What is smoked salmon

Cold-smoked salmon tends to be smoother and mild while hot-smoked salmon is flaky and smokier in taste. Food scientists generally advise against using cold-smoking methods at home because of the food safety risks involved. Yet, hot smoking can be safely performed at home with the proper equipment and techniques Check the product label for recommendations for storage.

Once opened, smoked salmon can be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks or frozen for 3 months You should avoid smoked salmon that has lots of dark bits. Smoked salmon is made by curing fillets with salt, then placing them in a smoking kiln. The omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, which fatty fish like salmon provide, have been linked to a reduced risk of heart disease, certain cancers, and age-related mental decline 17 , 18 , 19 , These fats may work by lowering triglycerides, reducing inflammation , and maintaining brain structure and function.

Nonetheless, other nutrients in fatty fish may be partly responsible for these effects, as several studies on omega-3 supplements have failed to find the same benefits 21 , 22 , Smoked salmon also boasts a number of vitamins and minerals that are vital to your health. Thus, if you watch your salt consumption, you may want to moderate your intake of smoked salmon or eat fresh salmon instead.

Furthermore, observational studies tie smoked and processed meats to an increased risk of certain cancers, especially colorectal cancer Smoked salmon may also increase your risk of listeriosis, a foodborne illness caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes 25 , 26 , Listeriosis is more likely to infect older adults, people with weakened immune systems, and pregnant women and their newborns.

Therefore, these groups should avoid cold-smoked salmon — although canned and shelf-stable varieties are considered safe 28 , Cold-smoked varieties may increase your risk of listeriosis. Start by curing fillets in salt for at least 4 hours.

You can monitor their temperature using a meat thermometer. You can enjoy smoked salmon in countless ways. Many people like to eat it in dips or on bagels, salads, and pastas. Smoked salmon is a salty, cured fish renowned for its fatty texture and distinctive flavor.

However, it contains a significant amount of sodium, and cold-smoked varieties may increase your risk of listeriosis. There are some important differences between wild and farmed salmon. It was salty, affordable, and pareve , so it became popular among Jewish immigrants because they could eat it with dairy.

This type of "smoked salmon" often isn't actually smoked at all, but cured similar to the Swedish dill-cured salmon, gravlax. We're not exactly sure how it got lumped into the smoked salmon category, but it's almost always made with salmon belly , the fattiest, most flavorful part of the fish.

To make things more complicated, there's another version of lox — Nova lox — that gained popularity with the advent of refrigeration. Because it was no longer necessary to brine the fish as a method of preservation, smokehouses reduced the amount of salt they used to cure the fish and cold smoked it to deepen the flavor. Traditionally, you won't find Nova made from belly , though; that's still reserved for the real-deal lox. Now that we've cleared that up, let's talk about the first step in making smoked salmon.

While you could technically smoke the salmon whole, you wouldn't really want to. It's easier to find the bones and remove them before you smoke a fish, plus there's the whole skin-on or skinless debate which we'll dive into in a moment.

You could cut the fish into steaks, but the most popular way to smoke salmon is by removing the meaty fillets on each side of the backbone. Most fish fillets including the ones you buy at the store still contain a few tiny bones called pin bones. They're super easy to remove if you drape the filet over an upside-down bowl and remove the protruding bones using a pair of tweezers, as Tasting Table recommends.

Now it's time to decide whether you want to smoke the salmon with the skin on or off. Thermoworks advises that keeping the skin on helps the meat hold together as it cooks, but the salmon absorbs the cure better without it. The skin can also lead to off flavors, and although it does have nutrient value , the skin can become soggy and chewy when smoked. Since most people don't eat the skin on cooked fish anyway, we'd just as soon remove it now rather than later.

Since salmon's flavor gets concentrated as it cures and smokes, the type of salmon you choose has a lot to do with the flavor you end up with. That said, you can make smoked salmon out of any kind, so use what you have. Keep in mind that each salmon species has a unique oil content.

