Well, I haven't been around much lately, so I thought I'd go ahead and enter one of these TDs. To be the odd one out, I thought I'd do something different and tell everyone that my "Go-to meal" is smoked salmon. :heh: Like that would be anyone's go-to meal, but hey, I do this almost every week. It probably is! So, this is the warm-smoked salmon recipe I use. I begin with some brown sugar (about 4/3 cup) and kosher salt (about 1/3 cup) -- that's a 4:1 ratio for those in the upper level math class.
I use the farm-raised salmon at Costco. I've used the expensive stuff and the family really prefers the farm-raised. I usually slice the side in fourths, but sometimes fifths. And I try to avoid the mess and spread out some of that sugar in a plastic bag and set that in a cake pan.
I lay those salmon slices in there and cover them up with the brown sugar and salt mixture:
I then wrap that up and put the open end of the bag outside the pan -- this keeps the juices in the bag so they don't make a mess.
I put that in the fridge overnight and weight that down with anything handy. The primary weight is a container of cheese and a few other items:
That usually takes me all of 10 minutes to prepare, including clean-up and I do this the night before. Next day when I get home from work, I light up the Oval with a big chunk of cherry. I try to let it settle between 150 - 200*. I don't like it to go above 200* or you have cooked salmon:
I pull that salmon out of the fridge and rinse off the individual pieces.
Look at all the juice in there; get Bigabyte a straw, quick!
I dry the pieces off and set them out on a frog mat for a half hour or so
then I'll dress them. We prefer either a coating of sesame seed oil and sesame seeds
or maple sugar and fresh ground pepper
Into the smoke they go for 2-4 hours
We bring them up above 145* IT, sometimes even as high as 160*. It seems pretty foolproof, which is what I need. Anyway, here is the final product.
This goes in the fridge and is our breakfast food. It's great on bagels. And you can pick any ol' zero your heart desires for the TD pic. You can even grab the one that Al says looks delicious! That's a novel idea!