Hot smoked pike: cooking features, recipes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Hot smoked pike is a gourmet dish for any table. Pleasant aroma, delicate taste and stunning appearance will make this dish stand out from the rest. You will learn how to smoke hot smoked pike, how to choose the right wood chips and other secrets of cooking this dish by reading this article.

Why hot smoking?

There are two ways of smoking: cold and hot. For pike, it is better to choose a hot smoking method, but why?

• Although the cold method of smoking is more harmless to the body, it also needs a special smokehouse, many simply may not have it. In addition, even if you buy it, it costs much more than a hot-smoked smokehouse.
• Time. Cold smoking takes much longer than hot smoking. When smoking pike in a hot-smoked smokehouse, it will take only 45-60 minutes to cook delicious fish.
• Color. Hot smoked pike will look more ruddy,smells more appetizing and fragrant than after cold smoking!

What do you need?

To cook hot smoked pike at home you will need:

• Pike (preferably several fish at once). It is advisable to take not too big, but not too small. The ideal weight is 2.5-3 kg. Keep in mind that you will need to cut off the head and fins of the fish.
• S alt. It all depends on how much fish you are going to smoke. For 2.5 kg of pike, you will need about 350 g of s alt.
• Seasoning for fish.
• Smokehouse. Any hot smoker will do. In hardware stores, a smokehouse can be found even for 200-300 rubles.
• Chips. This is a special fuel for the smokehouse. The choice of chips will be written below.

Choosing chips

An entire paragraph has been dedicated to describe the procedure for selecting wood chips for a reason, because they play an important role in smoking! The taste and color of our future hot-smoked pike will depend on it! In general, everyone has different tastes, and over time, a person already knows what wood chips he needs. Some people make their own, others buy. By the way, a very wide range is on sale: apricot, alder, beech, cherry, pear. The most versatile is alder, but you can also mix several types together, for example, alder with apricot. The price of wood chips is quite low, about 80 rubles per pack weighing 0.5 kg.

Cuttingfish

Now let's start describing the smoking process itself. First you need to wash our pike. Many say that the fins of the pike contain the most harmful substances and should not be eaten. Believe it or not - everyone's business, but still they will interfere and you need to get rid of them. Take a sharp knife and cut off the fins. The tail and head are also not recommended to be left, we also remove them. The next step is to take out all the innards. Of course, some smoke with the insides, but given all the dirt that accumulates there, it's better to clean it. We open the belly of the pike and take out all the insides with our hands, after which we wash the carcass. As a result, we are left with a clean fish, fully prepared for smoking.

Solim

Of course, you can pickle pike for hot smoking, but this requires more time and ingredients. S alt is not only a public product, but also cheap. It is for this reason that she should not be pitied. Mix s alt with seasoning for fish. Any seasoning will do, even the cheapest. Approximately 2 packs per 0.5 kg of s alt - the perfect ratio! Rub the fish with s alt and seasoning on all sides. It is important that you need to s alt in some kind of container, for example, in a plastic container. We put the already grated fish in a container with the top belly. It is important that the pike is laid this way, because the spine area is the thickest, and when it is lying, all the s alt will flow down, thereby falling into the thickest part. After that, sprinkle everything with s alt again. Close the container and leave it for5-8 hours. If the fish is too big and the smoker is small, you can cut the pike into small pieces to fit in the smoker. Of course, you can leave it overnight, but then it’s better to rinse the pike before smoking to remove excess s alt.

Smoking

So we came to the most long-awaited - the process of smoking. This is a whole science! So, the fish has already come up, but first you need to prepare everything in order to get a hot smoked pike. The first thing to do is to light the fire. The coals won't do, because we need an open fire. The fire should be medium, not very strong so that all the chips do not burn out at once, but not too weak so that cooking does not drag on for several hours. Next, you should place bricks next to the fire, or some other device to put the smoker over the fire. Next, you should lay out the chips in the smokehouse. There are a lot of different opinions about this: someone claims that they need to be poured only in the center, some are sure that they need to be around the edges. To choose something in between, sprinkle some wood chips all over the surface of the smoker.

It is also very important to have a drip tray available. The fact is that if there is no pallet where the fat will drain, then it will fall on the wood chips. In principle, there is no big problem in this, but then hot-smoked pike will turn out with a slight sourness, and maybe with a bitter aftertaste. But, unfortunately, there are often no pallets in cheap smokehouses for 200-300 rubles. In this case, you canuse regular food foil. We just put an even layer of foil on the surface of the wood chips so that both the smoke can pass and the fat flows there. Also, of course, you can put some aluminum dishes on the bottom.

Now let's move on to how to put the fish on the net. It should be folded in such a way that the pieces of fish do not "feel" cramped. Between the pieces there should be at least some space, small, but space. The last step is left! We close the smokehouse and put it over the fire. As soon as the smoke from the smokehouse begins to seep in, we begin to record the time! The average smoking time for fish is 45 minutes. But it all depends on the pieces and the volume of the fish. In principle, you can open the smoker every 20 minutes and check its readiness. As soon as the fish acquires a beautiful shade and is easy to separate, the pike is ready. So they smoked hot smoked pike! How easy it is, right? Remember that hot smoked foods should only be eaten after they have cooled.