Many people like eat salmon，normally you see it is raw, but not a raw, it just cured to prevent bacteria growth. Sometimes it will smoked after cured and also taste good. So herewith, I will share both cured and smoked method for you. Again, we only do hot smoke at home, there are many incidents occurred in other counties. But, if you have smoking gun, you can use it for smoking fish around 15 minutes too.
Practically, we better select middle portion, which is after belly and before tail, it’s the thickness part and easy to cut, of course, you can process the whole salmon as well.
材料 (Ingredients) ：
三文魚 (Salmon fillet)
鹽 (Kosher Salt)
蔗糖 (Raw sugar)
黑胡椒 (Black pepper)
時蘿 (Dill)
紅菜頭 (beet root) [optional]
做法 （Method) :
1. 先量度魚肉的淨重量，準備 5%鹽、及5%糖
Measure the net weight of salmon fillet
2. 清洗三文魚，印乾，準備好密封袋，放入三文魚，加入鹽、蔗糖、黑胡椒粒、時蘿香草，並平均地塗上三文魚上
Wash it, dry it and prepare a vacuum bag, put the salmon, add salt, sugar, black pepper and dill, rubbed all in the salmon equally
3. 密封好，放入雪櫃3天，每天翻一次
vacuum seal the bag and put in the refrigerator for 3 days, flip it over every day
4. 取出後，放在冰水浸1小時
soak it in the water for an hour
5. 印乾後，如想生吃，這樣就可以切薄片了。
dry it then you can cut it into slices and enjoy it if you wanna eat raw
醃好後生吃的魚片外國人也喜愛三文魚配藍莓醬吃
6. 要是存放在雪櫃，準備2張牛油紙，把切好的魚片平放在牛油紙上，把另一張放上面，然後折合四邊，再放在密實袋存放，這樣魚片就不會變乾了。
You can store it in the refrigerator as well, prepare 2 baking paper, put the salmon slices one by one and cover another baking paper over it, then flip over 4 edges and put it in the ziplock back for storage, then the salmon will still moisture itself.
7. 不喜歡生吃，可以選擇煙燻 (15-25分鐘) 或低溫慢煮(54度，30分鐘)也可以。
If you don’t like eat raw, you can process for smoking (15-25 minutes) or sous vide (54 degress, 30 minutes) as well.
We mentioned smoking after cured for the next few posts, why need so? since cured meat is still raw, it’s not cooked, cured meat just prevent bacteria growth on the meat, other than fish, other meats not prefer to eat raw, so better cook it or smoke it afterwards.
煙燻食物在西方國家比較普遍、多樣化及復雜，但中式煙燻卻簡單得多。
Smoked meat is more familiar in western countries, it’s more fun and complicated, but it’s just only one style for chinese smoking method.
First talk about western one, there are two smoking method, hot smoke and cold smoke, dry smoking and wet smoking; hot smoke temperature around 100-130 degree and cold smoke around 60-90 degree. However, we suggested you to process hot smoke at home only since the temperature is high, it can killed bacteria; Alternatively, cold smoke meats require professional equipment and wide knowledge of techniques, cold smoke meats also require long time to process and the temperature of cold smoke meats caused bacteria growth rapidly during the time being, so it is very dangerous to do so at home, it will killed you. So once again, it is so important that don’t try to cold smoke meats at home, if any accident happened, I will not take any responsibility, none of my business at all. However, you can try to cold smoking cheese, nuts, paprika etc, this is relatively low risk.
Dry smoking means without any liquid, just use wood and/or coal; on the other hand, wet smoking will add some alcoholic drinks that flavouring and tendering the meats .
In western countries, also have another method called smokeless meat, which is a liquid smoke, it is a concentrated smoke comes from real smoked wood in the water, it’s good for those people without smoker at home, you can find in high grade supermarket in Hong Kong, but I can found one flavour for sale only. This liquid smoke used to inject the liquid inside the meat, it will have smoked flavour, normally will use for sous vide and bake cooking method. However, liquid smoke also widely use in factory for bacon, they are just machine spray the liquid in the surface of pork belly, so what you buy from supermarket, the bacon is raw as well.
這就是煙燻液體，在香港一大型超市才有售，但亦只有一款木材味道而已
然而中式煙燻一般只是短暫進行，材料一般只是白飯、糖及茶葉，所以煙燻的味道是淡淡表面的。
Chinese smoke food just a temporary flavour since it’s smoke about 15 -20 minutes only, normally using cooked rice, sugar and tea leaves for smoking flavour.
近年也興起煙燻槍，由於煙燻槍只是一陣子的煙霧，所以味道一瞬間就會消失，這只是餐廳的小把戲而已。
Recently, smoking gun also popular in the market, it’s just a smoke cloud a very short time before serving the food, so there’s only a minutes flavour only, I can say it’s just a toy or show off for restaurant.
Many people think that smoking food must process in outdoor with kettle grill or desktop smoker, but it is not, you can do it using smoked meat without grilling, so the meat not comes out with black colour only, if so, if you are doing wet smoking, it will not becomes crispy skin, better put to the oven for roasting it until skin turn brown . Smoked meat is very popular in other countries, so they have stove top smoker for sale, it’s not really messy but safe.
There are many kinds of woods for smoking in western countries, for this stove top smoker, we are using wood chips, not the whole wood and come with 2 common wood chips in the box. Just explain the most popular woods below that you can reference for and select your favourite flavour for smoking of your meats.
We talk about pasta and bread in earlier posts, but better having it with some curing meats, then more perfect, right? In Hong Kong, many people will eat with chicken sausage or spam, etc, it really unhealthy meal.
Curing meats are unhealthy food in most of the people’s mindset, if you buy from supermarket, yes, of course, it is unhealthy, it’s because all factories are added large amount of salt for curing meat that can extend it’s freshness, and also add sodium nitrite (pink salt) to ensure the colour of the meat and artificial flavourings. No matter package one or from Deli department.
In fact, there are many people made their own cured meats in foreign countries, not prefer to buy in supermarket. Well, maybe you will think that they have a big house, of course they can do it. However, just use some space for your refrigerator can do so.
Actually curing is very easy, but you have to be patient for waiting the curing occurred. You can enjoy it after cured for some meats, but most of the meats have to do smoking, steam or cook afterwards, I will deeply talk in individual posts later.
There are two curing methods : dry cure and wet cure (brine)。Dry cure can use salt and/or with other flavourings; wet cure (brine) require to use a warm water with salt and other flavourings, but both are the same results at the end.
About the curing salt, the best is kosher salt, you can easy to find in high grade supermarket in Hong Kong, only HK$4x, but can use many times. On the other hand, we only use brown sugar or raw sugar for curing.
There are two very important points that you have to aware of. First, clean your hands, all the equipments and utensils throughly before process curing to make sure the food hygiene. Secondly, even you are operating a restaurant, unless you have the "Food Factory Licence", otherwise, all homemade meats not allow for sale or provide in your restaurant, only can be enjoy the food yourself and/or share among families and friends.
溫馨小廚 