Garlic and brining?

Hi All,

A friend of mine says he loves Garlic on his trout.
I would rather not waste a pan of good trout
trying this out. Any one have an comments?

Also, would you bother brining them?

Many thanks,
-T

My typical recipe: olive oil, butter, rosemary,
salt, pepper

"Todd" wrote in message ...

A friend of mine says he loves Garlic on his trout.
I would rather not waste a pan of good trout
trying this out. Any one have an comments?
Also, would you bother brining them?
. . .
My typical recipe: olive oil, butter, rosemary,
salt, pepper

1. You can try garlic in other forms, e.g. garlic
bread, garlic in spaghetti sauce, and thus decide
whether you want to try it on trout. The main question
is whether you want to taste trout (enhanced by being
rubbed beforehand with garlic) or trout and garllic
(two flavours combined.)

2. Brining is prerequisite to smoking (strong brine
for cold smoke, mild brine for hot smoke). Before
other cooking methods, it seems likely to make
the food too salty.

Why both olive oil and butter? (I prefer bacon fat to
either for pan-fried trout, but fry eggs etc. in OO
rather than butter.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

On 7-Sep-2009, "Don Phillipson" wrote:

Brining is prerequisite to smoking (strong brine
for cold smoke, mild brine for hot smoke). Before

I make a nice mild brine and smoke my trout 3-6 hrs
Lemon and garlic in various forms are essentail ingredients
I will sometimes use a little soy sauce as a partial salt substitute

I have a sceret recipe for smoking including some whiskey
Its a big hit!

We also cook w olive oil -
We can try to replace the fat comtent w olive oil
but sometimes its worth it to add a little butter just for flavoring

I would like to know more anout cold smoing
Can you elaborate a bit - ?
I tried it w some sockeye salmon (lox) but then I was afraid it would be
undercooked or smoked so I smoked them as normal a for a litte less time
I would like to know more about and have more confidence in cold smokimg?

Fred

On Sep 7, 4:24*pm, "Fred" wrote:
On *7-Sep-2009, "Don Phillipson" wrote:

Brining is prerequisite to smoking (strong brine
for cold smoke, mild brine for hot smoke). *Before

I make a nice mild brine and smoke my trout 3-6 hrs
Lemon and garlic in various forms are essentail ingredients

Brining may be a prerequisite and lemon and garlic may be essential
ingredients......to suit some palates, but none of the above is needed
for any practical reasons. While there are virtually infinite
delicious methods and ingredients and recipes for preparing trout,
none of them is necessary for any reasons other than suiting
individual tastes. Personally, I prefer smoking to all other methods
for trout.....and I like simplest best. Just trout and warm hickory
smoke for an hour or so.

g.

On Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:22:26 -0700, Todd wrote:

Hi All,

A friend of mine says he loves Garlic on his trout.
I would rather not waste a pan of good trout
trying this out. Any one have an comments?

UM, OK - I like garlic, lots in/on some things, a little on others, and none on
some things. I don't know if you like garlic or in what amount you might like
it and on what. I think a little garlic on all but the mildest of fish dishes
can be good, but you might not.

Also, would you bother brining them?

It would depend on the "cooking" method. With a simple and quick pan-saute in
some form of fat, brining isn't necessary nor will it help an appreciable
amount.

Many thanks,
-T

My typical recipe: olive oil, butter, rosemary,
salt, pepper

HTH,
R

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009 16:03:06 -0400, "Don Phillipson"
wrote:

"Todd" wrote in message ...

A friend of mine says he loves Garlic on his trout.
I would rather not waste a pan of good trout
trying this out. Any one have an comments?
Also, would you bother brining them?
. . .
My typical recipe: olive oil, butter, rosemary,
salt, pepper

1. You can try garlic in other forms, e.g. garlic
bread, garlic in spaghetti sauce, and thus decide
whether you want to try it on trout. The main question
is whether you want to taste trout (enhanced by being
rubbed beforehand with garlic) or trout and garllic
(two flavours combined.)

2. Brining is prerequisite to smoking (strong brine
for cold smoke, mild brine for hot smoke). Before
other cooking methods, it seems likely to make
the food too salty.

Why both olive oil and butter? (I prefer bacon fat to
either for pan-fried trout, but fry eggs etc. in OO
rather than butter.)

Typically, using both butter and olive oil can serve one or both of two
purposes. There are a couple of practical reasons: olive oil has a higher
smoke point than (unclarified) butter, and so, heating a pan, putting in some
olive oil, and then, some butter is less likely to "burn." Also, you can do the
saute with the OO, and then, after the saute is complete, if you are making a
"pan sauce," the butter can be used at the end to thicken and enrich the sauce,
ala a beurre blanc, etc. The latter is ties into the second reason - taste and
mouth feel.

