to smolder almost immediately.
Fragrant white smoke will start pouring out.
Smoke for exactly 30 mins, keeping the fire going. Half an hour. No more, no less! Then carefully take the smoker off the fire.

Serving

It’s best to “take the fish apart” right away and remove the large bones. Smoked salmon must cool down. You may not even need a side dish for the salmon.
And then you can eat it. It’s delicious on a slice of very fresh Ukrainian bread!!!
It’s nice to see the happy faces of friends…

Calories and macros

520 kcal

Serving ≈ 180 g

Protein51 g40% of kcal
Fat34 g60% of kcal
Carbs0 g0% of kcal

100 g297 kcalProtein 29.1 gFat 19.1 gCarbs 0 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

Enjoyed the recipe? Pick me as a preferred source on Google, and you'll see my recipes more often in search. Choose on Google →

How did you like this recipe?

Thanks for rating!