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SD2OR with a trophy fall walleye

Topic: Wet brining?  (Read 2310 times)

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Tinker

  • Sturgeon
  • *******
  • Kevin
  • Location: 42.74°N 124.5°W
  • Date Registered: May 2013
  • Posts: 3304
I've always used a dry brine for salmon but getting the salt content right is tricky (and I don't catch enough salmon to experiment on).  Thought I might try a wet brine because they appear to allow me to better control finished saltiness by soaking time but I don't understand wet brining, and while I've found a lot of brine recipes, I haven't found a "Brining for Dummies" explanation of how it works.

Anyone have a suggestion for where I might look?  Online, please.  Anatomical references aren't necessary.
« Last Edit: August 22, 2020, 04:11:37 AM by Tinker »
I expected the worst, but it was worse than I expected...


pmmpete

  • Sturgeon
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  • Location: Missoula, Montana
  • Date Registered: Jul 2013
  • Posts: 1989
The experts on food preservation at university extension services are a reliable source of information about how to produce safe smoked fish.  See, for example, https://seafood.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/snic/smoking-fish-at-home-safely.pdf and https://eatwisconsinfish.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/preservation_HomeSmokingFish.pdf.  There is a comprehensive article on making smoking brines at https://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-making/curing/making-brine.  Kummok posted instructions for smoking salmon and his wet brine recipe on the Bradley Smoker forum at http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=107.0; this turned into a mammoth thread.  There is an excellent collection of brine recipes in the book "Smoking Salmon and Steelhead" by Scott and Tiffany Haugen.  I posted some pictures of the process I follow for smoking fish at https://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=21999.msg230191#msg230191.

Each recipe for fish smoking brine contains a different concentration of salt, and as a result, the brine recipes specify widely different times for soaking fish.  Even if you follow the instructions in a recipe, there is a considerable trial and error process required to find out how long to soak a particular kind and size of fish in a particular brine recipe to produce smoked fish with the exact degree of saltiness which you prefer.  You will produce a couple of batches which are way too salty, or which are too bland, before you determine the length of time to soak a particular kind of fish in the brine from a particular recipe. To reduce that trial and error process, I adjust the amount of salt in my brine recipes to produce a brine with a concentration of 60 degrees salometer, which is a moderately salty brine which requires only a few hours of soaking, depending on the size of the fish fillets.  With these adjusted recipes, the soaking time is the same for each size of fish. I explained the process I use to adjust my fish smoking brines at http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=33157.msg387368#msg387368. Each time you smoke fish, keep notes about the brine recipe and the length of time that you soaked the fish, so you can learn from your experiences.  As George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I put my adjusted fish brine recipes on an Excel spreadsheet, so to produce a batch of brine, all I need to do is enter the number of cups of brine I want to produce and hit tab. This avoids the irritating calculations necessary to adjust the quantities in a brine recipe. 

Here are a couple of my favorite brine recipes, with the quantities required to produce three cups of brine.  The first is an adjusted version of Kummok's salmon brine recipe:

Water 2.4 cups
Teriaki sauce .6 cups
Salt 3.8 oz.
Brown sugar 4.8 oz.
Garlic powder .9 tsp
Cayenne 1.35 tsp

The recipe below is an adjusted version of the Sweet Teriaki recipe from the Haugen book:

Water 2 cups
Teriaki .7 cups
Molasses 1/4 cup
Salt 3.3 oz.
Brown Sugar .7 cups

Here are examples of the brining times which I use with these recipes:

8"-10" kokanee fillets - 1 hour 30 minutes
14"-17" rainbow fillets - two hours 15 minutes
15"-18" kokanee fillets - two hours 45 minutes
20"-24" lake trout fillet pieces - 3 hours 20 minutes

« Last Edit: August 22, 2020, 09:23:31 AM by pmmpete »


Tinker

  • Sturgeon
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  • Location: 42.74°N 124.5°W
  • Date Registered: May 2013
  • Posts: 3304
Thank you, Peter.
I expected the worst, but it was worse than I expected...