How to Make Hot Smoked Salmon

How to Make Hot Smoked Salmon Hi, Chef John from FoodWishes.com with an idea here for what to do after your Fourth of July barbecue. We’re going to do hot, smoked salmon and we’re basically using the leftover coals from your hotdogs and your hamburgers and your tri-tip, and whatever you did barbecuing but you got to think ahead. Alright, soak these wood chips overnight. Minimum, minimum one hour in the water, otherwise, you will start on fire and you have all kinds of noxious fumes and you don’t want that. So soak some woods chips. What I did I did is I made a little kind of pan, out of four or five layers of heavy duty aluminum foil. I tried to make it about the same size as the salmon and I just cramp up the edges so that’s pretty easy to do. I should have filmed that but then you can do it. Its not very complicated just fold up some foil, alright? And what you’re going to there, I put on two I don’t know five, six ounces of wild Alaskan salmon, skin side down. Just a little salt and pepper and let that come to room temperature, okay? You don’t want this ice cold. Now what I mean by using leftover coals, the chicken had been barbecued, the tri-tips long since been eaten, hotdogs, hamburgers, some crazy hippies even grilled some garden burgers on here. Anyway, we’re done and the coals are almost burnt out but not quite, there’s some heat. Now, see they're completely white. They’re on their last legs. So what you do is you push them all the way to the sides and by the way, I’m using my beautiful 15-year-old weber grill here. And I took about two handfuls of those very well soaked chips. Now traditionally, you want to use a sweet wood like an apple wood, or a hickory, here in Northern California there are some people who are using the grape vines and use what you want. So you’re going to put about two handfuls of those soaked chips around and in the middle of those coals. Put the grill back on. Now when you first put the chips on, you’re going to think you have smoke but you don’t, you have steam. And steam is not what you what right away, so give it about five or six minutes. See that steam and then all the sudden water, the drippy water will be gone and they’re still be wet but now they’re going to start to smoke and you can smell it. You can actually smell when that starts to happen. As soon as you can smell that smoke and see a good amount of smoke being generated, grab your salmon and you’re simply just going to slide it off the plate into the center of that grill. That’s why we pushed all the coals to the side. We don’t want to hit direct heat. We want this to cook kind of slow. We want this to take about you know 12 or 15 minutes. If it cooks too fast, and we’re just going to bake salmon and it won’t absorb the smoke close the dents. Alright close the vents, we’ll have this go nice and slow. By the way, I did clean the top of the grill just like I said it’s about 15 years old and it doesn’t look nice but it’s okay. Alright, so take the lid off. That was after about five minutes. I just want to peek. It wasn’t done, put it back on. Alright, it’s been about 10 minutes. Now, I’m going to start to check more often. I feel it with my finger, it’s starting to get to warm but I can tell it’s still not cooked, it’s almost there. You see it’s starting to flake a little bit. By the way, when you’re smoking or barbecuing, and you hear fire engines sounds like they’re starting to pull up your house, that’s never a good sign. Think out it was the neighbor. So anyway, I’ll put the lid back on to set a couple more minutes and then it was done. See, I can feel the salmon is actually kind of hot. The juices and oils have come to the top. I am going to take that off and here’s where I kind of screwed up. This shot was way too tight. What I did is I took the plate and the thongs and I just slid it back on there. So let me cheat here. Let me reverse the shot of me putting it on the grill. And again, the thongs are actually on the other side but use your imagination. Just slide it back on your plate. Another good reason and make sure you have at least four or five layers of foil doubled up. I serve it simply, so you see smoke hot smoked salmon very rich, that smoke flavor really permeates. Salmon, as you know is oily and delicious fish. Those oils are great for you by the way. So just a squeeze of fresh lemon, some greens, some of my lime and chipotle, sweet potatoes, I was in heaven. So this came out really, really nice. I was extremely happy with it. By the way, go to the blog, read the article the difference between hot and cold smoking. Anyway, have a great holiday and enjoy.