by Jenise » Thu Jun 16, 2011 5:14 pm
David Creighton's post about wine in TCA the other day got me wondering about using wine in place of water as the moisture medium when we smoke salmon. Well, on Tuesday we smoked three fresh filets of Copper River sockeye, and the result was the best salmon we've ever made. Definitely better than what we made two weeks ago, at any rate. Is the wine the reason? Not sure. Last time we smoked fish we had a hard time getting the lacquer to set up (in the last hour or so, we glaze the fish with honey) and then I realized that the water bowl in the smoker was unusually full. Bob had refilled it to the brim during smoking, and the excess moisture was likely the reason the fish wouldn't glaze over--too wet. This time we let the wine go dry, and when the wine was gone it too actually began to smoke, which could only have added yet more flavor (we used an inexpensive Chilean SB from Viu Manent). So maybe the success of this batch was a perfect storm of the above plus perfect seasoning on my part yada yada, but I promise you this: next time we'll use wine again!
My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov
