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Hello again and welcome back! This year has started off with a series of blog posts featuring things I have wanted to learn but for one reason or another procrastinated. This post focuses on curing and cold smoking, two areas covered in a great book named Charcuterie The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing
. For this cook I cured, then cold smoked a beautiful piece of farm raised salmon. Now sit back, grab a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and enjoy this post for Big Green Egg Cold Smoked Salmon.
Big Green Egg Cold Smoked Salmon
Although there are a lot of moving parts to this recipe the cure used for the salmon was simple featuring just two ingredients: Coarse Salt & Brown Sugar.
Mix the salt and brown sugar well and place a layer on the bottom of a pan before laying the salmon on top. Then cover the salmon with the remainder of the salt, sugar mixture.
I moved the cured salmon to a deeper dish since the cure creates a brine when pulling the moisture from the fish. Here is the salmon after 36 hours in the cure.
After 24-48 hours, rinse the salmon under cold then place it in a bowl of cold water for 30 minutes to extract the salt.
Pull the salmon out of the water and place on a wire rack, then refrigerate (uncovered) overnight. This helps dry the salmon creating a surface the smoke will adhere to.
After the salmon sits overnight in the fridge it is time to set up your Big Green Egg for the cold smoke. I used the Amazen Pellet Smoker
with Apple Wood pellets
.
Fill the maze with the pellets.
Clean out all of the lump charcoal in your Big Green Egg so the fire box is empty. To light the pellet smoker, place on top of your grate, light the corner of the smoker with a butane torch, and let the flame burn for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, blow out the flame, and place the pellet smoker in the bottom of your fire box (mine sits on top of my Kick Ash Basket
below).
Keep the top and bottom vents all the way open and let the smoke billow from the Big Green Egg. Place your ConvEGGerator
legs up and then the grill grate on top to complete your set up.
Remember this is a COLD SMOKE so if you are doing this in weather above 70° Fahrenheit you need to add a tray of ice to your environment to keep temp under 90°. Fortunately, this cook was in February and it was 32° outside.
Once the pellet smoker has been producing smoke for another 10 minutes place your salmon inside on top of a wire rack on the grill grate. Close the dome and let the salmon smoke away for 6 to 12 hours.
For this cook, the salmon was ready at the 8 hour mark. As you can see the smoke was still going strong with this little pellet smoker!
Pull the smoked salmon from the Big Green Egg and place it on a large piece of butcher paper. Wrap and place in the refrigerator overnight before slicing and serving.
Big Green Egg Cold Smoked Salmon
Serve with lemon, chopped hard-boiled egg, sliced red onion, capers, cream cheese, and fresh bagels.
This was an amazing experience and one I look forward to doing again soon trying various aromatics for the salmon cure.
Big Green Egg Cold Smoked Salmon
Ingredients
- 2-3 Lbs. Salmon Filet
- 2 1/2 Cups of Coarse Salt
- 2 1/2 Cups of Brown Sugar
Instructions
- To make the cure:
- Combine the salt and brown sugar in a mixing bowl and mix well.
- Spread 1/3 of the cure over the bottom of a glass baking dish large enough to hold the fish.
- Lay the salmon on top of the cure.
- Spread the remaining cure on top of the salmon to cover the fish completely.
- Cover the dish with plastic wrap and cure the fish in your refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours.
- After 24-48 hours in the cure rinse the cure off the salmon under cold running water.
- Place the salmon in a large bowl and cover with cold water.
- Soak for 30 minutes, then drain well.
- Blot the salmon dry on both sides with paper towels.
- Lay the salmon on a wire rack over a sheet pan and let the salmon dry, uncovered, in the refrigerator over night.
- Fill your Amazen Pellet Smoker with Apple Wood pellets and light in one corner.
- Let the flame burn 10 minutes before blowing it out to produce the smoke.
- If you’re smoking the salmon on a warm day (temperature above 70 degrees), arrange the fish on a wire rack over a roasting pan filled with ice. (The fish should be at least 1 inch above the ice.)
- Empty out your fire box and place the Amazen Pellet smoker inside.
- Put the ConvEGGerator in the Big Green Egg for indirect cooking.
- Place the salmon on a wire rack in the Big Green Egg on top of the grill grate.
- Now cold smoke the salmon 6-12 hours. You will know when it is ready when it takes on that semi-firm and leathery look.
