Smoked Herring
Ingredients:
- Fresh Herrings (the bigger the better)
- Salt – 65 g (2.3 oz) per liter/quart of water
- Allspice – 7 grains per liter of water
- Bay leaf – 5 leaves per liter water
Brining:
To ensure adequate salt uptake you need to prepare 1.5 of brine to 1 part of fish by weight.
- Boil small amount of water with spices for few minutes and let it cool down. When cold, add cold water to arrive at desired volume and add salt.
- Place cleaned fish in prepared brine and marinade for 2 hours. Keep in room temperature.
Drying:
- After 2 hours rinse the fish in cold water and preferably hang or place on racks.
- Keep the fish in the room temperature for drying until the appearance of pellicle, slightly tacky skin surface. Use toothpicks to keep the bellies of fish open.
Smoking:
- Preheat smoker to 40°C (105°F) and place fish in the smoker.
- Dry for another 30 minutes in the smoker without smoke.
Smoke with Alder wood, using medium density smoke. Optionally add juniper berries to the last load of wood chips.
- After drying increase temperature to 50° (120° F)and smoke for 3 hours
- To finish increase smoker temperature to 80°C (175° F) and smoke until internal meat temperature reaches 60° C (140° F)
Cool down in the air and finish in the fridge for several hours.
At this point the fish is ready for consumption.
Fish can also be vacuum packaged and frozen for longer storage.