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2 Attachment(s)
Attachment 25485Attachment 25486So I decided to try my luck at smoking some rainbow a friend of mine dropped off to me. I started with frozen fillets and then did a dry brine in course sea salt and brown sugar. I glazed the fish with maple syrup and then applied the dry brine. I let it sit for 12 hours and then rinsed the fillets to prepare for drying. I smoked at about 200f with mesquite in the bbq for almost 2 hours then finished it off in the oven for another 20min. It turned out really good but IMO it was a little to salty.
My question is for you smoking enthusiast. Does a dry brine or wet brine retain more salt in the fish. I would be willing to sacrifice the shelf life of the fish in order to not have a sodium induced heart attack. Also I could only get my hands on the mesquite at the time when shopping, does the wood make a difference in the salt retention in the fish?
Thanks for any help to this. Can't wait to try a second time.
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I had salty fish the first time I tried smoking. You need to rinse the fish off after brining and allow it to dry before smoking it. The rinsing off gets rid of the real saltiness.
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There are some interesting articles on smoking fish on SalmonUniversity:
http://salmonuniversity.com/rs_htss01_index.html
The first one covers dry brining.
Some good articles about fishing the Great Lakes too, if you like that kind of stuff :)