- Wrap the salmon in butcher paper and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.
- Slice using a sharp knife diagonal to the fish, cut the salmon into paper-thin slices.
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi, would like to try this recipe (Seems amazing) but it’s 14F outside (canada winter), would you do it the same way with the amaze N cold smoker? Would you add a heat source?
Thanks
I want to try this recipe in my BGE but here in Canada it’s 14F, do I follow the recipe or do I add a heat source so the salmon won’t freeze?
The colder outside the better! Basically the salmon is cured and edible by the time you go to smoke it. So the smoke is further curing it and adding flavor i.e. it isn’t for cooking it with heat. Make sense?!
Hi Patrice. I also live in Canada (Eastern Ontario).
Done this twice with only the pellets as the heat source. No problems. Used my thermoworks smoke thermometer to monitor temp. 70 – 80 F maintained.
First try was mid November. 48 hr brine, 8 hr smoke. Good, but salty and slightly overdone.
Chris, I didn’t follow up with you after the 2nd attempt, so here it is.
This one was mid December, very cold! Temp was good in the BGE tho.
This time I brined for 24 hrs and smoked for 6 hours.
Excellent Christmas day brunch!
Next time I’m going to drop the brine time go 20/22 hrs. Gotta experiment!
Thanks Jim! So, happy y’all love this recipe and keep iterating it.
Jim,
Your first experience sounds exactly like mine, too salty and over smoked. My second was ~26hrs and 6 hrs and it was fantastic. My third attempt was closer to 36hrs of brine 8 hrs of smoke. I think my pellets must have caught fire at some point because the salmon formed a skin on it that was tough. I dubbed it salmon jerky and it was a hit. I cut the tougher “jerky” off the top and sliced the other meat up and it was ok. On another note, after the first attempt, I consulted some other sites and decided to try leaving the skin on the fish. I feel that skin on produces a better product plus it makes slicing easier.
Good morning Chris. The first time I made this recipe. I followed the recipe with the exception my smoke tube only does 6 hrs. And I removed the skin. The Salmon was perfect. I gave some to my girl friend on Christmas 2019 (our first date). She loved it so much, she is now requesting more for Valentine’s Day instead of chocolate. Now to figure out, is it me or the Salmon she is falling for…lol. Thank you for the recipe.
Of course it’s you my friend… you took the effort to make this salmon! Thanks for the kind note 🙂
Second time making this, and I’m thrilled with the results. 36 hours cure, 8.5 hours on the smoker, perfect results. I’ve amazed my friends and family with this recipe, and will continue to do so. Planning on vacuum sealing in thirds and freezing some of it for later. Thanks again!
I love that you’ve had so much success with this. After vacuum sealing feel free to mail me a hunk 😉
Any advice regarding venting? I assume some venting is needed for oxygen.
It’s buried in there somewhere, but good catch. Top and bottom vents are fully open for the whole cook.
Hi this is very interesting. We have a bge and a Traeger. I’m curios about your using pellets in the bge. Why not use bge smoke? Why not use a pellet grill?
This is a cold smoke and thus you need to keep the temp very low. That’s easily accomplished with the pellet maze I used for this cook. You cannot set the temperature that low on a Traeger so that isn’t an option. This is less about the wood type and more about the cooking environment. Hope that helped.
I’m still saving up for my BGE.. but having a blast curing and cold smoking just using my weber. Cure for 36 hours or so, cold smoke for 2-3 hours gives me the flavor I like. Now that it’s summer, the cold smoking has to be done early in the am, and over a pan of ice cubes. I change them about every hour (which I realize releases the smoke, but I am fast)
I don’t want to cold smoke the salmon but rather just cook it low and slow on The Bug Green Egg. Does 215* work?
I live in So California!!!
That works!
Thank you for this recipe! i’m a rookie in smoking and i’m really concerned about storage. I’ve read that many things can go wrong if we don’t follow precise steps in the preparation and, after the smoking session, when storing it in the fridge or freezer.
How will i need to store this in the fridge? How long will it last if not vacuum sealed?
Thanks!
1-2 weeks in the fridge and 1 month in the freezer
Alberto, a good vacuum sealer will become your most prized kitchen tool (almost) – I cold smoke a bunch of this when it’s cool enough in the spring mornings. I just had the last of it this morning, still delicious. The long 6 months in the freezer didn’t seem to affect it in the least. I can’t wait for it to cool down around here again.