Smoking fish, particularly cold-smoking, is a great starter project; it’s not only the sense of achievement in doing it, but it has a fairly large cost saving.
I’ll cover the procedures in another post but for now let’s look at the types of fish that are often smoked.
Salmon
Firstly, the fish that many would think is the king (or queen?) of smoking – Salmon. In the UK this will often be farmed salmon, wild is better but far more expensive.
It’s worthy to note that salmon is is sold hot smoked, or cold smoked.
Trout
Like salmon, this is hot smoked, or cold smoked. Hot smoked trout is one of my favourite smoked fish.
Herring
Until overfishing led to a ban on commercial herring fishing in the UK it was a very common, and cheap, fish. Massive amounts of it were salted in barrels to preserve it, and it was also smoked. Regrettably, most smoked herring in the UK is made from imported fish. There are many ways of preparing smoked herring; the three main ones are:
- Buckling – the fish have their heads cut off and are gutted except for any roe. They are then hot smoked.
- Bloater – the fish are left whole, guts and all, and are cold smoked.
- KIpper – the fish are split along their backbones and opened in a ‘butterfly’ style. They are then cold smoked.
Mackerel
In some respects, the new kid on the block, although, I’ve no doubt that it was commonplace when smoking was done to preserve the catch. It became popular in the 1970’s as it was cheap and made a nice pté.It is hot smoked.
Eel
A real delicacy that’s hot smoked. Thankfully, it’s rarely seen now as eel stocks are so low.
Haddock
Fillets are usually cold smoked. The most famous is Finnan haddock, or Finnan haddie, from the village of Findon in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
A lot of commercially produced ‘smoked’ haddock is made with a yellow dye and smoke flavouring.
Making your own ensures the job is done properly!
Some haddock are hot smoked; Arbroath smokies from the town of the same name in Angus, Scotland are the best known and have PGI Status.
Other white fish
Cod, coley and Atlantic pollock are aalso cold smoked; the last two are a cheaper alternative to smoked haddock and are great in things like fish pie.
Cod’s Roe
Cold smoked cod’s roe makes an excellent version of taramosalata. It looks ugly be taastes superb.
Other posts about smoing food:
Recipe Index created by Visual Recipe Index