[BigV]

Darned if I can find any of the conversations I've had with y'all on this topic. Were *all* of them in my head?

I have a new (to me) smoker. It's a lovely offset firebox unit from New Braunfels. I've gotten many meals from it, and today's feast is salmon jerky.

I bought a couple of medium/small Copper River sockeyes from The Fish Co. down the street. I wanted to make strips, so I got whole fish and cut inch-ish wide strips the length of the fish. This was a LOT harder to do than I expected. Also (flippin rookie mistake) I checked but failed to discern that the fish were NOT scaled until I'd already filleted them. Crap. So, the strips took a thrashing as I scaled the narrow strips. They're kind of ugly. Anyhow, I'd also intended to hang them in pairs and smoke them vertically so I kept pairs of them intact at the top. I'd intended to hang them like hand dipped candles. But, I changed my mind when I realized how much crap I'd have to macguyver to mate the two smokers (the other one is a Brinkman's Bullet).

I made a marinade of two pounds of brown sugar, one pound of non iodized salt, a cup of teriyaki sauce, a cup of ginger liqueur and salt and pepper and enough water to cover the fish. It made about eight inches in my five gallon food bucket. I let it marinate at room temperature overnight.

This morning, I despaired of smoking because the weather forecast was for a high of 63 and showers. It looked like that until midday when the sun broke out. I then moved to the backyard and started a chimney of mesquite lump charcoal in the chimney starter. I came back in and took the strips out of the bucket and laid them on the oven rack which I'd placed over the sink.

At this point I'd previously just tossed the chunks (not strips) into the smoker, but recipes I'd read told me that the development of the "PELLICLE" was very important to the quality of the finished product. I have to admit that the warnings were strong enough to overcome my usual impatience as I waited and patted dry and bathed them in the wash of hot air from the blow dryer until I could detect the presence of the shiny tacky sealed surface on the fish, or at least on most of the fish. This meant I could load the smoker a bit at a time. and I did working from the coldest part of the racks furthest from the firebox and working my way toward the firebox.

There were pictures along the way, but I'm in the middle of a picture/camera/computer crisis so, you'll have to wait for those. The strips have been on the smoker for an hour or so at this point, I might risk another picture soon.