The former practical reason is one reason to clarify butter, ala ghee, etc., as
it is the milk solids that cause the butter to "burn"/brown at lower temps,
although this browning characteristic is also intentionally used, where this
browning is intended as part of the dish/sauce - beurre noisette/noir.

HTH,
R

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009 21:24:06 GMT, "Fred" wrote:


On 7-Sep-2009, "Don Phillipson" wrote:

Brining is prerequisite to smoking (strong brine
for cold smoke, mild brine for hot smoke). Before

I make a nice mild brine and smoke my trout 3-6 hrs
Lemon and garlic in various forms are essentail ingredients
I will sometimes use a little soy sauce as a partial salt substitute

I have a sceret recipe for smoking including some whiskey
Its a big hit!

We also cook w olive oil -
We can try to replace the fat comtent w olive oil
but sometimes its worth it to add a little butter just for flavoring

I would like to know more anout cold smoing
Can you elaborate a bit - ?
I tried it w some sockeye salmon (lox) but then I was afraid it would be
undercooked or smoked so I smoked them as normal a for a litte less time
I would like to know more about and have more confidence in cold smokimg?

Fred

Brining serves a purpose in various forms of "cooking." In cold smoking, it is
part of the preserving process as well as part of the seasoning process.
Smoking, both hot and cold, are primarily preserving processes that also happen
to taste good, at least to a lot of folks. First, keep in mind what "cooking"
is, at least as far as most people in the US consider it to be - in the case of
meat, it is basically nothing more than denaturing the protein, typically via
heat, and intended to make the food "safer" via heat. Therefore, personal
preferences aside, all you must do for safety issues is to get the food
temperature up high enough to kill any "bugs" that _might_ be present. Since
all the likely "bugs" _on_ beef that you'll kill with (reasonable) heat are
surfactants, rare cuts are no more dangerous than well-done cuts, but hamburgers
_can_ be made potentially safer by cooking the entire burger through to medium
or more.

IAC, brining/salting can serve several purposes. In the case of cold smoking,
it is part of the preservation process. In the case of, for example, modern US
pork and chicken, brining can help keep very lean meats "juicy" in cooking, esp.
if it is a relatively long cooking process - a "Boston butt" roast or a
dry-roasted chicken. Basically, it's diffusion of the moisture into the
intercellular spaces, which raises the denaturing temp of the protein, which
means less water cooks out in the process and some sources say that there is
osmosis of the water into the cells via the saline content of the solution. IME,
I've heard the diffusion is accepted and the osmosis is disputed. For my
purposes, it works, so I've not done in-depth research. If you really want to
know all about it, get a textbook on meat processing techniques - I don't mean
that in a smart-assed way, it's just a pretty complicated area that covers a
whole lot of material, and as I said, there is some disagreement, at least among
the food crowd.

If all you want to know is how to properly cold smoke some fish, just brine it,
use sawdust (or chips, but as small a pieces as you can get), keep the temp of
the smoking chamber _low_ (under about 70-80 degrees), and let it smoke for at
least 24 hours - longer is better, esp. for preservation rather than taste.

HTH,
R

"Fred" wrote in message
...

I would like to know more anout cold smoing
Can you elaborate a bit - ?
I tried it w some sockeye salmon (lox) but then I was afraid it would be
undercooked or smoked so I smoked them as normal a for a litte less time
I would like to know more about and have more confidence in cold smokimg?

Vendors of smokers usually explain, e.g. see
http://www.bradleysmoker.com/faqs.asp
Generally hot smoking (at 150 deg. Fahr. or hotter) is
cooking for eating today and cold smoke (100 deg. F)
is for storage (a month in the fridge, a year if frozen.)
Cold smoking takes two or three times as much time.
My portable Abu smoker (size of a shoebox, burning
alcohol) cooks a fish or cheese sandwich in 20 min.
(No need to brine fish. Mixed salt and red pepper is
lightly sprinkled beforehand. The red pepper helps
you see what you are doing.) My Luhr Jensen smoker
hangs 4 to 8 whole sides (max. 16") where they are
smoked 7 hours for storage.

Recommended brine for cold smoke:
Brown sugar 0.25 lb.
Salt 1.25 lb.; we use coarse pickling salt
Lemon Juice 85 ml. = 85 c.c. = 3 fl. oz (at 29.5 c.c. ea.)
Garlic 3 or 4 cloves well mashed
Dill weed 3 tablespoons
Oregano ample pinch
Marjoram ample pinch
Water 15 cups (@8 oz.)