Salmon with a lot of oil like king or sockeye is more full-flavored and will retain its moisture more efficiently as it smokes. Salmon like Atlantic or coho are lower in oil with a pale color and a more mild flavor. These fish are best for those who prefer a lighter fish and a dryer texture. While you want the salmon to be fresh, that doesn't mean it can't be frozen. If your choices are smelly "fresh" fish or pristine frozen fish, the latter is the better choice every time.

The flavor of the salmon will intensify as it goes through the smoking process, and if it developed an off, fishy flavor because it was spoiling, it definitely won't taste very good after it's smoked. Because freezing fish causes the cells to burst, it actually allows the fish to take in more of the brine and smoke flavors , too.

You'll just want to make sure the fish is fully thawed before moving on to the next step, as salt can't penetrate frozen tissue. After preparing the salmon fillet, the next step is to apply salt to the fish.

Salt gets a bad rap , but its importance in seasoning and preservation cannot be underplayed. There are two ways to cure salmon : wet or dry. Applying a dry cure means covering the fish in salt and maybe some sugar and seasonings and rinsing off the excess after a long period of time — anywhere between an hour and a full day.

With a wet cure, a brine is prepared using salt and sugar, and the salmon is submerged in the liquid for around six to 10 hours. By the end of the brining process, the salt has done a lot for your piece of salmon. Not only does it remove some of the moisture, helping to stay fresh longer and tolerate the smoking process better, but it also improves and intensifies the flavor. The sugar has a job to do, too, aside from adding some sweet flavor.

Sugar helps the salmon absorb moisture, allowing it to take on some of the wet brine after the salt has pushed out the fish's original moisture. We're really close to tossing that fish on the smoker! Now that's it's been cured, there's only one more step before we can add that delicious, smoky flavor. It's time to develop the pellicle , a skin that forms on the surface of food as it's exposed to air and moisture is removed.

Professional kitchens often use a fan and higher temperatures to form a pellicle on salmon in as little as 30 minutes, but most at-home recipes call for drying salmon at room temperature for one to three hours.

This might seem like a step you could skip if you're in a hurry, but that protective layer has a few functions. First, it traps moisture inside the fish, ensuring that your final smoked salmon will be moist despite the long smoke time. It also gives the finished product an attractive glean and helps the smoke adhere to the meat as it cooks, making your smoked salmon that much more flavorful.

After it's properly dried, we're finally ready to smoke the salmon. Alder a popular wood for smoking salmon, but you can use any type of hardwood you like. Because the curing happens so quickly, the product stays incredibly fresh, and our end-product is never dry or fishy but instead has a fresh, delicate texture and flavor.

Depending on the unique recipe of one of our products, or the recipe requested by a restaurant or chef we partner with, there may be a small amount of sugar used during curing but by the end of the process the sugar is dissolved and no longer detectable.

Our salmon is treated with nothing but salt, herbs, spices, and natural smoke. On each rack of salmon, we add a little note to make sure we remove the salt at the right time.

Rinsing the salmon to get all of the salt off is a very important because it halts the curing process and ensures that the flavor is not overly salty. After the salmon is rinsed, it is dried on wire racks. At this point, the salmon is already largely preserved from the curing.

After a quick drying process, the salmon fillets are loaded into the smoker. Cold smoking, which yields a smooth, silky texture, requires a temperature of less than 90 degrees fahrenheit.

Hot smoking, on the other hand, is done at over degrees. Different woods offer different flavors. When fruit wood is used during smoking, for example, the end product is very subtly fragrant. While we sometimes incorporate natural ingredients for high-quality flavor add-ins, our core focus is on preserving and flavoring salmon with salt and woodsmoke only.

This allows the quality of the salmon to truly take center stage. After the salmon comes out from the smoker, the black meat and skin is removed. Once the black meat and skin is removed, the salmon is either packed up whole or it is sliced. Some of our customers prefer to purchase the salmon side whole and slice it themselves.