The ~thirdeye~ Nova Lox Adventure Is Underway...

... and if I fark this one up, I swear this will be the last batch I make this year. :mrgreen:

The salmon quality was not good at the first two markets...., so I called Sam's to see when theirs arrived (it's usually skinless and I prefer skin-on), the guy said "it just showed up along with some steelhead". "Skin on I asked?", "Salmon no, steelhead yes" was the reply. I hauled ash up there and scored three nice sides of steelhead, about 7 pounds total.

It has wonderful fat content is very thick. Only one small piece will become Nova Lox, the tails I will reserve for pan frying or grilling, the rest I will use my old reliable dry cure and hot smoke method.





The belly strips will only cure for 4 hours, they are only 3/8" thick and always higher in fat so I'll make them into a salmon jerky kind of thing. I cut the fillets in half, one of the halves will become lox.








If you saw the Nova Lox thread 8 or 10 days ago, you know I've been on a quest for recipes and was overwhelmed with different varieties of lox as well as numerous recipes and methods. I'm doing a dry cure/brine cure/ soak-out/ long rest/cold smoke kind of thing, and this is my first attempt at making lox.

Here the lox following a dry cure, a brine cure, the soak out and a light seasoning with white pepper, black pepper, and dill weed. It most likely won't hit the cold smoker until late today or early Sunday. Then it needs to chill out again for 8 hours of so before sampling..... Monday morning with some bagels and cream cheese sounds like the plan for now. If it goes bad, Plan B is using it for cut bait on my next ice fishing trip. This way I know I will catch something I like to eat. :mrgreen:

Ron_L said:

I don't think I've seen Nova lox with dill (or any seasoning for that matter). Gravlox (the Norwegian version of lox) has dill, but the Nova lox that I get in the delis around here is just cold smoked after the brine and cure.

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One thing I noticed from the get go was the way terms were interchanged between the British Isles, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Scandinavia, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the US. Then there was a big swing in terms from coast to coast. Regardless of the name, some recipes are the essentially the same. For example, I got recipes from three different folks that called the combination of dry cure, dill, pepper and vodka gravlox, Scottish lox and Nova Lox.

I even traced the name lox back to "lachs" the German name for salmon and found an article stating that Germans were in fact responsible for the popularity of using milder cures, which later became Nova Lox. This was interesting because early on in my searching, I played my hole card and contacted my friend who lives in Nova Scotia, asking for an authentic recipe for Nova Lox. She sent an email saying "no body around here I know makes the stuff". She is still asking around.

The common denominators, and where I began to sketch in a recipe and method was that the majority of my sources did agree that Nova Lox was a milder cure, often a double cure (dry and wet), and it is cold smoked. Because so many of the lox recipes I found called for dill (some very heavily coated) I decided to give mine a light sprinkle, more for appearance sake than anything else.

Ron_L said:

I should have known that you would do your research first :-D

In the little research that I have done I found that Nova Lox were originated in New York using salmon from Nova Scotia, so that may be why your friend can't find anyone there who makes them.

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And part of the history I turned up indicated that many Europeans liked the mild cure (which the Germans may have had a hand in making popular, especially in their beer halls), and that due to a shortage of North Sea Salmon, German merchants imported Pacific salmon from the US and Canada... but they didn't like the hard cure and requested a milder cure. About the same time, emigrants from Europe were arriving in the US, mostly around New York and the East coast. They too demanded a milder form of smoked salmon than what was available here.... which ties into your research. To them the name Nova Lox indicated a milder, less salty product. And of course, the salmon could have come from the Nova Scotia fishing grounds.

buccaneer said:

That species of Nova Scotia salmon is extinct, fished out.
Looking forward to the process thirdeye, love your stuff!
The origin of lox is Yiddish, from the Yiddish word for salmon, 'Laks'.
Stands to reason, they were using salt cures in step with their beliefs that it was an aphrodisiac and in step with their religious rituals...and doing so long before there was a 'Germany'.
Institutionalized religions LOVE their lay people to be prolific in reproducing as it grows the religion.
I'm subscribing, looking forward to seeing it!
Not the religion thing, the salmon thing sheesh

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Awright.... I knew there was going to be a curve ball in this discussion sooner or later. I'll add the Yiddish word "laks" and lox origin to the developing story.