Homemade Sausage Making

Took the big fish and cut it into easy-to-fillet pieces

Really great color on the fillets, the salmons stomach was stuffed with anchovies

Trying out a new brine recipe, similar to the one my fishing partner and I have always used


1 cup canning salt
2 cups brown sugar
3 cups Yoshida teriyaki sauce
3 cups pineapple juice
3 cups water
2 tbsp each onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper
1 tbsp Instacure #1

After brining in the fridge overnight I had the fillets on racks in the West Nile Virus Room drying under a strong fan

Three hours and it was time to give the fillets a honey baste and let them drip for a bit

I just popped the load in the Pro 100 pre-heated to 120° with a full pan of moistened applewood. In a hour I'll raised the temp to 145° for 3-4 hours, then raise the temp to 170° for a hour or two. It should all be done just in time for cocktails! RAY

Nicely done ol' friend. Glad to see you using a cure! Many people don't. Just think of it as health insurance! You won't come down with scombroid poisoning or botulism!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

A complete success! For 35 years I smoked salmon and didn't know a thing about cure but for the overnight brining. With all I've learned in my time here I wasn't about to ignore Rytec's first rule of meat smoking. Some website said to pull the pink at a IT of 145, and I'd never used a meat thermometer when smoking salmon before. The one I inserted this time read 131°, we took a taste, and I pulled it right off. Cookbooks will tell you to pull a prime rib at 140° for rare, do that and let it sit for twenty minutes and you won't be happy. The flavor is perfect smoky-moist, and I need to get back in the kitchen before my wife gobbles half the stuff up in the first 15 minutes, she says it's the best batch of smoked pink I've produced in the last millennium. RAY

Superb Ray, Thanks for sharing the info. VERY helpful for future smoking fish. I never used cure, will next week. Thanks, Fred

Krakowska wrote:Superb Ray, Thanks for sharing the info. VERY helpful for future smoking fish. I never used cure, will next week. Thanks, Fred

I'd never used Instacure #1 for salmon before either. We detected no salty flavor and had more confidence in what was coming off the smoker than ever before. With all the information that can be gleaned and shared here there's no reason anyone should get hurt or sick. The recipe and smoking method I posted worked to a "T", try it if you've got the stuff to monitor temps, go a hair over rather than under. I don't have the Marianski book, Rytec has always been my bible. If you look at the general guidelines and follow common sense it's hard to go wrong, but one must ALWAYS pay attention to detail. Exact measuring makes everything so easy it's a snap, I've had to get this stuff in the freezer and ready for shrink-wrap, it's way too good to be out for snacking. RAY