Kitchen Essential

Fish

There is a completely erroneous belief in some quarters that stale fish can be used for smoking, as the smoking process will impart its own flavour to the fish and thus mask any defects in quality. Certainly it is just possible to ’save the life’ of stale fish approaching putrefaction, by smoking, so that it is just edible; but, at the best, only a very inferior product both in keeping quality and flavour can result.

Fish which is to be smoked must be completely fresh to obtain the best results, although this is a good point at which to dispel the belief that frozen goods are not suitable for smoking. This is completely untrue. All deep frozen fish, game, meat and poultry can be employed, and first-class results obtained.

However, in the case of salmon, a better-looking finished product can be obtained from fresh fish. This is because the moisture between the fibres of course turns to ice within the fish during deep freezing. When the fish is allowed to thaw out, prior to smoking, this water runs away, taking some of the fish’s natural oil with it; however carefully the fish is filleted, some gaps will appear between the fibres of the cut surface, causing a more unsightly finish than if the cut surface could be kept smooth and unblemished. Deep frozen salmon is altogether more tender to handle when thawed out than the fresh fish.

Fat content

This mention of the oil loss suffered by the thawed-out salmon, brings one to the connection between the relative fat contents of all raw products to be smoked and the salt contents they are required to absorb during pre-salting or brining. Anything with a high fat content is more resistent to salt penetration than anything with a lower concentration of fat. It follows, therefore, that a fat, fresh run salmon will require longer in the brine than a fish of equal size that has been hanging about a river during a period of low water, or alternatively, has come many miles inland, negotiating scores of obstacles on the way. I was told a story of a Scottish salmon smoker who attended to the needs of several fishermen who fished the length of a famous salmon river. At one period when he was extremely busy and his kiln was full to capacity, a friend called in and was shown fish from practically every beat on the river. Even to an unpractised eye, it was apparent that the best conditioned fish came from the lower reaches of the river, and the higher up the river the fish had been caught, the thinner they became.

There are no hard and fast rules to apply to this question of differing fat content. One must play it by ear and use intelligent guesswork. If I am brining a batch of pheasants and I notice one is lacking in fat under the skin, it comes out of the brine 15 minutes before the others; if I am preparing fillets of beef and some have that marbling of fat between the tissues, visible at the sliced ends and the hallmark of superbly conditioned cattle, they receive 30 minutes longer in the brine than the very lean, solid red fillets.

Meat

Whereas fish for smoking should be as fresh as possible, which should present no problem to the home smoker, who will in the majority of cases be a fisherman himself and smoke his own fresh catches, other products require a different approach. Beef will not absorb salt unless it has been hanging for a minimum of one week, and 10 days to a fortnight is better here. It is essential to know and trust one’s butcher. So many modern butchers do not hang their meat for long enough before selling, but there are still some old-fashioned rural butchers who do. Ideally, the beef should hang in the carcase, but if only fresh fillets can be obtained they can be ‘aged’ in a refrigerator (not a deep freeze). They will probably become a little tainted when ageing in a refrigerator, but a wash in vinegar solution before brining will take care of this problem. No meat or game should be allowed to become really high before smoking as a gamey taste conflicts with the smoky flavour, and I find it unpleasant. Venison should hang for one week to 10 days. Pheasants, grouse, mallard, ducks, geese, turkeys and chickens are best done fairly fresh, 3 days dead being ideal. I have smoked thousands of quail which have been deep frozen within 24 hours of killing, and this would appear to be perfectly satisfactory.

Deep freeze storage

In the deep freeze storage of any foods required for smoking, all ageing must be done when the product is in its fresh condition, and it must be processed immediately upon thawing out. Salmon should be stored with their heads on and guts intact. As they do not feed in fresh water, their innards are empty, so gut tainting does not result. Trout should be gutted and the blood channel along the spine scraped out before freezing. Eel guts taint very rapidly, so they should be gutted as soon as possible, but the chief secret of successful eel smoking is the removal of the kidney. The eel has one kidney, buried deep in the flesh — 11/2 in. below the vent. You must slice into this area and scrape out the kidney, for if it is left within the eel it will make the finished product unpalatable.

All poultry and winged game should be plucked and drawn prior to deep freezing. I once froze a batch of pheasants intact but they suffered a certain degree of gut tainting. Although still quite palatable, knowing their history as I did, I could just detect a degree of tainting although others did not.

If you intend to store anything in the deep freeze for any length of time, it is an excellent idea to wrap it in either aluminium foil or brown paper, which will protect it from freezer burn and subsequent dehydration to a far greater degree than polythene freezer bags.

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