Field study 2 : Cape Cleare salmon.

Cape Cleare is a salmon company based in Port Townsend that focuses on hook and line hand caught salmon.

Interview : coming soon

In an attempt to obtain more apparent results it was important to try to push the factors in the smoking process for the initial idea and compare it to the first two smokings. In the third attempt approximately 4.5 ounces of juniper berries were used along with alder,  about twice as much as the first smoking.

The brine was replicated using the same measurements : One and one half quart water, three tablespoons sea salt and four tablespoons honey. The sockeye was brined for six hours and dried for another six.

Smoking commenced using alder as a base and an even dispersement of the juniper berries over the eight hours.

The above photo shows the finished result. The alder creates a nice sweet flavor profile with a deep ‘woody’, ‘beachy’ smoke aroma, the juniper berries imparted a rich bitter flavor that was more pronounced and was borderline over powering however it remained in the ‘culinarily sensible’ category for flavor. Sockeye by nature is a more firm fish and does not turn out as oily and supple as Chinook, it does however have a bright red flesh which I believe contributes to the pleasure of eating it. Having smoked quite a few fillets of sockeye now I have noticed an important factor, smoking the fish at a lower temp for longer does help to foster a softer consistency in the flesh and the long brine time appears to preserve the moisture even after many hours in the smoker.

Field study : Crimson cove smoked salmon, cheese, nuts, oil and salt.

Interview and perspective coming soon.

In order to make a more accurate judgement of the first juniper smoke I prepared a batch of salmon with simply alder for comparison.

In this batch the sockeye was brined again in the NW clover honey and sea salt for six hours. Followed by six hours of drying. Finally it was smoked with alder chips for eight hours.

The salmon turned out very similar to the first batch and it had a similar bitterness though much more faint. The bitterness casts some doubt on my judgement of the the first batch. However I can’t rule out the influence of the juniper berries. Since the cubic inches of alder outweigh the cubic inches of juniper by a considerable amount I decided to increase the amount of juniper berries for the next batch to try to push the flavor augmentation.

In following along with the research question (…insert question verbatum…..) I attempted to replace all basic ingredients in smoked salmon with local ingredients, thereby creating a food that truly has a taste of (one) place. There is one glaring hole in this project which is the use of Alaskan Salmon, which, is some-what local. It is, however, ‘imported’ if you will, to a certain degree. An ideal scenario would be to use salmon caught either from the Salish Sea or the Straight of Juan de Fuca. It is not salmon season however, so this is simply not possible right now.

(insert photo of salt and honey here)

That aside, the next series of ingredients in making smoked salmon is the brine. The essential ingredients of the brine are water, salt and sugar. The salt and sugar are preserving agents, while the water simply allows the fish to be submerged in them. In the first trial I used a generic bulk brand of local sea salt for which I was not able to obtain proof of origin, other than its label of being “sourced” and “produced” in the Washington. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, this time, even though it’s rather ‘fishy’. The sugar I used was L.R. Rice brand raw and unfiltered clover honey labeled “local northwest” yet, packed in Colorado, this again is a bit fishy.

I brined the sockeye salmon in about a quart and a half of pure water using 4 tablespoons of sea salt and 5 tablespoons of honey for 6 hours. The salmon was then air dried in the refrigerator for another 6 hours.

(insert photo of juniper berries)

The salmon was then smoked using alder wood chips (native to the NW) for 8 hours. Evenly spaced over the 8 hour period dried juniper berries (bulk sourced from Washington) were added onto the alder chips, with the intention to augment the flavor.

The interesting challenge with the juniper berries were that they are waxy and resinous and are fickle when it comes to smoking, the have a ‘critical mass’, when crowded in a foil tray with holes on the bottom (which makes isolating wood chips easy) they tend to spontaneously combust. When this happens they release a very heavy, strong, noxious, tarry smoke which really wears on the lungs. When the berries are dispersed lightly and evenly over the lump charcoal the release a less tarry smoke that has a intense but pleasant aroma.

The verdict?

I did not smoke a control group fillet of simply alder smoked salmon. Trial 1 results: alder smoke, in sockeye, creates a nice deep-forest ‘woody’, ‘beachy’, aroma in the salmon which I find absolutely palatable. It was hard to tell if the Juniper berries, of which around two ounces were used, imparted much of a flavor. Which was a surprise given how strong their aroma was during the smoking. However I believed there to be a deep rich almost bitter ‘note’ to the fish. I attributed this to the juniper berries.

Above photo: Juniper alder smoked salmon garnished with sorrel and fresh juniper berries.

Weekly post that addresses student’s exploration of your ILC learning objectives, activities and outcomes; specifically a weekly post that explores answers to the questions in the Learning Objectives.