What an experience…
I’ve been playing with smoking times and temperatures on each batch of smoked kokanee to find my optimal/most efficient method of producing the best tasting smoked kokanee to suit our taste buds.
You can YouTube smoking kokanee as much as you want to help with the process, but the best way to succeed is to “just do it” and ask questions on internet forums and Facebook groups like this one. There is always a target temperature and final recommended temperature to smoke fish. Finding the temperature you like is a different story (at least for those of us who are picky).
This last batch started like every other. Thursday night, I removed an approximate number of kokanee needed to fill all my racks in the smoker. I wanted to try something new, which goes against regular techniques in any cooking situation. I pulled out small fish and big fish, which under normal circumstances is not correct based on different cooking times. The reason I did this was to use up all the packages that had not been vacuum sealed correctly.
The next day, I filleted the half frozen kokanee and placed them in my sea salt and brown sugar brine. Saturday afternoon, my kokanee had been sitting in their brine for 12hrs so I removed them, rinsed them off and placed them on their racks in the smoker. I made sure the thickest and largest fillets were on the bottom racks to help even the cooking process. I let them sit for one and a half hours to form a pellicle and then turned the smoker on like any other day.
It didn’t take long until a new variable entered the equation. Our Cariboo skies surprised us with a 15 minute rain storm that forced me to run and grab an umbrella to shelter the electronics of my smoker (I do not have a covered deck or porch). During this scramble mode process, I turned the smoker around a few times on the deck to help shelter the electronics. This would later prove to be the contributing factor to my new smoking experience.
The last batch of kokanee we made was cooked at a higher temperature than normal and then I reduced the temperature at the end. This time, my plan was to smoke it low and slow. I planned to increase the temperature the last couple hours to help finish the cooking/smoking process.
Later in the evening I raised the temperature of the smoker (or so I thought). Lesson learned here was to check the temperature more often than not. The day temperature was 120F but due to our Cariboo evening temperatures, the smoker was only able to reach 100F in the evening. The time had come to take the kokanee out of the smoker after 8hrs of low and slow cooking with a 2hr window of raised temperature. Low and behold, my kokanee was not ready to come out of the smoker. The temperature was only showing 100F and the inside of the smoker was not very hot.
What was the issue? The one time I figured I would be going to bed early with a finished batch turned out to be the longest night of smoking since doing Fraser River Sockeye 20 years ago with my uncle. My tired mind was not thinking straight and so I thought maybe the smoker needed more chips to burn, which I had stopped smoking the last 2hrs (also a new technique I was trying). I found a box of apple chips and tried that, but the internal temperature would not climb. Thankfully, Google is my friend and a quick search on Google helped me investigate my issue. There were two potential issues at hand, but only one of them could be the issue. The first issue was saying that the thermometer on the smoker might be faulty, which I knew to be false due to the lack of heat. I believed this to be more of an issue if smoking large meats like hams. The second trouble shooting issue ended up being the solution to my problem.
Remember how I moved my smoker around during the rain storm? It turns out that the plug came loose to the smoker and my element was not working because of this. A quick re-connection and we were back in business (well, only I was in business because the rest of the household was sleeping snug as a bug). At this point, it was 1:30am and I had to get some rest. I set my alarm for 2:30am so I could check on the fish. An hour passed quickly and I rolled off the couch to check on my precious kokanee. It wasn’t ready so I re-set my alarm for 3:30am.
Finally! My kokanee was done to perfection at the expense of lack of sleep. I started taking it out of the smoker and placing on plates to cool down. Sarah woke up during this process and couldn’t believe I was still awake. I told her i was almost done and would be to bed soon (or so i thought).
The kokanee was hot and I wanted to let it cool this time before vacuum sealing to see if it made a difference. I made the mistake of falling asleep again on the couch and slept thru my 4:15am alarm. By 5:00am my kokanee had cooled enough to vacuum seal and I finished just before 6:00am and then climbed into bed. I double sealed each end of the bags and hopefully this helps.
Lesson learned, check the temperature on your smoker at least every hour and make sure your temperature is between 120F and 150F.
The good news is, we have more smoked kokanee to enjoy.