Title: The Art of Smoking - Part 5 - Fish
Categories: Smoke Seafood
Yield: 1 Servings

Cleaning: Remove exterior slime and scales. With catfish, bullheads and other fish that have no scales, remove the slime, but leave the skin on.. With most fish, cut the belly open, remove guts and throroughly clean the body cavity. Small fish may be gibbed.

Trimming and Cutting: For small fish that are to be smoked in the round, leave fins and tails on, and the head, too, for convenience in handling and hanging up. For a big fish, cut off the fins and tail. If it is to be cut in halves, fillets or chunks, remove the head.

If the fish is to be split, lay it on one side, start at the head and, with the knife scraping the top of the backbone, cut it in half. For small and medium-sized fish, leave a strip of back or belly skin intact, holding the halves together. Then, after smoking, the halves can be folded back into their original position to look like a whole fish for serving.

For bigger fish, separate the halves. Make another lengthwise cut just under the backbone, and remove the bone. Then cut the halves lengthwise into fillets or crosswise into chunks for processing.

Brining: Put the fish or pieces in the Basic Fish Brine, preferably at a fairly cool temperature. In very hot weather, keep the brine cool by haning in it a plastic bag of ice cubes. Put a plate or some other flat object on top of the fish to keep it submerged. Leave it for a time proportional to its weight. In brining of more than 2 hours, overhaul once.

Rinsing, Drying: Take the fish from the brine and rinse BRIEFLY in fresh water. Hang it up or lay it on racks to dry in a cool, airy place, screened from flies, while the pellicle

forms. Omitting the procedure will produce the harmless phenomenon of a white liquid oozing from the surface. This is not in any way harmful or unpleasant. It is a mixture of tasty, nutritious protein substances that normally form the pellicle. Do not try to remove this secretion. Simply let it solidify on the surface of the fish. This will necessitate a longer period of smoking, since the oven then has to draw more moisture out of the fish.

Smoking Times and Temperatures: Cold Smoking - not above 85 F - is generally favored for fish that are to be preserved for a long time. A preliminary period of cold-smoking may also be given, to impart a stronger smoke flavor to fish that are later to be hot-smoked.

Hot Smoking - between 85 and 250 F - is in effect a cooking process. Hot-smoked fish are usually intended to be eaten immediately or, at most, to be kept for 2 or 3 weeks under refrigeration.

Fish that are to be canned should be given a fairly brief smoking, just enough to give the desired flavor and color. Canning seems to intensify the smoke flavor, and anyway, the cooking will be completed during the canning and sterilization process.

A good variant flavor may be obtained by sprinkling pepper on the fish immediately before it is put into the smoker. General Instructions - The smoke oven should be at 75 to 85 F and the smoke generator in action by the time the fish is dried. Hang the fish or put it on the racks in the oven. If using racks, grease or oil them lightly, so that the fish does not stick. Note the time. Allow a period of cold-smoking proportional to the strength of smoke flavor desired. Then raise the oven temperature to 125 to 150 F. Check smoke density periodically. Test fish to see when it is done. Note the time required for complete cooking.

Storage: Remove and serve; or, if the fish is to be stored, let it cool, wrap tightly in metal foil or waxed paper, and refrigerate at once.

Most smoked fish should not be frozen. Admittedly, freezing prevents decay, but, on thawing, the fish may be found to have lost much of its flavor, and to have acquired an unpleasant, pulpy texture. The only smoked fish that can be successfully frozen is a hard-smoked one

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