DULUTH, Minn. — A popular restaurant in Duluth is sharing some of its favorite recipes in a new cookbook.
Northern Waters Smokehaus is located in the DeWitt Seitz Marketplace at Canal Park.
The new book is titled: Smoke on the Waterfront: The Northern Waters Smokehaus Cookbook.
Owner Eric Goerdt and Kitchen Manager Nic Peloquin joined KARE 11 Saturday to share some of their secrets on smoking meat.
RECIPE: Smoked salmon
Ingredients
- Brine
- 2 pounds salt
- 8 ounces brown sugar
- 1-gallon water
- 7-8 pounds of cleaned, fileted salmon, cut into ½-¾ pound chunks (usually 3 ½ inches long by however wide the filet is.
Mix the salt, brown sugar, and water until salt and sugar are dissolved. We use 5-gallon re-appropriated pickle buckets for this activity, and your local grocery store may be willing to part with a few of these if you ask nicely (maybe swap some smoky treats?).
Place Atlantic salmon chunks, flesh-side down, in large casserole dishes or any receptacles deep enough to hold them as well as brine and allow for some light jostling. Pour brine over the fish until it is completely covered. The fish will undoubtedly emerge from the depths and begin to float. Don’t worry.
For Atlantic salmon filets, which tend to be at least an inch and a half thick, brine for 2 hours, but jostle the pieces along the way: making sure the pieces have all spent the same amount of time in the same amount of brine. For pieces one inch thick, brine for 1.5 hours. For pieces less than one inch, brine for one hour. For the skinny pieces, such as the tail sections, brine for 30 minutes. Remove chunks from brine, rinse with cold water, and place on sheet pans lined with a rack. This is important: the fish need this racking time to distribute salt and form a layer of skin (called a pellicle) that will hold in moisture and collect a pleasant smoke flavor. Use sheet pans/racks that will fit into your refrigerator.
When seasoning, coat the salmon with a liberal amount of your seasoning of choice, then place in refrigeration for 8-12 hours. Move salmon directly from refrigeration into your (preheated, if possible) smoker and use the following smoke schedule:
SMOKE SCHEDULE*
100° for 1 hour
125° for 1 hour
140° for ½ hour
160° for ½ hour
170° for 1 hour
Internal temperature must reach 155° for 30 minutes.
Let the fish cool for 20 minutes, then transfer the fish, once again on racks, to the refrigerator to cool completely.
*A note about the smoke schedule: If you’re using an electronically-controlled smoker, you will be able to easily follow the schedule. As you can see, it demands relatively low temperatures for the duration. Normally, these low temperatures would be problematic for food safety, but the salinity in the brine allows for more flexibility for time and temperature. If you are using a kettle or other more primitive smoker, you will have a harder time keeping the temperatures consistent. Just be sure to get the temperature up to 160° in 2.5 hours and you will have a safe, delicious outcome.