Smoked fish at home.

Homemade smoking of fish can be cold or hot. The very process of smoking is accompanied by the impregnation of the fish with smoke. Before you start smoking fish at home, you first need to understand the technology of the process, and only then make it yourself or purchase the necessary equipment.

Regardless of the method of smoking, it is desirable to treat the fish (clean from the entrails and cut out the gills) and treat with salt. Salt treatment is an interesting process, as each person produces it according to his prescription. Some people kilogram of fish are salted with one tablespoon of salt, others with 10 tablespoons, however, each according to one's taste.

In order to understand the necessary amount of salt, you need experience, tests and learn from your mistakes. However, no one bans learning from other people's mistakes. A sign of salting is the accumulation of salt under the scales of smoked fish. In cases with oily fish, a sign of salting is the destruction of its tissue, as well as a rusty color.

It is correct to smoke fish at home in a hot way in special ovens, where the temperature is + 50 ° C, for 30 minutes. Signs of the readiness of fish is its golden color, it becomes friable. Exceeding the temperature regime leads to the destruction of fish (from it flows fat). Bitter taste and viscosity means that you do not dig up or spoil the fish.

Cold smoking of fish at home is done for many hours, and even days. Here, smoke is primarily important, high temperatures are inappropriate. After completing the smoking process, the fish should be hung in the shade for a couple of days.

In both ways, the smoking of fish at home must, in accordance with the measures for disinfection of fish from various parasites. The traditional way of decontamination is keeping the fish in a saline solution for several days.

To make smoking fish at home, first of all you need a stove. The design of the oven is quite simple: grilles are placed on top, on which the fish lay or hang. For fire, trees that are not tarry must be used. After heating the oven, the fish should be placed on the grilles, put out the fire and close the chimney. To give the fish specific taste qualities on the coals, it is possible to add sawdust of alder, wormwood or other herbs. After that, the oven closes for the required time, and the fish is smoked until ready.

In our time, portable tin cans for smoking fish are more popular. Their design is very similar to the construction of stationary furnaces for smoking fish. They differ in that on the bottom are placed sawdust of different types of trees and with the help of a burner or a fire sawdust begins to smolder. This is the beginning of the process of soaking the fish with smoke.

Smoking fish at home in a hot way can lead to fish burning. Therefore, care should be taken to reheat the oven or tin box. It is also necessary to control the humidity of the chamber, if necessary open the lid of the oven.

The cold process of smoking fish has a duration: before laying the fish, the sawdust is kindled and the stove is removed from the fire. After full cooling, the oven is put on fire again, but not for a long time, so that the fish can not bake. This process takes several days. With a cold smoking method, it is best that the smoke does not stay in the smoking chamber, but rather go out. It is also desirable that the chamber where the sawdust is burned is separate from the smoking chamber. However, in order to become a real master in smoking fish, you need sufficient experience.