Simple Smoked Trout

This is an incredibly simple method for preparing trout. It pretty much just involves, salt, smoke and a little bit of time. The great thing about this method is that it gives you a ton of options. Trout right out of the smoker is delicious and makes a wonderful meal. It also tastes great cold the next day. Leftovers can be used for dips, salads and a melange of other preparations. There are definitely a lot of versions of smoked trout or salmon that require the addition of brown sugar and spices. Those recipes are delicious as well. For this one though, I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible, not only for ease of cooking, but because we will end up with a product that lends itself towards inclusion in the greatest variety of additional recipes.

Ingredients

Whole Trout (guts and gills removed) 10-18” in length

Course Kosher Salt

Rosemary Twigs

1. Once your fish are cleaned, thoroughly rinse them in cold water. You don’t have to go crazy here, but we want to insure the body cavity is clean and to try to remove as much of the mucoprotein (slime) as you can.

2. Pat the fish dry with paper towels, inside and out.

3. Thoroughly cover the fish both internally and on the exterior with course kosher salt. Do not use regular table salt or anything with a fine grind. Salt with too fine a grind will over power the fish. Course kosher salt has a lot of surface area an works great for this particular application.

4. Place fish on a rack, in the fridge with a tray underneath. We are only leaving the fish in the fridge for about 2 hrs. The salt will remove a little moisture from the fish, season it, and help to remove the last traces of that slimy coating. This is a very simple version of a dry brine. Again, there are a lot of other recipes that involve more ingredients for a dry brine. Nothing wrong with that, but for this preparation we want simple, simple, simple.

5. After the requisite time has passed, remove the fish from the fridge and again thoroughly rinse in cold water. We want to remove as much of the salt as possible. Once that’s done pat dry with paper towels and return to the rack in the fridge. Leave the fish in the fridge for at least 3 hrs, but overnight is probably better. This is the point that we are developing a pellicle on the fish. That just means that as the fish dries a bit in the refrigerator a tacky coating will develop. That’s what the smoke will stick too.

6. Now its time to smoke the fish. We are looking for a consistent temp of around 215. You can use any wood you would like, but I highly recommend you use a mild one. I’m a big fan of fruit woods when smoking. This time I used cherry. Before you place the fish in the smoker skewer them with the rosemary twigs in two places in the belly flaps. This will allow you to position the fish with their split bellies open, which in turn will allow better smoke penetration. If you dont have rosemary in your garden just use toothpicks or bamboo skewers. The rosemary is a nice option though as it will absolutely impart some wonderful subtle flavors and char to the finished product. Smoke for 2-3 hours depending on the size of your fish. All of my trout were in the 10-14” range so I ran the smoker for about 2.5 hrs with the biggest fish on the rack closet to the heat source.

7. That’s it. You have beautiful smoked trout that can be enjoyed any number of ways. For this batch I served it simply with brown rice and blistered asparagus. I flaked the meat off of the fish that weren’t eaten right away and vacuumed sealed it. The meat will keep in the freezer for some time,but I plan to use it in the next few weeks.