Damn, it's good. Picture's don't lie:
Look at that lacquer! These filets were a five pound local, wild sockeye. On Thursday they went into Michael's cure, sans the granulated garlic and onion which I don't own and didn't remember to buy, and yesterday we smoked them.
The smoking was an interesting process. We've smoked salmon before, but last summer time got away from us and we didn't smoke any, and we only did one batch each summer before that, such that the method has never become intuitive, nor have we capitalized on what we learn from one batch to fine-une the next. Seasonally speaking, there has been no next. We've just been lucky to get off one batch a year.
This time I bought so much fish that we had to make two batches, and do it all in one day. What a world of difference between batch A and batch B (pictured).
As well, Mike's process is so different from what we've done before. His cure seeks to remove moisture, where we have previously brined to import moisture. The result of curing, as suspected, is chewier than the brined method though still tender. I like both. There's an elegance to the cake-y tender brined fish, but I love the chew of this. The brined method, you wouldn't think of not eating or cutting it with a fork. This method, though I served our first meal of it with forks, somehow neither of used them and we gravitated instinctively toward pulling off chunks and eating it with our fingers. (Not a bad thing--Bob and I agreed that we prefer the chew of the cured texture.) And this would be more true of the A Batch, which endured higher heat from propane-fueled cooking during the first hour where Bob couldn't keep it under 175 without losing the fire in the tinderbox.
At which point I said, "Do we really need the propane? What if we had chunks of charcoal in the tinderbox, and relied on THOSE to keep the wood burning? Score one for Jenise. It worked PERFECTLY. Another lump of coal every so often along with a few little stick of wood, and the smoker had no trouble staying between 125 and 150--without any propane at all once the coals were lit. The initial high heat and uneven spaces until we got the charcoal act figured out precisely (at one point I found the temperature under 100 and virtually no smoke being generated at all), created some very delicious smoked salmon on the A batch, where the fish turned a beautiful mahogany with some lacquering, but it was nothing like the uniform lacquer we got on the B Batch. These filets were done perfectly in just over four hours, no oven-baking required to finish.
Which was not a deliberate attempt to deviate from Mike's method, it's just that differences in equipment mandate differences in methodology, and ours was going to do all the cooking it needed to right there on the smoker.
I did make one significant deviation, however, in that I brushed our fish (both batches) with warm honey before they went onto the smoker (spray the grates and the skins of the fish with Pam, if you're going to do this) and about an hour before they were completely done. Honey really enhances the color and lacquering, and it tastes pretty good too.
Anyway, we're thrilled with both the results and the fact that we finally figured out how to get the results we've always wanted. All the salmon we've done was good, but we have never achieved the absolute perfection we achieved with Batch B yesterday. And that we got that by mastering the best way to use our equipment once and for all--well, all the more satisfying. We'll do another batch next weekend. We love to have a freezer full (wrapping the filets in lots of stretch tite and then foil ensures the fish will keep well all winter), but additionally, we have to--we gave a whole bunch away yesterday afternoon to neighbors who'd been sniffing around all day, as well as taking some to a terminally ill friend means we don't have enough for ourselves!
Thanks, Mike, for getting me off my duff to