Smoked Salmon

I'm a lucky girl!  One of my husbands clients recently took a fishing trip to Alaska and brought him a big bag of salmon filets!
The other weekend it was finally over 0 degrees so we started up the grill and decided to smoke some salmon.
Actually it all started the day before I put the salmon in a brine, and that consisted of:

*1Cup water
*1 Cup brown sugar
* 1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
* 1/3 Cup Kosher Salt
And some extra Syrup for basting


What you want to do is mix all those ingredients and place into a plastic container or plastic ziplock bag then add your fish.

You would want to have that marinade for 24 hours.

After that 24 hours is up it's time to start the smoking process.

But first place your fish on a metal grate, such as a cooling rack and pat it dry.  It needs to dry out, don't worry the fish won't go bad it's filled with all that salt now. Let it dry for an hour.

We used our wood burning grill, get your grill warmed up to 100 degrees.  We used maple wood to smoke the fish.

Start cooking your fish scale side down , shut your grill lid (DUH!) and let that go for 2 hours, brush with more syrup and crank it up to 140 degrees.
Repeat the first step brush with syrup and cook for another 2 hours
Guess what time it is!?  Nope not time to eat it.  Time to baste with syrup and crank up to 175 degrees, cook for 2 more hours!
Are you drooling yet?!  I was!
Yeah once those 2 hours are up it's time to grub!

I make a plate with the delicious smoked salmon, an aged Irish Cheddar and Sour Dough bread we just ripped apart and devoured.

Delicious!