How to cook cold-smoked fish

Humanity made a great leap forward when he invented methods of food preservation. Smoking is one of the ways of preserving food. Thus it is possible to keep the prey in field conditions with a minimum of tools and supplies. There are two ways of Smoking: cold and hot.

You will need

• • fish;
  • coarse salt;
  • the wood of deciduous breeds of a tree.

Instruction

1. Prepare the fish: gut it, rinse and put in a bowl, sprinkling salt based – 1.5 kg salt for 10 kg of product. In salt, you can add a little sugar, it will improve the taste of the finished product. Add your favorite spices: pepper, aromatic herbs. Cover the fish in a flat dish, press down with something heavy and leave in brine for 3-5 days, depending on the size of the fish.
2. Remove the fish from the brine and rinse: fine in running water for 1-2 hours, and the larger you can soak up to a day. Then the fish need podvyalit: small assemble on the string pieces 5-6, stringing them through the eyes. Large it is better to tie the tail and hung head down. Take out the fish to dry in the open air. Make sure that the fish are weather-beaten from all sides, if necessary, insert the bellies of the wooden struts to the inside, too, everything was dry.
3. After 2-3 days podsushennouu and dried fish hang in the smoker and start Smoking: the coals should smolder and smoke, avoid open flames. Make sure that the smoke remained within 25 degrees, otherwise, it's hot. The Smoking process is very delicate, almost impossible to get the same results, even if you really aspire to. The taste of the final product depends on the smoke, and that, in turn, depends on the wood, weather and many other factors. Smoking is a process that requires constant attention, because you need us to maintain the heat in the coals.
4. Smoking take the wood of deciduous woods, conifers are not suitable for Smoking, it contain too much of resinous substances, the resulting products are gaining bitterness. Birch is suitable for Smoking, but it is necessary to remove the bark, otherwise the tar settles on the product. Southerners for Smoking products try to use the wood of fruit trees: they enrich the taste of smoked meat with their aroma. That is why by the end of the Smoking it is recommended to add the charcoal branches of trees with fragrant wood or spicy grass. For example, the juniper smoke has disinfecting properties and has a wonderful aroma.