Time: max. one hour per (weighed) pound of fish.
Rinse afterwards under a running faucet and dry
overnight (hanging from a bulldog clip) before
smoking for several hours.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 12:28:57 -0400, "Don Phillipson"
wrote:

"Fred" wrote in message
m...

I would like to know more anout cold smoing
Can you elaborate a bit - ?
I tried it w some sockeye salmon (lox) but then I was afraid it would be
undercooked or smoked so I smoked them as normal a for a litte less time
I would like to know more about and have more confidence in cold smokimg?

Vendors of smokers usually explain, e.g. see
http://www.bradleysmoker.com/faqs.asp
Generally hot smoking (at 150 deg. Fahr. or hotter) is
cooking for eating today and cold smoke (100 deg. F)
is for storage (a month in the fridge, a year if frozen.)
Cold smoking takes two or three times as much time.
My portable Abu smoker (size of a shoebox, burning
alcohol) cooks a fish or cheese sandwich in 20 min.
(No need to brine fish. Mixed salt and red pepper is
lightly sprinkled beforehand. The red pepper helps
you see what you are doing.) My Luhr Jensen smoker
hangs 4 to 8 whole sides (max. 16") where they are
smoked 7 hours for storage.

Recommended brine for cold smoke:
Brown sugar 0.25 lb.
Salt 1.25 lb.; we use coarse pickling salt
Lemon Juice 85 ml. = 85 c.c. = 3 fl. oz (at 29.5 c.c. ea.)
Garlic 3 or 4 cloves well mashed
Dill weed 3 tablespoons
Oregano ample pinch
Marjoram ample pinch
Water 15 cups (@8 oz.)

Time: max. one hour per (weighed) pound of fish.
Rinse afterwards under a running faucet and dry
overnight (hanging from a bulldog clip) before
smoking for several hours.

You seem to know what you want and how to do it - I am curious, though - have
you tried a lower cold temp for a longer time period for your "cold" smoking?
The reason I ask is that your temps seem a bit higher than what I'm used to
insofar as the general description of "hot" and "cold" smoking. If I understand
your premise hot = for eating immediately, that is what we do for things
like "BBQ" - pork ribs, brisket, etc. However, we tone it down a bit for things
like sausage, hams/tassos, or jerky, and even moreso for fish. I guess,
technically, I'm more accustomed to hot, warm, and cold smoking, with the warm
and cold being used to both flavor and preserve and the "hot" used for
"cooking." This, IME, is somewhat different than smoking as used as a
preservative method - "hot" and "cold" in general terminology and warm and cold
in my description above - that happens to taste good as a side benefit.

TC,
R

On 8-Sep-2009, "Don Phillipson" wrote:

I would like to know more about cold smoking
Can you elaborate a bit - ?
I tried it w some sockeye salmon (lox) but then I was afraid it would be
undercooked or smoked so I smoked them as normal a for a litte less time
I would like to know more about and have more confidence in cold
smokimg?

Vendors of smokers usually explain, e.g. see
http://www.bradleysmoker.com/faqs.asp
Generally hot smoking (at 150 deg. Fahr. or hotter) is
cooking for eating today and cold smoke (100 deg. F)
is for storage (a month in the fridge, a year if frozen.)
Cold smoking takes two or three times as much time.
My portable Abu smoker (size of a shoebox, burning
alcohol) cooks a fish or cheese sandwich in 20 min.
(No need to brine fish. Mixed salt and red pepper is
lightly sprinkled beforehand. The red pepper helps
you see what you are doing.) My Luhr Jensen smoker
hangs 4 to 8 whole sides (max. 16") where they are
smoked 7 hours for storage.

Recommended brine for cold smoke:
Brown sugar 0.25 lb.
Salt 1.25 lb.; we use coarse pickling salt
Lemon Juice 85 ml. = 85 c.c. = 3 fl. oz (at 29.5 c.c. ea.)
Garlic 3 or 4 cloves well mashed
Dill weed 3 tablespoons
Oregano ample pinch
Marjoram ample pinch
Water 15 cups (@8 oz.)

Time: max. one hour per (weighed) pound of fish.
Rinse afterwards under a running faucet and dry
overnight (hanging from a bulldog clip) before
smoking for several hours.


Thanks to you and others (who were at one time blocked) for help re cold
smoking.

I willl keep this recipe and try it
We raise rainbows and I smoke some from time to time in my Weber charcoal
smoker
I can fit 8 filets or 4 fish
It really is not worth smoking less than 2 at a time

But I will try the cold smoking on some salmon

Fred