(At The Secret Geving Fish-Smoking Compound)

Well, it's time again! With a few fish accumulated, we decided to smoke them up on the fourth of July to celebrate Independance Day with some truly gourmet food. On this page, I'll explain how we do it and point out any tips or pitfalls along the way. If you aren't a fish-smoker, you should be! This is a great way to prepare fish, and a great way to utilize some of the under-utilized fishes as well. 

For starters, the fish are cleaned and cut into chunks. Small trout, ciscos, and panfish can be smoked whole - all you need to do is remove the gills and entrails. Larger fish can be chunked (head removed and cut into sections lengthwise). Fish that are larger still can either be steaked or sliced into thinner chunks. On this occasion, we happened to have three smallish brown trout (12 inches), three Lake Superior Herring about fifteen inches long, and three Lake Whitefish about 3 pounds apiece. We chunked the Herring, Steaked the Whitefish, and left the trout whole. Here's what they look like after soaking for 12 hours in cold brine. The brine is non-iodized salt (enough to float an egg) and a little brown sugar in icewater.

When the fish are pulled from the brine, you leave them to dry and blot them with a paper towel. A shiny, slightly tacky film called a "pellicle" covers them, which helps them absorb that delicious smoky flavor, and helps keep the moisture in during the smoking process. Proper development of the pellicle is critical to producing top-notch smoked fish. The best way to do it is to rinse the fish lightly when they come out of the brine, blot them dry, and then place them in a shaded area of cool, gently flowing air. When the fish have a good pellicle on them, you can stoke up the charcoal! Some smokers also might use electricity, propane, or wood coals. All do a fine job.

When the charcoal is going good, it's time to load the smoker. In this case, we loaded two smokers since we had so much fish. Plus, a portion of the fish disappears during the smoking process due to a phenomenon known as "sampling". Because of the sampling effect, you should try to make more fish than you think you will need. When you're finished, you'll have less fish than you wish you had. Place each piece on the racks so that it doesn't touch the sides or any of the other pieces of fish. This ensures that the smoke can billow and flow all around each piece.

Now cover up the smoker and add your wood. You can buy hickory or mesquite chips, or you can scrounge for it. We prefer apple wood, mainly because we have a bunch of apple trees that constantly need pruning and apple wood imparts a sweet, delicious flavor to the finished product. Alder and willow are also excellent, and I've heard good things about maple. Green wood up to about the diameter of your thumb is best. Unless you have freakishly large thumbs, in which case, use smaller branches. The wood should be cut into chunks less than an inch long. You need to add enough wood to last a long time, but not too much because it can smother the fire. Three big handfuls of wood chunks is about right for a small smoker. Unless you have gigantic hands, in which case, go with two. No leaves! That can cause a flare-up.

Now your fish is in the smoker, the smoker is hot and smoking, the cover is on, and all you have to do is tend the coals and wait. Hot-smoked fish takes between three and five hours to make, depending on the thickness of the fish chunks and the temperature of the smoker. You need to get it up to 180 degrees for at least twenty minutes sometime during the process. Don't peek too often! Every time you open the smoker, the temperature drops. In this picture, The Spook keeps an eye on the smokers in case they are attacked by some kind of critter. In this case, we only got attacked by one fluffy little dog, a small neighborhood girl, and a rabbit. The Spook was able to scare off all of those critters with ease.

While you wait, you can cut up more wood. Here, Andy cuts up apple branches to keep up a steady supply of apple wood, using a hand-powered pruner. If the wood branches are too big for the hand pruner, use a lopper, a hand saw, a power saw, a machette, a double-bit axe, a gas-powered woodchipper, a high-powered rifle, an air-powered disk blade, a chainsaw, a pack of trained beavers, or a stick of dynamite. Anything that reduces the wood to one inch or less in size will work. Keep a close eye on the smoker, and whenever it quits smoking, add more wood. While you're doing that, add a couple more charcoal briquettes and stir up the coals. That keeps the fire burning hot and the smoke a-flowin'! Don't open the smoker unless absolutely necessary!

