Cold Smoked Salmon Question

What is the recipe for the brine you used, and what was the recommended brine time?

Was it more of a brine or a cure? If the point was to pull moisture out of the fish then likely when you thaw not much at all will have changed with regard to meat texture. Reality is most fish is frozen at some point before you eat it. Obviously the less times it's frozen and thawed the better but for the purposes of a cold smoke I doubt you'll notice the difference.

One way to find out!

Unless you had the ability to flash freeze the mixture, the longer freeze
time, due to the salt in the brine, may have caused the ice crystals to
damage the fish making it seem somewhat mushy.

Per an online search...

The slow freezing of fish flesh is undesirable because large ice crystals form which can damage the structure of the muscle, resulting in a thawed product that is less attractive in appearance and less palatable than the original fresh fish.

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pmad said:

Thank you all,
So, it was a brine recipe that I threw some pink into.

Based upon everything here, I'm thinking I might have damaged the texture some but it should be safe.

It's still partially frozen. I think I'm going to leave it to thaw on a rack in the fridge tonight.
Slow smoke tomorrow and eat within 2 days.

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Okay....the brine is a curing brine (which is good), but we don't know if it's a strong brine or a weaker brine. Or if the instructions call for a 4 hour brine time or a 12 hour brine time. The real question is, what is happening to the fish for the 24 hours in the freezer, then during the thaw time. I'm almost wondering if you need to thaw the fish in plain water to dilute the brine as it thaws. Then give it some extra pellicle time before smoking.