Title: Smoking Salmon and Trout Part Xvii - Freezing Fish
Categories: Seafood Smoke Info
Yield: 1 Text file

Home freezers are good for storing frozen fish but not _freezing_ fish. Fish should be quick frozen- in under 2 hours. However freezing water throws off a lot of heat which must be removed by the system. Home freezers do not generally have circulating fans to carry this heat to the refrigeration coils. 5 lbs of wet fish will raise the temp of 100 lb of already stored frozen fish by 14 deg. The already frozen fish act as a heat sink for the freezing wet fish until the system can carry away the excess heat.

Also as water begins to freeze inside the fish at 30 deg the minerals and salt in the fish concentrate in the remaining water causing an antifreeze effect until the temp drops to 23 deg F. Slow freezing allows large ice crystals to develop which damage the connective tissues of the fish and there is excessive moisture loss upon thawing.

How to improve home freezing: ~1- Never freeze more than 5% of capacity at any one time. ~2- Place wet fish as close as possible to the cooling coils. ~3- Freeze fish in the freezer compartment of the fridge which does have a circulating fan and use the deep freezer only for storing already frozen product. ~4- Make a heat sink of containers of eutectic ice which freezes and thaws at 0 deg F. That way the freezing wet fish will drop to 0 quickly and the other already frozen products will not rise above 0 as the fresh fish freeze. ~5- Put the fish to be frozen in poly bags and add both the fish and the eutectic containers in a container of brine. The water in the brine transfers heat faster than air. Extracted from: Smoking Salmon & Trout by Jack Whelan. Published by: Airie Publishing, Deep Bay, B.C. ISBN: 0-919807-00-3 Posted by: Jim Weller

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