Most smokers come with a bimettalic-strip-type temperature gauge thingie. This is crap. It's only on there for insurance purposes, I swear to God. It helps if you have a meat thermometer, which you can insert into the top of the smoker to determine the temperature. The smoker needs at least twenty minutes at 180 degrees; otherwise, you might not kill all the bacteria that could be present in the fish. Of course, if you have any doubts, you can always pop them in the oven for twenty minutes after they are done. But that's not necessary if you keep your smoker hot. You need to turn the fish at least once during the process, usually after an hour and a half of smoking. This is easier if you grease the racks. Did I mention you were supposed to grease the racks? I hope you did, because turning the fish is a lot tougher if you didn't grease the racks. Yep, you guessed it, we forgot to grease the racks this time. Which means we had to kinda gently pry the fish chunks off the racks, with billowing clouds of apple smoke attacking our face, and while trying not to break or tear the fish chunks, and simultaneously fending off a fluffy little dog and a host of other citters. Remember to grease the racks! Use vegetable oil or Pam or something.

Now is the critical phase of fish-smoking. After two hours, the smoke emanating from your smoker will carry the exquisite odor of smoked fish. There are two pitfalls. The first one is "sampling". To determine if the fish is done, it's customary to grab one of the thinner chunks and break it open to see if it is done. It's done if the inside is moist, but there's no fluid left in it. At this point, you could possibly lose most of your smoker load to "the Sampling Effect". Be careful. It's not done yet. The second pitfall is critters. Be sure to kick the dog off his chair during this phase of the operation, because the odor will attract all kinds of critters, human and otherwise. Remember, YOUR DOG IS A CRITTER TOO! He might not be completely trustworthy around smoked fish. I'm not saying you shouldn't trust him, I'm just sayin' you might want to keep an eye on him. Just keep the dog away from the fish. He might not eat it, but he's a dog, so he might inadvertantly drool on it or accidentally knock the pan over with his tail. Or he might suddenly catch sight of an encroaching possum and tear off after it, only to knock over the smoker and send chunks of delicious fish flying in every direction. In that case, you're going to be attacked by crows and possums simultaneously. Defend your food!

Three and a half hours later, the fish is done. Wow, does that look good! It tastes good, too. I know because I'm eating a chunk of herring right now as I write this. Sadly, store-bought smoked fish is no longer edible to me. I mean, I can choke it down, but once you've had home-smoked fish done right, you'll never go back. Especially when it is still hot, right out of the smoker. Man, that's good. If you're lucky, you didn't lose very much to critters or sampling, and you now have a big pile of the most delicious food ever invented. This process works well with trout, salmon, ciscos, whitefish, suckers, panfish, catfish, bullheads, and presumably many others. Oilier fish need more time or higher temps; dry fish like crappies need less time.

All done! The last pan of fish comes out of the smoker, and it's time to EAT! Watermelon goes good with hot smoked fish. It'll keep for two weeks in the refrigerator, or you can freeze it for up to a year. But it's best when you eat it within an hour of smoking it. Small metal smokers are pretty cheap, but you can build one yourself, too. If you're out in the wilderness, you can build a smoker out of logs, rocks, and tree bark. Fuelled by dry hardwood coals, you can survive by preserving the fish you catch with smoke! It's an ancient art, practicied for thousands of years. Without it, many native peoples would've gone extinct. In the days before modern refrigeration systems, families smoked fish to keep it from spoiling so it could be eaten later. But since it tastes so good, why not make some smoked fish tomorrow?

Well, I hope you enjoyed this. Smoking fish is easy and fun. And you end up with the best-tasting food on the planet, bar none! In the future, I'm going to try smoking gar, catfish niblets, and mooneyes. I'll let you know how it goes ...

Finally, a fish-smoking story from my dad:

We had speared a bunch of suckers in the creek out behind my folks' place with the help of this kid who lived nearby, I forget his name. Nobody had a refrigerator so any kind of food that would last a few weeks was something special, and smoked fish was the best of all. So when we went to smoke the suckers he helped catch, we invited his whole family over to eat the hot smoked suckers, and to give them a few to take home. The whole family showed up right around the time they were supposed to be done, so we all gathered around the kitchen table to wait. The kid's dad said "I can't wait. I've been wanting some smoked fish. The last time I went out to get some smoked fish at the neighbor's place, when I got there the darn smokehouse was on fire."

Then he looked out the window.

"Hey, your smokehouse is on fire!" he said.

He was right!