How To Smoke Perfect Salmon

It might be the middle of winter, but it is never too early to day-dream about grilling/smoking some incredible meats.

Today we are going to talk about how to smoke salmon on an electric, or propane smoker. In this brief post, I will share the easy to follow steps, to guarantee top-end results.

Step One:
You will need to clean the fish. This means that you will need to debone the salmon. If you are a little short on time, or uncomfortable with this step, you can find deboned salmon in your local grocery store/meat counter.

Step Two:
Gently rinse the salmon under cold water, and pad the fillet dry.

Step Three:
Prepare your Brine. Typically speaking you want to mix together 2 cups of brown sugar, with 1 cup of Salt.

Step Four:
Apply the Brine.
Plastic wrap the tray. Try and get as much air our as possible
Place the Salmon in the fridge for 8 hours.
Take out and rinse off the brine.
Let the salmon sit at room temperature for 2 hours.

Step 5:
Prepare your smoker, with mild flavored wood chips. For Salmon, I prefer cherry, however alder or hickory will also do.

Step 6:
Preheat your smoker to 150-160 degrees F

Step 7:
Put the salmon into the smoker, and be certain that your temperature does not exceed 170 degrees F.

Step 8:
After 90 minutes of cook time, apply your marinade. (There are hundreds of delicious marinades, I will allow you to do your own homework on this).

Step 9:
After an additional 30 minutes of smoking (120 minutes total) your salmon will be done!

Step 10:
Let the salmon rest for roughly 10 minutes, and enjoy that damn good meat!!