Step 1 – Award Winning Fish Alaska Challenge Smoked Salmon Recipe

This is part one of a three part post. Be sure to continue to the other posts for the full process.

I am about to reveal my newly discovered super secret smoked salmon recipe.

Well, it is not that secret.  A simple Google search for ‘Award Winning Alaska Smoked Salmon’ will expose the recipe.  It was actually shown to me by my friend Jason.  The secret part is how I tweaked it to my preference and what I use to smoke it.

This is a several day process and I will walk you through it one day at a time.  Step 1 is the meat selection, thaw, de-bone and slice to prep for brine.

I prefer Chinook (King) salmon when I smoke it.  The oil rich meat makes for a super moist finished product as compared to the other species of salmon I have tried.  Spring Chinook is the holy grail of smoked salmon in my opinion.  The oil content is so high, it is just dripping with oil when I pull it out of the smoker.  At first, I refused to smoke spring Chinook because it seemed like such a waste to not just cook it up and eat it.  I have since been enlightened.

I always de-bone all of my filets when preparing to smoke.  I have found it easier to pull the pin bones after the meat has been frozen, so I will almost always freeze the salmon first.  I have a pair of kitchen needle nose pliers that are my tool of choice when pulling the pin bones.  It takes a little practice to squeeze just hard enough to pull the bone without pinching it off.  I am still practicing.  🙂

Now it is time to slice the filet into strips.  Because the Chinook usually tends to be extremely thick across the back, I cut it into 1″ slices to get the right brine/smoke to meat ratio.  If you cut it too thick, it starts to get more like cooked salmon than smoked and if you cut it too thin, it gets more like jerky.

Continue to Step 2 post……..